Upper West Side

Another day, another motorist barreling onto a New York City sidewalk. Reader Liz Patek sends this shot of the crash aftermath at Columbus and 72nd Street yesterday evening, where a van driver, apparently heading east, jumped the curb and crashed into a light pole. The tally on CrashStat reveals that 20 pedestrians and eight cyclists were injured in traffic crashes at this intersection between 1995 and 2005.

Last night's unanimous votes in support of a summer-long car-free Central Park by Manhattan Community Board 7's parks and transportation committees moved the ball forward for advocates of car-free parks. With no movement at the mayoral level on the issue, any successful push will have to come from the bottom up. Similar statements of community support will be needed from more than one neighborhood.

Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7's parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the traffic signals in the park, it's not clear how to move forward. Some bright news is on the horizon for cyclists hoping to use Central Park for transportation, however: Two east-west routes through the northern end of the park should open this summer.

Since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has promised to take his approach to street redesigns, first put into place by the Columbus Avenue working group, borough-wide, Streetsblog decided to check in with him to see just what this process would look like.

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.