Livable Streets

We don't understand a word of it, but in this video compilation from the Netherlands, we see what a well-funded television ad campaign to encourage cycling might look like. Or not. Check out the ad about three minutes in: It appears to show an Al Qaeda operative a Saddam Hussein-like guy on a bicycle with a machine gun strapped to his back chasing three Western politician businessman types. It's probably not the best sales pitch for the US market but you get the idea.

According to a more-than-a-little-snarky post on Curbed, the first of Lower Broadway's hotly anticipated bus bulbs has been constructed on Broadway south of Spring Street.

West 90th Street Bike Lane between Columbus and Central Park West This is one use of the new bike lane on W. 90th Street that I did not expect to see. I’ll leave it to someone else to submit this to MyBikeLane.com. Photo by Glenn McAnanama

The CB2 Traffic & Transportation Committee met at the LGBT Center on Tuesday. 

Saturday afternoon traffic congestion on a London street near Covent Garden with dimensions and land use almost identical to Prince Street in Manhattan.

 DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia on March 15: "I know that two-way streets are less safe."

Inspired by a poster produced by Portland's Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) in the mid-1990s, this weekend Transportation Alternatives gathered a gaggle of cyclists on 42nd Street in Manhattan to stage New York's own dramatic illustration of how much street space would be saved if everyone riding an automobile were traveling on a bicycle or bus.

All across the city neighborhood groups are coming together to re-envision and plan their own communities. In the last few months we've seen valuable community-planning processes taking place in Hell's Kitchen, the Meatpacking District and, to a certain extent, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People aren't waiting around for real estate developers or city agencies to tell them how their neighborhoods should be. They are going out and doing the thinking and planning themselves.