Eyes on the Street

Via Gothamist -- check out this bollard on the Hudson River Greenway at work.

A tipster sends this picture of one of the city's new bike racks that, someway, somehow, got wrenched out of the pavement. We're told that the sidewalk at Fulton Street and Rockwell Place in Brooklyn had a big chunk missing where the bike rack would have been.

Reader Holly Hudson sends this picture of the north side of Union Square earlier today. Orange construction barrels are lined up here and around the corner on Broadway, as crews get ready to add new pedestrian spaces and extend Broadway's protected bike lane, which will run against the flow of traffic on this particular block.

After a lot of great advocacy from the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance and a down-to-the-wire vote at Community Board 7 this spring, DOT crews are laying down the first on-street protected bikeway above 34th 59th Street, on Columbus Avenue between 96th and 77th. Streetsblog contributor Ken Coughlin sent in these pictures of the painting and striping in progress last Friday.

John Del Signore at Gothamist got this shot of Flushing Avenue this morning. Looks like phase one of the Flushing bikeway is getting striped, creating a continuous link between North Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridge.

A couple weeks ago, we showed how the bus bulbs on Lower Broadway were being integrated with the sidewalk next to them. For drainage reasons, a small gap and a large fence had separated the two pedestrian spaces, but DOT capped the gap with a small grate and replaced the fence with benches. That work's now largely complete and Streetsblog reader Dave "Paco" Abraham sent along these pics of Soho pedestrians taking advantage of their new public space. There's a lot more breathing room on a stretch of sidewalk that's often packed and it looks like people appreciate it. 

Bus bulbs are one of the most versatile tools in the livable streets toolkit. By extending the sidewalk out into the street, you can send a calming signal to through traffic, spare buses the trouble of pulling to the curb every few blocks, and expand the amount of pedestrian space in one fell swoop.

Streetsblog contributor Ken Coughlin snapped these shots of a rear-end collision between a yellow taxi and a livery cab in Central Park. The crash happened on West Drive at about 10 a.m. Wednesday.