Greenways

With New York City recently scoring a bronze medal for urban bike-friendliness from the League of American Bicyclists, we figured it was a good time to post our 8 minute StreetFilm on Davis, California, where I visited this summer. Portland, Oregon is nipping at their heels, but Davis is still the only city in America yet to attain LAB's Platinum award.

Earlier this summer, pedestrians and cyclists in northern Manhattan and the Bronx were surprised to learn that the walkway on the Henry Hudson Bridge, which spans the Harlem River to connect Inwood Hill Park with the neighborhoods of Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale, would be closed due to construction. For three years.

Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:

When I first met Brian McCormick, Milton Puryear and Meg Fellerath in the spring of 2002, they were picking up trash and planting tulips alongside a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway off-ramp in Cobble Hill. I asked them what they were up to and they told me they were working to create a waterfront greenway for Brooklyn -- a linear park running from Greenpoint to Red Hook. I didn't have the heart to tell them they looked like a gang of juvenile delinquents paying off 40 hours of community service for shop-lifting. Clearly, these people were either insane or visionary.

On Saturday, over 100 cyclists turned out for Brooklyn Greenway Initiative's annual ride. For nearly a decade, they have been working with numerous community & government groups to bring a Hudson River-style recreation path from Greenpoint to Sunset Park. In the next few years, much of the 15-mile route will finally become reality.

Opening this summer: East River State Park on the Brooklyn waterfront 

Photo: Metrolens

Among the three cyclist fatality clusters identified by the joint report by the City Departments of Health, Police, Parks and Transportation, the Queensboro Bridge is by far the worst. The entrance intersection at 60th and Second also claimed the award for the most unticketed incidents of block the box in the Borough President's study of lax enforcement of basic traffic rules.