Public Space

Fordham Plaza, one of the city's busiest transit and retail hubs, but also one of its most dangerous, is slated for a major redesign [PDF] by NYCDOT and the Economic Development Corporation. Highlights of the badly-needed overhaul include a massive increase in public space, a slew of safety improvements for pedestrians, and a block-long bus- and bike-only street.

After some vocal complaints spurred compromises to NYCDOT's ambitious original proposal to redesign the streets near Union Square, Manhattan Community Board 5 held strong last night, voting 24-1-1 to move forward with the fundamental safety features of the plan. Rather than cave to the most belligerent core of anti-bike residents and NIMBY businesses, the board actually strengthened its resolve in the face of irrational and uncompromising opposition.

Earlier this week, DNAinfo reported that NYCDOT may nix the pedestrian plaza in the agency's ambitious proposal for a 34th Street busway. But support for more pedestrian space between Fifth and Sixth Avenues remains strong in certain quarters. The head of the 34th Street Partnership, a group representing local businesses, supports the principle of adding pedestrian space on 34th. After all, most people using the street are on foot. 

The New Domino development slated for the Williamsburg waterfront passed the City Council's land use committee yesterday in a unanimous vote, thanks to a last-minute deal between the developer and project critics. Under that agreement, the project's tallest towers will shrink from 40 stories to 34, though the total number of units will remain the same. The project is now expected to sail through the remainder of the approval process.

Today, Manhattan's AIA Center for Architecture debuted an exhibition that envisions a new era of sustainable mobility. For "Our Cities Ourselves," the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy invited architects to take on the evolving transportation needs of the world's cities, which in two decades are expected to be home to 60 percent of the global population.

We got a couple of e-mails this week about a new directive from the Parks Department ordering cyclists to dismount on the Riverside Park path that connects the Hudson River Greenway and Riverside Drive at W. 72nd Street. On his Flickr page, BicyclesOnly says he learned of the restriction from parks enforcement:

It took a few tries, but the Department of Transportation finally won the support of Manhattan Community Board 5's Transportation Committee for its Union Square bike-ped plan last night. While a few safety improvements were sacrificed to local objections, the community board rejected calls by a particularly aggressive minority to scrap the centerpieces of the plan, including an extension of Broadway's protected bike lane, a traffic-calming pedestrian plaza, and the conversion of 17th Street into a one-way with a contraflow bike lane.

One of the most dangerous intersections in Queens is slated for a DOT safety makeover. At a meeting of Queens Community Board 10 last Thursday, DOT presented a plan [PDF] to rework the chaotic intersection of Crossbay Boulevard, Woodhaven Boulevard, Rockaway Boulevard, and Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park by turning two full street blocks into pedestrian plazas and introducing a host of other safety improvements.

Starting June 27, 570 bus stops across New York City could disappear. Unless Congress delivers an 11th hour reprieve -- still a distinct possibility -- service cuts will axe or reroute dozens of bus lines, raising the question of what to do with all the curbside real estate at these potentially defunct stops.