Manhattan

Streetsblog's Brad Aaron -- on vacation in exotic, uh, Midtown -- sends this pic of a newly-striped 34th Street bus lane, looking east from Eighth Avenue. Red lanes on each side of 34th are part of the first phase of improvements to what is intended to become the city's first "transitway." Another witness says the bus lane on the north side of the street hasn't been striped yet.

This morning I took a tour of the MTA's newly completed East Side Access tunnel 140 feet below Midtown Manhattan. My laptop is about to run out of batteries and, of course, I left my power cord at home. (It's a good thing I'm only in charge of running a blog and not, say, a 22-foot diameter, 850-ton tunnel boring machine.) So I'm just going to publish these photos with minimal text. I'll fill in the details later. Warning: If you're not a serious infrastructure geek, you might just want to skip this post altogether.

With the first anniversary of Vélib approaching and New York officially exploring the possibility of its own program, what better way to celebrate than trying out a free bike this weekend, courtesy of The New York Bike-Share Project. Streetfilms' Elizabeth Press dropped in to get reactions on the first day of this year's event, which lasts through Monday.

Streetsblog regular BicyclesOnly is posting shots of Midtown bus lane violators on his Flickr photo stream. He writes:

Three days after the debut of Bx12 Select Bus Service, Bronx resident and Tri-State Transportation Campaign Associate Director Veronica Vanterpool rode the route from Co-op City to Inwood. On Mobilizing the Region, she reports that riders are becoming accustomed to the pre-payment system and rear-door boarding, with the help of bus drivers and New York City Transit personnel.

New York City Transit staff introduce passengers to Bx12 Select Bus Service at Broadway and Isham in Inwood

If you spend much time in upper Manhattan, you know it's blessed with hundreds of acres of parkland, much of which serves to showcase the area's naturally rugged terrain. To help bring attention to this sometimes overlooked resource while promoting public health, an organization called CLIMB (City Life is Moving Bodies), in conjunction with Creative Arts Workshops for Kids, hosts an event called Hike the Heights, an "urban safari" through parks from Morningside Heights to Inwood. Streetfilms correspondent Mark Read has the lowdown.

With 2800 agents able to enforce rules against blocking the box, drivers may soon take these signs seriously.