Washington Heights

DOT presented the latest design concepts for a permanent Plaza De Las Americas to Washington Heights residents last night, showing a plan to pedestrianize the full block of 175th Street between Broadway and Wadsworth Avenue, in order to make a new space for residents and the popular market currently operating at that location. The design -- 95 feet deep and 165 feet wide, extending all the way into what are currently the parking lanes on Broadway and Wadsworth --  won plaudits from those in attendance.

DOT's planned safety improvements for the intersection of St. Nicholas and Amsterdam Avenues are currently being installed, as shown in pictures snapped by Streetsblog reader BicyclesOnly. Major features include shorter crosswalks, additional pedestrian space, and Upper Manhattan's first segment of physically-protected bike lane.

Build bike lanes? Manhattan's Community Board 12 doesn't even want to talk about bike lanes.

Following a series of public workshops going back to 2008, DOT has put forward some big plans for Manhattan's traffic-clogged 181st Street. Over the next few months, the department will choose one of three options to ease traffic and improve safety on the street. While every option offers some significant benefits for Washington Heights pedestrians, one keeps traffic patterns largely unchanged while the other two would truly transform the corridor.

At a Monday night meeting with the transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 12, DOT rolled out a slew of much-needed street improvements for Washington Heights and Inwood. Several are still in the preliminary stage, but one major intersection in the Heights is slated for an overhaul this fall.

It's about a year-and-a-half behind the schedule announced in 2007, but the rehabilitation of the High Bridge, a pedestrian and cyclist link between Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, is off the ground.

About a week before the Tri-State Transportation Campaign issued a report revealing that eight pedestrians were killed on the streets of Washington Heights and Inwood between 2006 and 2008, newly-elected Upper Manhattan City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez attended a protest calling for justice. NYPD, it seems, is regularly ticketing drivers for blocking intersections on traffic-choked W. 181st Street, and Rodriguez wants it to stop.

At October's Walk21 Conference, I got the chance to tour the High Bridge, a viaduct connecting Manhattan and the Bronx which has been closed to the public for nearly 40 years.

This was the scene in Washington Heights Friday evening, after this guy, along with two others, parked their gigantic rental truck directly in front of a trio of elderly people waiting for the M4 at W. 187th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Rather than sit passively with the spewing behemoth a few feet from their faces, one of them, a woman shown after the jump, took out her cellphone and began taking pictures.