Pop-Up Café Expansion Faces Critical Community Board Vote Tonight
When DOT installed its first "pop-up café" over a few parking spaces on Lower Manhattan's Pearl Street last summer, the 14-table public seating area helped increase business by 14 percent at its two sponsoring restaurants. With New York City still recovering from recession and much of the city starved for public space, DOT has moved to expand the program. Restaurants were given the option of requesting a café and DOT selected twelve locations from that pool of applicants. The selected locations are concentrated in the Village and SoHo, making tonight's Community Board 2 vote a critical moment for the program.
March 24, 2011
Gale Brewer Introduces Bill to Make Central Park, Prospect Park Car-Free
Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced legislation today that would restore Central and Prospect Parks to their original car-free status.
March 23, 2011
Road Diet for Macombs Road Wins Unanimous Bronx Community Board Vote
DOT's plans to improve pedestrian safety along the length of the Bronx's Macombs Road [PDF] received a unanimous vote of support from Bronx Community Board 4 last night, according to District Manager José Rodriguez. The plan puts Macombs on a road diet and reconfigures dangerous diagonal intersections that lead to drivers taking fast turns across the crosswalk.
March 23, 2011
Law Profs: PPW Lawsuit Unlikely to Succeed
Suing the city has earned the well-connected opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane a lot of media attention, but ultimately their lawyer, Gibson Dunn's Jim Walden, will have to show up in court and make his case that the lane was illegal. According to the legal experts we spoke to, that case looks shaky indeed.
March 23, 2011
New York Has 81,875 Metered Parking Spaces, And Millions of Free Ones
Today's New York Post story about City Council Member David Greenfield's desperate push to squeeze a few more parking spaces out of New York City curb space reminded us of this neat little chart, which shows the total number of parking meters in the city, broken out into single-space meters and muni-meters. If Greenfield and other council members want to get serious about opening up curb space, they need to take a hard look at these numbers.
March 22, 2011
Nancy Gruskin Launches Delivery Cyclist Safety Campaign
Nancy Gruskin, who founded the Stuart C. Gruskin Family Foundation after her husband was killed by a cyclist in Midtown two years ago, launched a new campaign to educate delivery cyclists about the rules of the road this morning. The "5 to Ride" campaign will ask restaurants to pledge to teach their delivery cyclists five basic rules, grouped in this mnemonic order:
March 22, 2011
Waterfront Plan Provides Timeline for Greenway Expansions
New York City's greenway system will see steady growth in the next three years, according to city plans released earlier this week. As part of its plans to revitalize the waterfront, the city released a list of 14 funded greenway projects slated to move forward in the next three years.
March 18, 2011