Transportation Policy

Monday night was the first meeting of the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project. About 130 neighborhood stakeholders filled the gym at the Holy Cross School in Midtown to begin a process to transform Ninth Avenue from a dysfunctional, traffic-choked, polluted highway into, what organizer Christine Berthet says should be "a neighborhood Main Street" for Hell's Kitchen and Clinton.

As soon as Mayor Bloomberg finally decides to deal with New York City's shameful and destructive government employee parking abuse situation, all he has to do is steal the simple new parking policy being instituted by Aetna Inc., a major employer in Hartford, Connecticut. The Hartford Courant reports:

Eliot Spitzer's campaign for governor promised, "Day One: Everything Changes." Well, it's Day Two and it's time to govern. Much of New York City's transportation policy rests in the hands of Albany legislators and agency officials. Here are ten things that the new governor can do to make New York City's streets more livable and transportation policy more sensible. Feel free to add more to the list in the comments section.

The Vauban Department of Transportation gets to work. Schritt Tempo: Walking Speed.

The latest issue of Tri-State Transportation Campaign's Mobilizing the Region newsletter just came out. Here are some of the highlights:

In just the last ten days here in New York City a 7-year-old boy was killed in the crosswalk by a trucker trying to beat a red light in Brooklyn, a young woman on the Upper East Side and a Brooklyn Heights law professor were crushed to death by private sanitation trucks, and a 12-year-old boy was mowed down by a hit-and-run driver in Queens. The list goes on. Yet, none of these horrible killings of innocents on the streets of New York City merited even a mention from Mayor Bloomberg or any other high level city official. Apparently, in America's safest big city, this is just business as usual.

A DOT press release today:

Some of us at Streetsblog headquarters were talking about putting together a sidebar listing of recommended books to reinforce the commentary you find on the blog. I put together a few brief recommendations of five of my favorites, but we're also interested in learning what you've all been reading and what you'd suggest to others, so treat this as an open thread on livable streets-related books now that we're in the midst of the holiday gift-buying season.

The Committee to Keep NYC "Congestion Tax Free." Front row, left to right: John Corlett, Automobile Club of New York; Ray Irrera, Queens Chamber of Commerce; Council Member David Weprin; Lobbyist Walter McCaffrey; Joe Conley of Queens Community Board 2.