Streetsblog Capitol Hill

It could have been just another gathering of urban idealists, agreeing with each other about how great it would be to have more public space for people, and less for cars.

Except last night's NYC Streets Renaissance event, "A New Vision for the Upper West Side," featured renowned Danish planner Jan Gehl -- who, as has been mentioned a time or two on Streetsblog, has been hired by the city to help bring to life the long-held wishes of New Yorkers who want their streets to be welcoming communal destinations, or, at least, something more than loud, dirty, traffic-choked motoring facilities.

After introductions by Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White, The Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Gehl joked that he was not yet at liberty to discuss his analysis of New York City streets, specific recommendations or much of anything else. Despite the warning, he teased the capacity crowd at the Jewish Community Center with vignettes of what the city could look like in the near and not-too-distant future. Ten years from now, Gehl said, New York could compete with Copenhagen, where nearly 40 percent of commuters travel by bike, for the crown of world's bike-friendliest city.

Whereas pedestrians now spend up to 25 percent of their walking time waiting on signal changes, Gehl sees a city where a presently accepted nod to auto supremacy like the button-activated walk light ("an application to cross the street," as he calls it) becomes an outmoded relic. Gehl's New York is one of flourishing street trees, attractive and functional street furniture, dedicated bus lanes, local outdoor art, complementary lighting, relaxed pedestrians and so many cyclists that the city will need to widen bike lanes to make room.

Specifically, Gehl looks to have big plans in the works for Broadway between Columbus Circle and the Battery. He also spent a bit of time discussing Fordham Road in the Bronx and Main Street in Flushing, noting that pedestrian volumes on these beleaguered outer borough thoroughfares are comparable to Times Square and some of the world's busiest urban promenades.

Gehl said his team was excited by New York City's wide streets and avenues, as they provide the space to easily accommodate wider sidewalks and new kinds of bus and bike lanes. The key, he said, is supply and demand; while cars will fill whatever space you give them, on-street or off, reducing auto capacity by even a small percentage would make a big difference to other users.

According to Gehl, the top priority for any city looking to humanize its infrastructure is to change the way citizens view the purpose and function of the city itself.

"New York has become very much a 'How to get from A to B' city," Gehl said. "It is not a law of nature that you have this much traffic."

Photos: Jonathan Barkey 

A standing room-only crowd turned out for last night's Upper West Side Streets Renaissance event with Danish urban designer Jan Gehl and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. All in all, it was an inspiring night and we'll have a more detailed write-up later today. Though Gehl wasn't allowed to get too specific about the work he is doing for the city, reading between the lines of his presentation, it was apparent that he is set to present some pretty groundbreaking ideas to Mayor Bloomberg. Word has it, Gehl is having lunch with the Mayor today. Hopefully the Mayor will be inspired too. 

Clarence Eckerson has already produced a three-minute StreetFilms wrap up which, frankly, is also inspiring being as how I know for a fact that he didn't get home last night until around midnight and he had quite a few beers in him.

Additionally, the staff at Transportation Alternatives and Open Planning Project deserve a lot of praise. They did a great job preparing materials and organizing the event.

Speaking of which, have you had a chance to play with the new NYC Streets web site? It's still in beta and there are lots of cool features yet to be installed. But pretty soon you'll be able to use this web site to launch your own Livable Streets project. You'll find a variety of tools, resources and other people to help you make changes in your own community and neighborhood.

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan will be talking about this evening's Upper West Side Streets Renaissance workshop with Jan Gehl on the Brian Lehrer Show, 93.9 FM, at 10:40am.

Help shape the neighborhood streets of the Upper West Side. Work with your neighbors to create beautiful, green streets with safer bike lanes, great walking spaces, less traffic and cleaner air. The Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign is holding a series of events aimed at empowering residents to re-imagine neighborhood streets and make their visions a reality.

A Workshop With Jan Gehl, the World's Foremost Urban Designer
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007, 5:30-7:00 pm
The Jewish Community Center
334 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street
Opening Reception, 7:00-8:30 Presentation

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan will be there too. Admission is free. Seating is very limited and RSVP is required.

If you haven't heard it already, WNYC's Arun Venugopal has an outstanding piece on New York City's rapidly changing transportation policies regarding bicycling. We hear from T.A.'s Noah Budnick, Copenhagen's Jan Gehl, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, NYPD Chief Ray Kelly, Judy Ross of Times Up, and a moron in a huge SUV. Click here or press the play button below:

REPORTER: Jan Gehl is an urban designer, also from Copenhagen, who advises the city's Department of Transportation. Like his friend and mentor, the late Jane Jacobs, Gehl speaks of the 'humanization' of the city's streets, which he thinks have become 'infested' by cars. But Gehl thinks Manhattan, given its density and flatness, is perfectly positioned for a wide-scale conversion.

