Trucks

Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:

Assembly Member Rory Lancman from Fresh Meadows, Queens has sent a three-page letter to his fellow legislators soliciting their support for a legislative alternate to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal and long-term planning ominbus bill, Sewell Chan reports. 

A third-grader was hit on her way to school here two weeks ago.

London mayor Ken Livingstone, whose congestion-pricing plan has served as a model for Mayor Bloomberg's, is expected to unveil today an even more radical measure aimed at reducing pollution in his city. According to the Guardian, Livingstone's proposal would target high-emission commercial vehicles:

First off, please accept my apologies for continuing to torture you with the intensely parochial drama taking place on Park Slope's 9th Street. I justify all of this coverage by imagining that this story may be useful for advocates working towards Livable Streets goals in other neighborhoods.

The streets of Soho, where trucks roam free

Yesterday, the Department of Transportation announced the publication of its Truck Route Management and Community Impact Reduction Study. The study, which began over eight years ago (PDF), recommends the establishment of an Office of Freight Mobility, new educational materials and public outreach efforts, improved street signs, better enforcement, and some policy and regulatory changes -- for example, requiring trucks over 26,000 pounds operating on city streets to be equipped with a convex mirror to help reduce blind spots.

Today's New York Times has an entire section on "The Business of Being Green" (Times Select), which includes articles on economies of scale in alternative energy, carbon-offset shopping, the possibly endangered practice of truck idling, Danish wind farms, and environmental litigation.

Two pedestrians were killed in New York City last December by private sanitation trucks, one on Park Avenue South in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn Heights. Both deaths followed the most common pattern of pedestrian death in New York -- the peds were crossing the street, in the crosswalk, with the light, and a turning vehicle ran over them.