Public Space

It's not everyday that people are out on the street doing art installations dedicated to parking and land use policy, so here are some more scenes from Park(ing) Day San Francisco, snapped by Clarence Eckerson:

Park(ing) Day San FranciscoA Clarence Eckerson StreetfilmRunning time: 6:51 - 22.05 MB, QuickTime

Today is International Park(ing) Day. Also known as a "parking squat," Park(ing) is a quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings. Here is how Park(ing) Day is being celebrated this morning in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street:

For most New Yorkers the official end of summer is Labor Day which, this year, fell on Monday, September 4, 2006. For astronomers, pagans and Daniel Libeskind's "Wedge of Light," the end of summer is the Autumnal Equinox, the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator from north to south. By that measure, Fall begins on Saturday, September 23 at 12:03 am this year. But for those who commute by bike along the northern end of Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the end of summer will be the day that New York City's Department of Transportation creates bike safety improvements along this stretch of avenue recently identified as one of the city's top three bicyclist fatality areas. At the moment, there is no end in sight.

We are certainly still going to be wearing our helmets when we ride bikes on New York City streets, but here is an interesting study by Dr. Ian Walker a "traffic psychologist" from Bath University in Great Britain. Walker found that motorists drove more safely and carefully when passing cyclists who were not wearing helmets. These findings are similar to some of the ideas put forward by David Engwicht in his book, "Mental Speed Bumps: The Smarter Way to Tame Traffic," a very interesting read if you haven't already picked it up.

New LED Flashing Stop Sign (with Solar Power Source)

The question was debated, albeit briefly and in slow motion, by two New York City Department of Transportation employees in the pages of the New York Times last week. Last week, in a Sunday City section op/ed piece, Andrew Vesselinovitch argued that DOT is not doing enough for New York City cyclists. Vesselinovitch is the former Director of DOT's Bicycle Program who made headlines in July when he claimed in a publicly-released resignation letter that the agency's leadership was purposefully undermining the progress of New York City's bicycle network. This week, a response to Vesselinovitch comes from Ryan Russo, the DOT's newly appointed Director of Street Management and Safety. Their back-and-forth is re-printed below, in full: