Staten Island

Real-time bus information, previously only available on two routes, is now live for every bus in the borough of Staten Island. On an average weekday, that means 127,000 local and express bus riders will be able to find out exactly how far away their bus is.

St. George Staten Island could become the region's next great downtown. That's the plan over at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is about to redevelop two waterfront sites immediately adjacent to the ferry terminal.

In two low-income neighborhoods, DOT is planning to make it easier and safer for residents to reach transit. In East New York [PDF] and Port Richmond [PDF], features like curb extensions, new sidewalks, and improved pedestrian ramps will be installed by next year.

For the second time in 12 months, the Bloomberg administration will remove a link in the bicycle network after receiving complaints from bike lane opponents. The Staten Island Advance reports that the bike lane on Father Capodanno Boulevard will not be striped again after the street is repaved. The news comes two months after the Advance published an editorial urging the city to remove the lane, and about a year after the city erased a 14-block stretch of the Bedford Avenue bike lane in response to opposition from local Hasidic leaders.

The one-way tolls on the Verrazano Bridge have been a major cause of truck traffic in New York City since they were instituted in 1986. Though numerous efforts to restore two-way tolls have failed over the last two and a half decades, technological progress may finally bring victory within reach. Congressman Jerry Nadler thinks that the MTA's moves toward cashless tolling could make two-way tolls politically feasible, and he's trying to pass the federal legislation necessary to allow them.

Earlier this week the Downtown Express injected some common sense into the public discussion about the value of bike lanes. With protected lanes on Ninth and Eighth Avenue now a valued safety improvement after facing some pushback at first, the paper predicted that initial complaints about the new lanes on the East Side will subside once people get used to them:

The New York City Parks Department has come up with a striking new method to demean pedestrians and cyclists and disrupt the public right-of-way.

Here's something you'd like to see more of from the NYPD: Cops cracking down on speeders near a school zone. Reports the Staten Island Advance:

The recent motorist assault on a Staten Island cyclist is a symptom of anti-bike bias routinely displayed by local politicians and the Staten Island Advance, as chronicled on a web site encouraging action for safe streets.