Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is offering the city a lesson in what a mature and constructive response to bike lane growing pains looks like.

The parks committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 restated its support for shared bike/pedestrian paths through Riverside Park and Central Park last night. In Central Park, the shared paths would create new east-west routes through the park, while in Riverside, the community board is fighting against the Parks Department's surprise imposition of dismount signs on what was once a part of the greenway system.

We talk a lot about windshield perspective on Streetsblog, so with his latest salvo against safer cycling and walking, CBS 2's Tony Aiello has done most of the work for us.

A taxi driver plowed onto the sidewalk at the corner of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue this morning, knocking into a signpole marking a stop for the crosstown bus. Lisa Sladkus of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance was there and snapped this picture.

Council Member Gale Brewer has struck a deal on the Riverside Center mega-development, sending the 2,500-apartment project through two City Council committees and on a track to final approval. The deal increases the number of parking spaces allowed at Riverside Center to 1,500, far more than the community board or even the City Planning Commission had approved.

Even by its own math, the City Planning Commission seems to have approved 430 parking spots too many at Riverside Center, the new development slated to straddle 60th Street on the far West Side.

After a chaotic committee meeting Monday, Manhattan Community Board 7 was able to discuss the implementation of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane far more productively at its full meeting Tuesday night, according to people who attended. The discussion of the new street design may lead to the creation of a community board task force charged with helping Columbus Avenue merchants work out their delivery issues.

Columbus Avenue merchants on the two blocks between 81st and 83rd Street led a chorus of complaints against that avenue's new protected bike lane at a raucous meeting of Manhattan CB 7's transportation committee last night. The committee co-chairs limited the discussion only to criticism of the bike lane, which runs from 96th to 77th Street, in an attempt to address specific complaints, but opposition quickly flew out of control. About half a dozen merchants spoke at the packed meeting, which at times descended into an anti-bike screaming match.

Now that the City Planning Commission has called for 1,260 parking spaces at the Riverside Center development -- instead of the 1,800 requested by the developer -- the project moves on to the City Council for the final step of the city's land use process. Traditionally, the local Council member representing the district is given a lot of deference by her peers, so we checked in with West Side representative Gale Brewer to see whether she'd be pushing for a further reduction in the number of spaces.