Public Space

Bronx electeds joined DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan yesterday to mark a completed round of ped-bike enhancements to the Grand Concourse and 161st Street. The package includes the newly ped-friendly Lou Gehrig Plaza (in front of the Bronx County Courthouse), and wider medians and bike lanes along one section of the Concourse. The project was launched in early 2006, while Iris Weinshall was in charge at DOT.

This week's StreetsWiki entry highlights an intriguing storyline that our colleagues at Streetsblog San Francisco will be covering in the months ahead. The Better Streets Plan aims to establish a citywide template for street improvements:

At a groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom asserted the project will be "so much more extraordinary than Grand Central Station."

These DOT photos [PDF] show off the revamped Bronx Hub -- the shopping district and transit nexus in Melrose that just received a slew of livable streets improvements. Planters, surfacing, and a few strategically placed concrete islands demarcate pretty substantial new swaths of pedestrian space, including a block-long plaza (shown above and in bird's eye view below). There's also a short stretch of exclusive bus territory and some interesting bike lane treatments. Follow the jump for more pics.

Last December, Washington Heights resident Lars Klove alerted us to night-time conditions on a segment of the Hudson River Greenway known as Cherry Walk, which lies roughly between W. 102 and W. 125 Streets. Wrote Lars:

Winners of the CityRacks Design Competition were announced this morning. First place for outdoor rack went to Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve (Bettlelab) of Copenhagen, whose prototype will be adopted as "the new standard bicycle rack installed on New York City's sidewalks." DOT plans to install nearly 5,000 of these in the next three years.

Streets designed for safe, accessible, and equitable use. That is the vision of the "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets," to be unveiled tonight by the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign. The product of one year of community-driven planning, in consultation with urbanist legends Jan Gehl and Donald Shoup, the 51-page Blueprint [PDF] is an expansive neighborhood-wide plan that would employ many livable streets concepts already in use by NYC DOT. 

The Forum for Urban Design announced the winner of its Red Hook bicycle plan competition Monday night, awarding top honors to Brooklyn native Jonathan Rule. The competition sought out ideas to make transit-poor Red Hook the city's most bikeable neighborhood, asking entrants to lay out bike routes and design a bike parking "loft" for the Smith-9th Street subway station.

Earlier this week Transportation Alternatives announced the winners of its "21st Century Street" design competition, selecting three entries from more than a hundred submissions re-imagining the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Brooklyn.