City Council

The City Council transportation committee heard testimony today concerning a package of bike and pedestrian safety bills, including one that would allow cyclists to follow pedestrian signals instead of car signals.

If you believe the companies developing automated vehicle technology, driverless cars could be on the market as soon as 2021. It will probably take a lot longer than that for real autonomous fleets to operate in cities, but government agencies are already anticipating how to handle the driverless car future. On Friday, the New York City Council transportation committee got in on the action.

The City Council is expected to move swiftly on a bill to eventually double the number of food vendor permits. Before the package of bills known as the Street Vending Modernization Act passes, advocates want to ensure that it includes more safeguards to avoid obstructing crowded sidewalks.

Momentum is building for Council Member Carlos Menchaca's bill to allow cyclists to proceed at traffic signals at the same time that pedestrians get the go-ahead. Intro 1072 would affect intersections with leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) -- signals that give pedestrians a head start to establish themselves in the crosswalk ahead of turning motorists. If the bill passes, cyclists can legally take the same head-start.

Bus ridership in New York City has steadily declined since 2002, and bus riders put up with the slowest average speeds in the nation. But the MTA is in no hurry to fix the problem.

Just how bad do bus riders have it in NYC? Today the transit advocates with the Bus Turnaround campaign launched a web site that lets you look up any route in the system and see how it performs. Spend a few minutes on the site and you'll see why ridership has fallen 16 percent citywide since 2002.

This afternoon the City Council voted in favor of a package of bills aimed to improve bike access to commercial and residential buildings.

A group of City Council members has endorsed Mayor de Blasio's plan to reform the way commercial waste is collected.

The City Council just passed a package of bills -- collectively known as the Criminal Justice Reform Act -- encouraging police officers to issue civil instead of criminal summonses for "quality-of-life" offenses like possessing an open container of alcohol or littering. Sidewalk biking wasn't one of the offenses included in the bills, but a reform NYPD made to its enforcement of sidewalk cycling appears to have served as a proof of concept for the rest of the package.