Traffic Calming

After over an hour of public comment, and another hour of deliberation, Community Board 2 last night voted to recommend the DOT proceed with bike lanes parallel to Houston Street, to be located primarily on Prince and Bleecker.

According to a more-than-a-little-snarky post on Curbed, the first of Lower Broadway's hotly anticipated bus bulbs has been constructed on Broadway south of Spring Street.

While acknowledging that casualties have dropped overall in recent years, safety advocates and government officials are calling on the DOT to establish measurable benchmarks for further reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths in the city, and want the agency to get moving on relatively minor improvements that would help meet those goals.

Park Slope's 9th Street corridor, with Prospect Park on one end and the Battery Tunnel on the other, has long been known as one of the most dangerous streets in the neighborhood when it comes to car crashes.

 DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia on March 15: "I know that two-way streets are less safe."

As noted elsewhere, tonight the transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 6 will consider a plan by DOT to redesign 9th Street from Third Avenue to Prospect Park West in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Community Board 6's transportation committee will hear presentations and community input on the following items: 

Prospect Park West at 8th Street, September 16, 2006, 9:45 am. "Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries." American Journal of Public Health

Last Tuesday night Ryan Russo and Josh Benson from the Department of Transportation presented a plan to Manhattan's Community Board 2 to create a safer east-west bike route across Lower Manhattan. With three cyclists having been killed on Houston Street over the last two years and major reconstruction of the street currently underway, members of CB2 led by Ian Dutton have been advocating for  a physically-separated bike lane to be built on Houston Street.