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Things Heating Up Over at UncivilServants.org
Over at the site UncivilServants.org, the Transportation Alternatives project where readers can post photos of illegally parked cars sporting government-issued parking permits (like the court officers above who are comfortably ensconced in a no-parking zone on Crosby Street), there's a hot thread on whether showing the plate numbers of the vehicles constitutes a potentially dangerous invasion of privacy for police officers and others who are caught in violation. What do Streetsblog readers think?
March 19, 2007
Park Slope says: “One Way? No Way.” CB6 says: “Let’s Study It.”
In the aftermath of last Thursday's CB6 transportation committee meeting on the DOT's proposal to convert Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn to one-way arterials, some observers are noting that the motion that came out of the meeting may not accurately reflect the input of the nearly 700 people who came out to oppose the plan. As Norman Oder points out at Atlantic Yards Report, the language voted on by the committee leaves the DOT plenty of leeway.
March 19, 2007
Parking Permit Abusers Being Cleared from Chinatown?
A Chinatown tipster sent along these remarkable pictures yesterday of what seems to be an effort to cut down on placarded vehicles clogging the neighborhood's streets:
March 13, 2007
Report from Atlanta: Don’t Walk This Way
I can't get behind Prevention Magazine's ranking of New York as 39th among the nation's most walkable cities. But after spending three days in Atlanta for a conference recently, I have no problem understanding why it rates 86th.
March 9, 2007
Feds Withhold Fatal-Accident Info from Public
An article in the LA Times (reg required) details how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has systematically withheld information on fatal accidents from the public, even going so far as to deny Freedom of Information Act requests from researchers.
March 8, 2007
StreetFilms: “Something Has to Be Done”
Here are some highlights from Sunday's rally for pedestrian safety. In the words of Audrey Anderson, whose 14-year-old son, Andre, was killed by an SUV while he was riding his bike: "Drivers who kill and are not apparently drunk walk away from crash sites as free as the birds in the air. How can this be, we all must ask?"
March 6, 2007
Why Is DOT Reorganizing Park Slope Traffic? Because.
Last Wednesday we learned about the Department of Transportation's plan for a major reorganization of traffic flow through Park Slope, Brooklyn. In Streetsblog's comments section, Andy Wiley-Schwartz of Project for Public Spaces asked: What problems are DOT's traffic engineers trying to solve with this particular set of solutions? Or, to put it another way: What triggered this initiative? Why now? I put the question to DOT and here is what the press office came back with:
March 5, 2007
Commissioner Weinshall Agrees: Two-Way Streets Calm Traffic
While Michael Primeggia, DOT's Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations is trying to sell one-way mini-highways through Park Slope as a pedestrian safety improvement, his boss, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, is hawking the exact opposite. On Thursday, March 1, at the City Council Transportation Committee oversight hearing on the Mayor's Long-Term Planning initiative, Weinshall touted two-way streets as successful traffic calming measure for Downtown Brooklyn. From her lips to your ears:
March 5, 2007
3 More Killed This Weekend as 100 Rally for Pedestrian Safety
Against the backdrop of news that three more pedestrians were killed on Saturday, a hundred people rallied for pedestrian safety on the steps of City Hall on Sunday. Karla Quintero of Transportation Alternatives, above, started with a moment of silence for those killed by the automobile on the streets of New York and called for 2,000 fewer pedestrian injuries and deaths by 2009 (pdf). Speaking in English and Spanish, she listed five objectives for the improvement of pedestrian safety:
March 5, 2007
Old Gray Lady Gets on the Bandwagon
The New York Times came out advocating for progressive transportation policies in its Sunday City section editorial, saying that the departure of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall presents "a great opportunity to take bold action on a vexing quality of life and health issue: traffic congestion."
March 5, 2007