Bicycle Safety

Streets designed for safe, accessible, and equitable use. That is the vision of the "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets," to be unveiled tonight by the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign. The product of one year of community-driven planning, in consultation with urbanist legends Jan Gehl and Donald Shoup, the 51-page Blueprint [PDF] is an expansive neighborhood-wide plan that would employ many livable streets concepts already in use by NYC DOT. 

Today's Streetswiki entry comes from Josh, a Livable Streets member based in San Francisco, who writes:

Earlier this week Transportation Alternatives announced the winners of its "21st Century Street" design competition, selecting three entries from more than a hundred submissions re-imagining the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Brooklyn.

City cyclist and graphic designer Marko Bon is working to get a logo like this one added to taxi video screens as part of the "Taxicab Passenger Enhancement Program." Bon tells Streetsblog that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has shown interest in the design, which he hopes can be incorporated in a way that will draw passengers' attention. Info stickers have included anti-dooring messages, designed by Transportation Alternatives, for years, but video PSAs got lost in the shuffle when making their "Taxi TV" debut in 2003.

E. 33rd St. and Park Ave. was the city's most dangerous intersection between 1995 and 2005.

Robin Urban Smith files this report from P.S. 76 in the Bronx, where students wrapped up a month-long bike safety course with a playground "rodeo" on Wednesday. This June, Michael Needham Jr., a fifth-grader at the school, lost his life after a speeding car hit him while he was riding with friends near the Allerton library.

This evening, Adopt-a-Bike-Lane and Transportation Alternatives will launch a campaign for a protected bike lane on Delancey Street by leading escorted "bike commuter pools" across the Williamsburg Bridge. Reads a TA press release:

Arturo Flores, a Queens musician who played Andean wind instruments, was struck and killed by a van this Tuesday while biking in Astoria. Reports of his death have appeared in a local message board, neighborhood blogs, and a Peruvian music blog. Conventional news coverage has not surfaced online, but a sparse account appeared in the print edition of the Daily News:

Vision Zero is about more than looking both ways.