Manhattan

At a City Council transportation hearing yesterday Manhattan City Council Member Jessica Lappin expressed anxiety about the effects of congestion pricing on her Upper East Side district. The ill-informed Lappin, who clearly has not read Donald Shoup's 750-page masterwork, The High Cost of Free Parking, asked DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan if the city would be building new municipal parking garages to accompany Mayor Bloomberg's traffic-reduction plan. Metro reports:

Bike courier Brendan McMullen displays the summons he received for riding through the Holland Tunnel

This striking color photograph was snapped on Broome Street near Baruch Place (a street that vanished beneath the Bernard Baruch housing project) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, September 27, 1941. The photo is part of the Charles W. Cushman collection at Indiana University. A tip of the hat to Kevin Walsh's outstanding Forgotten New York web site for pointing this out.

A "woonerf" or "shared space" street design in the Dutch town of Haren.

Michael Bloomberg (front row, fourth from right) with other mayors at the C40 Summit 

On Earth Day Mayor Mike Bloomberg placed transportation and environmental issues at the top of New York City's political agenda. He took a major step towards changing the conventional wisdom that traffic congestion is a sign of the city's vibrancy and economic health. And he joined the list of forward-thinking global mayors like London's Ken Livingstone and Bertrand Delanoe in Paris who have said that excessive automobile dependence is a drag on the urban economy, detrimental to public health, and a contributor to global climate change.

This is how newly appointed transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan got to work this morning. Accompanied by DOT director of street management and safety Ryan Russo, assistant commissioner and director of signs and markings Gerard Soffian, and bicycle program coordinator Josh Benson (pictured above, left-to-right), she took the scenic route, traveling along 9th Avenue through the West Village, the Hudson Street and 8th Avenue bike lanes and the Hudson River Greenway.