GEHL: It would be a piece of cake to have a really high class bicycle system which could take care of half of the commuting in Manhattan.

REPORTER: Gehl thinks that the political pressures arising from gas prices and the green movement will force the city to adopt bicycling fast. He says real change may be visible here within 5 years, and that the city could be profoundly altered in about 10 years. As more people take to riding bikes, it becomes safer, which in turn encourages more people to ride. Gehl sees major economic benefits as well, as people tend to linger more - in public plazas, or stores or sidewalk cafes - when air and noise pollution go down.

GEHL: In Europe increasingly we are trying to make the cities so that they are wonderful places, where you like to go out and sit and have meals and watch your fellow citizens, talk with them in spaces which are not completely filled with noise. Something about being a public citizens who enjoys his city.

... 

As we ride along 8th avenue, we're forced into the car lane because of all the double-parking law-breakers.

At one point, a man in a huge SUV pulls up next to us and honks his horn. The driver rolls down his window, and he shouts, 'There's only one bike lane, bro!'

Noah ignores him, then watches as the guy runs a red light. And he's at peace.

BUDNICK: the next thing, he's stuck in gridlock, and you're 10 blocks ahead of him five minutes later. Brings a smile.

The New York City Department of Transportation has retained Danish urbanist Jan Gehl's firm to evaluate city streets and other public spaces.

Streetsblog first reported this development as a possibility back in June, when we interviewed Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Not long after, we got word that Gehl had been hired by the city as a PlaNYC consultant.

DOT is now looking for volunteers to help with Gehl's survey. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail circulated to city planning student lists, courtesy a Streetsblog tipster:

They will need about 20 volunteers to do shifts on Sept. 26th, 27th and 29th for their public life survey, which is essentially a collection of data on people and activities taking place in a given public space. Pedestrian counts, age & gender of users, stationary activities and other kinds of public activity will be evaluated. We may also be looking at the quality of pedestrian conditions, seating opportunities, pavement, lighting, signage and quality of ground floor facades, which are all variables that directly affect how the public space is being used and inhabited.

Sites will be major pedestrian and commercial corridors in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Gehl has also been recruited to study pedestrian conditions in Sydney, Australia, which has not duplicated the success of neighboring Melbourne in reclaiming public space from the automobile. Gehl talked to the Sydney Morning Herald about how infrastructure "harassments" lead pedestrians to break the law.

The worst is Market Street, where pedestrians who obey traffic signals spend half their time waiting for the signals to turn green, his research team found.

"You have a number of built-in harassments," Professor Gehl said.

One is his pet hate, the traffic button that walkers must push to "apply" to cross the road. Another is the cluttering of the streetscape by large phone booths and bus stops that accommodate large advertising signs.

"The worse you treat people, the more they start to take the law into their own hands," Professor Gehl said.

Photo: Aaron Naparstek, Sept. 28, 2006. Jan Gehl leading a boat tour of the Copenhagen waterfront.

The Urbanist Musketeers: Alex Garvin, Jan Gehl and Fred Kent in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 30, 2006.

Jan Gehl, the famed Danish urbanist, is in New York City this week where, sources say, he has been hired as a consultant for Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC program.

At a presentation to the board of the Regional Plan Association on Wednesday at the offices of PriceWaterhouseCoopers at 41st and Madison, Gehl said the city must tame the automobile if it is going to become a truly great city for pedestrians and for public life.

Asked during questions what he would do specifically for the city, Gehl said he would make pedestrians more comfortable in the city by adding street furniture, widening sidewalks and creating "oasises" for them. In addition, he would put immediate emphasis on better conditions for cyclists. And finally, he said attention should be paid to the mass transit system. Good mass transit and good pedestrian environments, he said, "are brothers and sisters," each depending on the other.

In his lecture and slide show, Gehl talked of how in Copenhagen they had added bike lanes and additional sidewalk space by converting most four-lane streets to two lanes. Looking back over the last few decades, Gehl showed how big urban cities like Barcelona, Melbourne, Copenhagen and others are "reclaiming" their public spaces and streets for pedestrians by putting less emphasis on accommodating cars. He mentioned how in 1962, all of Copenhagen's principal squares, 18 of them, were being used for parking lots. Now all are used for public life. Gehl said that he sees enormous potential for similar improvements in New York City.

