Streetsblog Capitol Hill

With all due respect to my vehicular-cyclist friends, I’m a big fan of separate facilities for bikes. They keep bicyclists safer and encourage more people to ride, and I know I make a lot fewer risky moves when I’m riding in a lane built for my two wheels and not a two-ton, 200-horsepower steel box.

So I have to admit, my first thought upon seeing the mandatory sidepath provision in the Senate transportation bill was: What’s the big deal? If cyclists have fought hard to get a separated path built in federal land, why shouldn’t we use it?

But the League of American Bicyclists set me straight with their blog post and action alert on the topic. The group says that while many states used to have similar sidepath laws, the idea has fallen out of favor recently, and here’s why:

The problem with the provision is that the restriction applies regardless of the quality, safety, and utility of the path provided; it disregards the needs of cyclists to be on the roadway to access shops, services etc.; and ignores our fundamental right to the road.

Here’s the bill language that has cyclists up in arms:

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Rail~volution is underway in Portland, Oregon, bringing together more than 1,000 city planners, engineers, transit advocates, bike policy experts, and elected officials to strategize about making cities and towns better for transit, walking, and biking.

Monday started with 15 different workshops that took place around the city, including one highlighting Portland’s “Lost Freeways” – the roads that were never built, and one that was actually torn out. These battles happened decades ago, but in many cities, highway fights continue to this day, and in some, teardowns are looking more and more possible. (Take note, readers in New Orleans, St. Louis, Seattle, New York, and New Haven.)

Traveling around on bikes and on foot, two groups visited some notable sites in Portland’s battles against freeways. First, we saw some battlegrounds where the anti-freeway movement lost.

South Park Blocks and I-405

In 1943, Portland invited New York’s master freeway planner, Robert Moses, to come to town. After a month of study, he came out with an 86-page document mapping out the “future of Portland”: 14 freeways and a tangle of limited-access parkways to re-make the city. Portland would have become what longtime local transit official Dick Feeney calls “a wonderful place to drive a car through,” where “the neighborhoods would have all vanished.”

Today, one of those highways, I-405, runs right through downtown. Tour guide Sarah Mirk, author of Oregon history comic books (including one about dead highways), took us to a little grassy patch just across the I-405 overpass from the South Park Blocks, built in the mid-1960s.

This little marooned park over here is an orphan of when they built the I-405 freeway right here. The South Park Blocks are something people love in Portland; it’s a historic part of our city. And when they built I-405 through, they not only tore out two solid blocks of dense housing here in this neighborhood – which was really diverse, low-income housing – they also tore out two blocks of the South Park Blocks. People were really upset about that. And as a concession to people who were really upset about tearing out the park blocks, they said, we’ll do a ‘park-like treatment’ on the overpass coming over here. So you can see the overgrown bramble, and the cement, and the weeds. This is the ‘park-like treatment’ given to the South Park Blocks.

The freeway cut the neighborhood off from their school and library on the other side, becoming a “wall” between the residents and the services they used. Developers put in a bike-ped trail along the freeway as a concession.

That trail – unsigned, virtually unknown and unused – is known informally as the Ho Chi Minh trail. “Not to honor the Vietnamese leader,” says Mirk, “but because it was so dangerous and there were lots of muggings along here at night. There’s zero lighting, the neighbors have put up barbed wire, and it’s out of sight, out of sound. No one can hear you scream over the sound of the freeway.”

In my next post, I’ll get to the good stuff: the freeway plans that never saw the light of day, and one that came tumbling down.

Back in June, when the Senate was in the early stages of its marathon health care reform debate, several Republicans blasted the  proposed legislation for including a grant program aimed at encouraging construction of local infrastructure to promote healthier movement.

Citing the possibility of more paved sidewalks, jungle gyms, and bike paths, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) lamented: "[H]ow can Democrats justify the wasteful spending in this bill?"

Despite loud protestations from the GOP and conservative think tanks about the grants, dubbed "Community Transformation" aid, it has survived intact in the final health reform bill that Democratic leaders will call up for a crucial test vote tomorrow.

The final Senate legislation opens the Community Transformation awards to non-profit groups as well as state and local governments. Proposals to promote increased physical exercise and "the infrastructure to support active living" would be eligible for funding, and grant recipients would be required to measure the resulting local health benefits.

The amount of money set aside for the program is not specified in the Senate bill. The House health bill limited annual funding to $1.6 billion, while the upper chamber of Congress names Community Transformation grants as one eligible use for a "prevention and public health fund" that would receive $5 billion by the year 2015.

