Upper West Side

DOT's bike-share expansion maps for the Upper West Side and Upper East Side are now final, and they're not any better than the draft maps that showed a thinned-out network of stations for some of the city's densest neighborhoods.

Will the third time be the charm? Manhattan Community Board 7 has overwhelmingly voted -- again -- to ask the city for a northbound protected bike lane as part of a redesign of Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. DOT will have to move forward on a redesign very soon to get a complement to the southbound protected bike lane on Columbus Avenue in place by the time Citi Bike debuts in the neighborhood, which is expected sometime later this year.

Will NYPD file Right of Way Law charges against a driver who fatally struck Moshe Grun in an Upper West Side crosswalk? A sergeant from the 20th Precinct wouldn't answer that question, denying Grun had died before deferring to an investigator who was on vacation.

On Tuesday, the Manhattan Community Board 7 transportation committee unanimously passed a resolution asking DOT to immediately install a protected bike lane on Amsterdam Avenue in the neighborhood.

At the beginning of 2014, drivers killed three people -- Cooper Stock, Alexander Shear, and Samantha Lee -- on the Upper West Side in a matter of days. Neighbors turned out by the hundreds at vigils for the victims, and came out again to pack meetings demanding action. In response, Community Board 7 formed a street safety task force. More than a year later, there's little to show for it, and now CB 7 chair Elizabeth Caputo says the task force wasn't created to tackle street safety issues in the first place.

Citi Bike is coming to the Upper West Side, but the expansion map DOT revealed last night has big gaps between stations. Like the map for the Upper East Side, the UWS plan calls for fewer stations per square mile than the current Citi Bike service area.

It looks like some parts of Manhattan north of 59th Street could be getting Citi Bike sooner than previously expected.

Members of Families For Safe Streets asked Council Member Helen Rosenthal at a town hall meeting last night why she reappointed street safety foe and longtime Community Board 7 transportation committee co-chair Dan Zweig. But Rosenthal refused to answer questions from Upper West Siders who have lost loved ones to traffic violence.

Council Member Helen Rosenthal has come out strongly for a protected bike lane on Amsterdam Avenue, sending a letter to DOT this week asking for a plan to calm traffic and provide a northbound complement to the Columbus Avenue bike lane.