Upper West Side

We got our hands on a copy of the City Planning Commission's report on the Riverside Center mega-development [PDF], and as we reported last week, the commission is allowing Extell Development to construct 1,260 parking spaces under two Upper West Side blocks. It's possible that the number of parking spaces could drop lower when the public review reaches the City Council, where local representative Gale Brewer has said she favors 1,100 parking spaces.

UPDATE: This meeting has been postponed to next Tuesday.

Upper West Side residents can ride with a new sense of safety and comfort on the recently installed Columbus Avenue protected bike lane, but between 81st and 82nd Streets, the bike lane has been consistently blocked by a minivan owned by Quality Florist, a local business located on that block.

The City Planning Commission is likely to approve a 1,260-space garage for the Riverside Center mega-development at its meeting this Wednesday, according to multiple sources. That's space for hundreds more cars -- causing more congestion and more pollution -- than requested by the Upper West Side's representatives. It's yet another case where the commission and planning chair Amanda Burden have disregarded the sustainability goals of PlaNYC when shaping parking policy.

The Hudson River Greenway is the busiest bike route in the city, with around 5,000 cyclists riding it during the peak 12-hour period each day. This June, the Parks Department abruptly put up dismount signs at the 72nd Street entrance to Riverside Park, interrupting a popular access route to a major corridor within Manhattan's green transportation network.

The long history of violent traffic crashes where Broadway, Amsterdam and 71st Street converge is about to take a turn for the better. This intersection was the site of 19 pedestrian and cyclist injuries between 2004 and 2008. Earlier this summer, in the course of a few hours, two people were injured in separate crashes while walking in this area.

Central Park Conservancy head Douglas Blonsky wants his park to get a lot more bike-friendly, he revealed at a meeting of Manhattan's Community Board 7's parks committee last night. Not only is he working to create shared use paths that would allow cyclists to cross the park east-west safely and legally, he repeatedly announced his support for removing vehicular traffic from Central Park entirely.

A hearing on the Riverside Center mega-development yesterday revealed a popular hunger for a more walkable West Side and perhaps some interest from the City Planning Commission in the same. Extell Development is looking to build a housing and retail complex, including 1,800 parking spaces, on this waterfront site equivalent in size to two Manhattan blocks. Public testimony called for a slew of urban design improvements to their plan, including reducing the amount of off-street parking, integrating the site with the surrounding streetscape, and working towards burying the elevated Miller Highway.