Air Quality

Meghan Goth reports:

Help shape the neighborhood streets of the Upper West Side. Work with your neighbors to create beautiful, green streets with safer bike lanes, great walking spaces, less traffic and cleaner air. The Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign is holding a series of events aimed at empowering residents to re-imagine neighborhood streets and make their visions a reality.

Mayor Bloomberg and city agency commissioners answered questions in Riverdale last night.

The Philly CarShare program (Motto: "Why own when you can borrow?") is one of the most successful of its kind in the country. Currently in its fifth year, the Philadelphia-based non-profit recently surpassed 30,000 members and is generating $10 million annually to pay for a small staff, the purchase and maintenance of a fleet, and a reduction in rates when possible.

Only 20 years ago, Beijing was one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. Today, rapidly increasing automobile congestion is helping to turn the Chinese capital into one of the most polluted cities on Earth. Air quality is so bad, the Chinese government is initiating special driving restrictions ahead of next year's Olympic Games in order to make the air breathable for the world's elite athletes. Meanwhile, one entrepreneur is trying to bring back bicycles, capitalist-style with a bike sharing program similar to the one recently set up in Paris.

In June we reported on the city's effort to bring some 20,000 additional parking spaces to the Hudson Yards area on the far West Side, via a rezoning provision adopted in 2005. Though it's a remnant of the failed stadium plan, the Bloomberg administration nonetheless intends to hold on the parking component, going so far as to defend itself against a related lawsuit by claiming that the city's carbon monoxide levels are declining. (Not surprisingly, neighborhood folk aren't taking the city's word for it.)

From City Room: