Midtown

Before Dan Biederman came to Bryant Park, there were no movable chairs, no free movies on summer evenings, no kiosks selling sandwiches and refreshments. No lunch time crowds and not much in the way of civic life or social activity, either. There was, basically, an open-air drug market in the New York Public Library's backyard.

As it is, the NYC DOT “Midtown in Motion" initiative is a bit of a head-scratcher. To learn that the city is devoting well over a million dollars in addition to staff resources to speed up car traffic in Midtown, which the mayor has declared the "lifeblood" of the CBD -- is it 2006 again?

The Department of Transportation is rolling out a response to Midtown traffic congestion that is as high-tech as it is intellectually outdated. Microwave sensors, video cameras, and E-ZPass readers will gather traffic information in real-time and beam the information to the DOT's Queens command center, where engineers will instantly adjust the traffic lights as needed in an attempt to fine-tune the workings of the traffic grid.

We have an update from NYPD on the curb-jumping motorist who struck and injured a pedestrian in Midtown this morning. Police said the driver hit a 73-year-old woman on the sidewalk while attempting to back into a parking space on 58th Street. The victim was sent to New York Presbyterian Hospital with serious head injuries, according to NYPD; she is now in stable condition.

Reader Liz Patek sends this account from a crash scene in Midtown this morning:

Yesterday the 18th Annual Taste of Times Square filled up the crossroads of the world, serving dishes to throngs of people. DNAinfo reports that the event broke with tradition a little bit, and the vendors were better off for it:

NYC DOT's proposed design for bike lanes from 34th Street to 57th Street along First and Second Avenues, which call for a protected lane on First Avenue from 34th to 49th Streets and shared lanes everywhere else, earned the endorsement of Community Board 6's transportation committee last night. The 7-5 vote in favor of DOT's plan -- the nays thought it included too much space for cyclists, not too little -- came after a misleading discussion in which the committee members seemed not to understand what they were voting on.

Pop-up indeed!

The First and Second Avenue bike lanes on Manhattan's East Side will only be extended from 34th Street to 57th Street this year, not up to 125th Street as advanced in a plan that won community board approvals in 2010.