Upper West Side

A cyclist was struck and injured by a cab driver at 81st and Broadway this afternoon.

New lights appeared earlier this week on the Hudson River Greenway between 59th and 72nd Streets, on a notoriously dark stretch beneath an elevated section of the West Side Highway.

Last night, Manhattan Community Board 7 signaled its support for an extension of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane -- which currently runs one mile, from 96th to 77th Streets -- north to 110th Street and south to 69th Street [PDF]. The 26-11 vote (with one abstention) was a much wider margin than CB 7's 23-19-1 vote in favor of the initial Columbus Avenue bike lane segment back in 2010.

A frustrated Upper West Side resident is looking to tame the rampant illegal parking and placard abuse on his block.

Mark Gorton is the publisher of Streetsblog and lives on the Upper West Side with his wife and four children. This is an edited version of a message he sent to Dan Zweig and Andrew Albert, the co-chairs of the Community Board 7 transportation committee, after neither of them voted in favor of extending the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane this Tuesday. (The project did clear the committee and will be going to the full board later this month.)

After deadlocking in December, Manhattan Commmunity Board 7's transportation committee voted 7-2, with one abstention, to support the extension of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane before an overwhelmingly supportive crowd last night.

Tonight, Manhattan Community Board 7 will again consider a DOT proposal to extend the existing Columbus Avenue bike lane, a mile-long segment between 77th and 96th Streets that's currently isolated from the rest of the city's network. If the committee supports the lane tonight, the proposal would go before the full board in February in time to be installed this spring.

This morning, WNYC's Brian Lehrer discussed the Columbus Avenue bike lane with reporter Kate Hinds. The show covered a fair amount of ground in a short amount of time, but gave a lot of airtime to a key assumption which has given cover to street safety opponents -- that small retailers in New York City need to maintain as much on-street parking as possible -- and let it go unchallenged for much of the segment.

Buried in the pile of uninformed New York Post letters to the editor following Steve Cuozzo's unhinged rant about the Columbus Avenue bike lane, intrepid readers found a note from Council Member Gale Brewer. "Bike lanes in my district are highly popular and strongly supported by the wider community," she wrote. "Expanding these benefits is the right thing to do."