No matter how you slice it, however, the Senate has recognized the maxim that transportation reform is health reform.

Local residents turned out to give their opinions on the renovation of the malls early last summer.

Residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown have been fighting for improvements to the Allen and Pike Street pedestrian malls for more than a decade. Now, with the city's Parks Department set to begin a $5.4 million renovation of the malls below East Broadway, their wait for meaningful action might be nearing an end.

The Hester Street Collaborative has just released a final report on the community's visioning process (download the full study), which was coordinated by United Neighbors to Revitalize Allen and Pike (UNRAP) and will be used to inform the upcoming work.

The malls, which run along the center of Pike and Allen Streets from the East River to Houston Street, have long been in a state of disrepair. The pavement is cracked and uneven. There's little vegetation. The roar of traffic is ever-present. "There's a tremendous need for more viable open space here," says Annie Frederick, executive director of the Hester Street Collaborative. "This neighborhood has one of the lowest rates of public space in the city."

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Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:

The New York State Department of Transportation announced last month that it will weigh the costs and benefits of its plan to expand the Sheridan Expressway against a Community Vision for the highway's removal and redevelopment.

The Community Vision, which includes decommissioning the Sheridan and replacing it with affordable housing, open space, and new economic development opportunities, will be included in NYSDOT's Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed expansion.

If the analysis finds that the Community Vision makes more economic and environmental sense than the expansion proposal, NYSDOT will be hard pressed to move forward with its plan to stretch the Sheridan south into Hunts Point.

Check back soon for updates on the DEIS process. In the meantime, check out what Wikipedia has to say about Environmental Impact Statements.

On the closing day of New York City's historic C40 Climate Summit, Lord Mayor Clover Moore of Sydney, Australia and Copenhagen's Mayor of the Technical & Environmental Administration Klaus Bondam took a lunch break to ride bikes with Transportation Alternatives in a symbolic loop around Central Park. As usual StreetFilms brings you the best coverage.

Opening this summer: East River State Park on the Brooklyn waterfront 

It was a dreamy spring day on the Brooklyn waterfront as more than 100 bikers set out to trace the proposed route of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.

Starting at the end of Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, cyclists were treated to views of the soon-to-open East River State Park as well as an unprecedented spin around the piers that will be part of the future Brooklyn Bridge Park. Watch a StreetFilm showing these rarely seen views here. 

Milton Puryear (right), vice chair and director for planning of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI), led the ride and did a great job of explaining the group's vision for the future of Brooklyn's waterfront. A key part of that vision is the provision for separate lanes for bikers and pedestrians, so that, as Puryear explained, "Cyclists can keep their heart rate up and pedestrians can lower their blood pressure."

The challenge facing the greenway's advocates is considerable. Considering the multitude of owners and interests at work along these now prime pieces of real estate, coordinating the planning and construction of a world-class greenway is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. Community Board 1 will be holding a planning workshop on May 24th at 6pm where residents of Greenpoint and Williamsburg will be able to brainstorm about planning options for that section of the greenway.

Several riders commented on how quickly we got from Greenpoint, where condo towers are sprouting right and left, down to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's easy to imagine how the construction of the greenway would provide a vital physical and psychological connection between the rapidly developing neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and the more established residential neighborhoods to the south -- Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook. Right now, these neighborhoods feel very distant from each other, in part because the only way to travel between them is by the G train or by car on the massively overcrowded BQE. But on a bike, cruising along the East River, you can become aware of how close together they all really are -- and how integrated the waterfront's recreational opportunities could become with smart development.

The BGI has a spiffy new map showing the proposed route as well as the current preliminary route along the waterfront. Contact them and get a copy at info [at] brooklyngreenway [dot] org. Then go out and ride it yourself.

Photos: Sarah Goodyear 

Little Legs For Green Streets
A StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson Jr.
Running Time: 2 minutes 41 seconds

This Streetfilm celebrates the students at P.S. 321 in Park Slope who are going green. The entire school participated in an Earth Day walk-a-thon to raise money for Transportation Alternatives, Amazon Watch, and Added Value.

Bookending his much-vaunted Earth Day speech with congratulatory video clips from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called for New Yorkers to take the initiative in the international fight against global warming, positioning himself as a leader on the issue.

