Livable Streets

While we're on the topic of Williamsburg, this lengthy piece of original reporting on NYTurf is worth a read if you didn't catch it when it was filed a couple of weeks ago: How the City Has Left Williamsburg in a Traffic Jam

The death of Derek Lake, killed one month ago at age 23 when his bicycle tripped a metal plate on Houston Street, hints at a tragedy shared by all New Yorkers: City Hall's continued insistence that the ultimate goal of a New York City street is to move as many cars and trucks each day as physically possible.

Derek Lake died on June 26 when his bike tripped over a steel plate and fell beneath the wheels of a moving truck in the midst of Houston Street's reconstruction mess. Brad Hoylman, a Village resident, chairs the Traffic and Transportation Committee of Community Board 2. Hoylman talks to Streetsblog about the  Community Board's reaction to Lake's death and its plans to try to prevent similar horrors. And he reminds us that, despite a $30 million reconstruction project that includes no new bicycle amenities, Houston Street is supposed to be a part of New York City's Bicycle Master Plan. 

A correspondent reports:

Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 2:30 pm New York City Council250 Broadway, 14th Floor Hearing Room (across from City Hall).

"The greatest achievement of New York is the streets," says architect Hugh Hardy. And he says we can achieve richer public places -- if New York's citizens can persuade officials to make those places serve people rather than cars.

This is an artist's rendering of what West 125th Street would look like after Columbia University's expansion is completed more than a decade from now.  (It is included in an overview of the plans that appears in the print edition of Columbia magazine, which, um, hasn't updated its web presence in a while.)  Regardless of whether you're in favor of or against the expansion, it is clear that Columbia is trying hard to persuade skeptics and opponents that the expansion will be a good thing for this part of Harlem.

Van Brunt and Wolcott Streets. Before paint, July 7. After paint, July 14.

The other night in the Financial District, the buildings of Trinity Place were lit-up all noir-like, and light illuminated the steam temporarily wafting skyward from an orange stack. The lighting set up a visual image of a comic book, larger-than-life metropolis that will appear in Spiderman III.  I enjoyed watching a take or two of traffic on the streets as the star flew through the air on some kind of hoist, and generally I am a fan of Hollywood filming here because besides creating jobs, it usually improves the city's image, and encourages tourism, and reminds viewers around the world of the excitement that daily life here can include: New York remains the ultimate movie setting because it is the place where anything can happen. But the New York's huge film industry has been leaning on a not-so-secret crutch that has now been eliminiated. (Hat tip to The Oil Drum.) An essay by Francis X. Clines in the Times brings to light some news: