Quality of Life

"What became clear to me in this discussion was that the engineers were thinking from the motorists' viewpoint."  -- Iris Weinshall, New York Newsday, April 29, 2001

Park Slope's Fifth Avenue: a pedestrian- and bike-friendly, two-way, neighborhood Main Street.

The B67 bus veers around a double-parked van blocking a car parked in front of a fire hydrant as a Bugaboo-pushing nanny strolls by Councilmember David Yassky and Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White calling for more sensible parking policy this afternoon in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Like Third Avenue in Brooklyn, Manhattan's Ninth Avenue is emerging as one of New York City's new "Boulevards of Death." This afternoon, the Clinton / Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition, the community group that has been organizing the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project, broadcast the following news and call to action:

As people living in the neighborhoods around Downtown Brooklyn are learning the hard way, New York City government's installation of pedestrian safety and traffic calming measures is remarkably slow and expensive. Even as children are dying while crossing the street in potentially preventable crashes, and even with projects approved and funded, New York City's bureaucracy appears to be organizationally unable to move faster than a snail's pace when it comes to installing fine-grained, spot-by-spot pedestrian safety and traffic calming measures.

Earlier this week, I received a request  in writing from Gary Altman, the Legislative Counsel of the City Council to testify at a hearing on March 1st. The topic of this oversight hearing is: How do we achieve the PlanNYC2030's Sustainability Goal to Improve Travel Times by Adding Transit Capacity for Millions More Residents, Visitors and Workers? For reference here is the presentation on congestion (warning pdf) put out by the PlanNYC2030 folks.

When there isn't snow on the ground where does all the black stuff go?

A new Columbia University study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, yet again, links livable streets to improved public health. The study reports:

How can we get drivers to respect the communities they are driving though? How can we make traffic slow down if we can't change the design of the street or the timing of the lights? How can a community reclaim its neighborhood streets?