"Climate change is a national challenge, and meeting it requires strong and united national leadership," the mayor said to an appreciative invited audience at the American Museum of Natural History. "The fact is, the emerging consensus among scientists is that, to avoid serious harm, we must reduce our emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050.  That means we can't -- and we won't -- wait for Washington. The time to act is now."

Bloomberg set forth some particulars of an ambitious agenda -- dubbed PlaNYC, and first floated at a speech he gave last December -- for remaking the city's infrastructure in order to prepare for a city with 1 million more inhabitants by the year 2030. Many of the initiatives he announced were aimed at reducing New York's output of greenhouse gases 30 percent by 2030, creating "the first environmentally sustainable city of the 21st century." The mayor got a big round of applause when he said, "The science [on climate change] is there. It's time to stop debating it and to start dealing with it."

Bloomberg's wide-ranging speech covered everything from affordable housing to cleaner power plants to refurbished parks to cleanup of brownfields. And as expected, a plan for cars to pay to enter Manhattan was a key part of the mayor's wish list. "As long as we're at the Museum of Natural History, let's talk about the elephant in the room: congestion pricing," said the mayor, getting a good laugh.

Here are the basics on the mayor's congestion-pricing plan:

• It would cover Manhattan below 86th St. from 6am to 6pm, Monday through Friday.
• Autos would pay $8 to enter, leave, and move within the zone; trucks would pay $21.
• Trips bypassing the zone on the FDR and West Side Highway would be exempt.
• E-Z Pass users would be credited the amount of their round-trip tolls toward the charge.
• Handicapped license plates, emergency vehicles and transit buses, and taxis and livery cabs would be exempt.
• Payment would be by E-Z Pass; vehicles without E-Z Pass would get bills based on camera-recorded license-plate readings.
• All proceeds would be dedicated to transportation investments.
• The NYC DOT would control the system.
• A three-year pilot program would be paid for with federal funds.

Bloomberg, in anticipation of criticism that has already begun, rolled out a lengthy defense of the idea, mentioning equity -- in effect, congestion pricing would level the charge for entering Manhattan, regardless of which crossing is used -- along with economic and health benefits.

"As the city continues to grow," the mayor said, "the costs of congestion -- to our health, to our environment, and to our economy -- are only going to get worse. The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?

"I've thought about this question a lot. And I understand the hesitation about charging a fee. I was a skeptic myself. But I looked at the facts, and that's what I'm asking New Yorkers to do. And the fact is in cities like London and Singapore, fees succeeded in reducing congestion and improving air quality. Many people are already paying to drive into Manhattan -- there are tolls on most bridges and the four tunnels. But to avoid those tolls, many people drive through neighborhood streets. That not only clogs the streets, it increases air pollution -- and asthma rates."

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One vision: Grand Army Plaza's fountain and arch connected to Prospect Park.

The summary of the brainstorming done at last month's placemaking workshop of the Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPco) is now available, and it's full of rich possibilities for this vitally important yet underused space. Download the PDF here.

The DOT's recently announced plans for pedestrian- and bicyclist-friendly improvements give some official momentum to the effort to remake the plaza, but the GAPco report opens up a much broader range of possibilities for the plaza's future. Those include everything from more benches to an expanded Greenmarket to "shake shack"-type food vendors.

This kind of creative, community-driven thinking could turn Grand Army Plaza from a disjointed sea of traffic into a well-integrated and vibrant public resource. It's well worth reading the whole report, but here are some of the broad overall recommendations:

• Conduct short-term improvements. Take the most feasible suggestions from the workshop and start experimenting. Start showing people the future of Grand Army Plaza can start now.
• Close the gap. Connect the arch with Prospect Park by extending the entrance plaza to the arch (using paving, etc.).
• Improve access to the plaza and connect it into a broader circulation system for pedestrians, bicyclists, automobiles and transit users. Balance the user needs.
• Create clear pathways to the "center" across the berms. Create access (visual and/or pedestrian) through the berms. Sight lines and physical connection will increase presence and use of arch and fountain.
• Relocate the "entrance" to Prospect Park to the north side of Grand Army Plaza. Create a symbolic entrance on the north side of the plaza that marks the beginning of Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza. Treat this area as a part of the park rather than a traffic circle.
• Connect the west berm area to the arch and fountain by converting the west side of  the inner circle from traffic lanes to a pedestrian plaza.
• Partner with local institutions. For example, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden could display rotating horticultural displays, the library could host events in the plaza, and the zoo could partner with the Brooklyn Children's Museum to host an event oriented to children in the plaza.
• Formalize GAPco's role as an advisor and manager of the public process.