Midtown

We were out last Friday taking shots of cars parked in the new Select Bus lanes on 34th Street -- you know, the ones NYPD has pledged to help keep clear. If only we had walked a few blocks west we might have hit the mother lode.

Broadway Boulevard takes center stage in a USA Today story on New York City's recent pedestrian improvements. Those who questioned whether people would sit in plazas near passing traffic have their answer:

DOT plans to use cameras to keep cabs and government vehicles out of the 34th Street lanes.

SBS lanes are the first phase of the 34th Street Transitway concept

After Summer Streets wrapped up last Saturday, I headed over to Times Square to check out the progress on DOT's "Broadway Boulevard" project. The new street geometry and surfacing are mostly in place, while plantings and furniture have yet to arrive. The bike lane was also fully functional, making this pedicab ride across 41st Street a lot more pleasant than it would have been a few months ago.

This weekend, on the second Saturday of Summer Streets, the first thing my wife Jennifer and I noticed as we ascended the ramp from 42nd Street to Park Avenue was the quiet. I mentioned to Jennifer that I had come across a blog comment likening the scene to the New York portrayed in the post-apocalyptic Will Smith movie "I Am Legend," minus the super-human zombies. Plot holes notwithstanding, that didn't do it justice. The absence of engine noise and incessant honking didn't seem eerie, or even surreal. Just blissful.

Welcome to the second installment of our Summer Streets photo tour. This pic comes courtesy of BicyclesOnly, who says Park Avenue South is "one of the more dangerous roadways to bicycle on in Manhattan. Without the cars, it's a playground for these two."

Last night, DOT closed both lanes of the Park Avenue Tunnel to prepare for the construction of safety upgrades at Park and 33rd Street. That's the intersection where southbound cars exit the tunnel, creating a dangerous blend of speeding vehicles and poor sight lines. From 1995 to 2005, 156 pedestrians and 10 cyclists were struck by cars there, according to CrashStat.

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.