The Dept. of Transportation's press office declined to comment on Gehl's work at this time. In an interview with Streetsblog in June, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said she was "hoping to bring Gehl over at the end of next month to help us work on a pedestrian and public space strategy much like what he did for London."

Photo: Aaron Naparstek

Today's Crain's Insider, available to subscribers only, reports on the next steps for the Bloomberg Administration's broader Long-Term Sustainability Plan now that congestion pricing has cleared its first hurdle in Albany:

7.30.07 Crain's NY Business
The Insider
by Erik Engquist and Anne Michaud

GREEN PLAN Closer to home

NOW THAT the Legislature has passed a congestion-pricing bill, the Bloomberg administration can turn to other environmental initiatives it outlined this spring in PlaNYC 2030, its blueprint for the city's future.

"A lot of effort has been put into what's happening in Albany," says Jason Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst at the New York Public Interest Research Group. "Now, it's going to take some work putting these other things in motion. But it's not rocket science."

The city can get 88% of the way toward its goal of cutting annual greenhouse gas emissions by 49.1 million metric tons from projected 2030 levels by adding clean power generation capacity, making buildings more efficient and accommodating 900,000 residents who would otherwise live in sprawling suburbs.

Furthermore, much of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's green agenda will be hammered out by the Public Service Commission, says Ashok Gupta of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "That's where the big decisions will be made that will be critical to the city's efforts, through the regulatory process and not the legislative process."

Meanwhile, the city's transportation commissioner says her agency is pressing forward with traffic-cutting plans that don't require approval from Albany or Washington. Janette Sadik-Khan says that many initiatives are under way and more are under consideration, including perhaps new alternate-side parking regulations. She aims for citywide installation of advanced signal controllers-now used on only a third of the city's traffic corridors.

To reduce the number of drivers cruising for parking spots, Ms. Sadik-Khan says, the city will put muni meters on more commercial strips, and it may raise prices. A crackdown on placard abuse is getting closer, she says.

Streetsblog interviewed DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at 40 Worth St., Monday, June 18

Janette Sadik-Khan: Four days.

Streetsblog: Left in the legislative session?

JSK: Yeah, well, maybe four days left, maybe more days. August in Albany. What can be better?

SB: (Laughing) So, let's start with something other than congestion pricing. How was your trip to Copenhagen to meet with Jan Gehl? Had you ever been before?

JSK: Never been.

SB: What did you think?

JSK: I thought it was spectacular. The experience of riding a bicycle in a city in which the car is not the priority was really inspiring. One piece that was a bit of a surprise was how well behaved people were in Copenhagen. I didn't see a single person break a single traffic law while I was there which is certainly a little different than the experience that we have here.

SB: I noticed the same thing when I was there last fall but every Copenhagener I asked insisted they were just as rude and unruly as New Yorkers.

JSK: Gehl went through the historic trajectory of how they've reclaimed public space bit by bit, one street at a time. Today, they've reached a tipping point where 36 percent of the people commuting to work are on bike and they're looking to get that mode share up to 40 percent.

The other thing that amazed me is that there are all of these bikes parked all over the place and it appears that none of them are locked. They all have these small black handcuffs on the rear wheel. You turn the key and this steel rod comes through and locks it up. How long do you think that would last on the streets of New York City? Ten minutes?

So, there are definite cultural elements that make Copenhagen Copenhagen and need to be adapted to work in New York. But the design of the streets and their approach to the streets are really interesting and I'm hoping to bring Gehl over at the end of next month to help us work on a pedestrian and public space strategy much like what he did for London.

SB: Would you have him work in a specific location or citywide?

JSK: We need to be able to show what can be done in all five boroughs with a variety of different techniques. But not everything needs to be a massive capital project. I'm looking to see what we can do on a shorter term basis to have some immediate impact in reclaiming streets and coming up with different designs for roadways and sidewalks.

Read more...

Department of Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan continues to assemble an impressive management team.

Following in the footsteps of Bruce Schaller and Jon Orcutt, Project for Public Spaces vice president and transportation program director Andy Wiley-Schwartz is heading over to 40 Worth Street where he will be reporting to Deputy Commissioner Schaller at DOT's new Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. There they will be working to implement the transportation and public space objectives set out in Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC.

Wiley-Schwartz starts at DOT on Monday. While there has been no official announcement of his hiring or his title, word has it Wiley-Schwartz will be working on new public space initiatives, which seems like a natural fit, given his experience at PPS. With DOT's recent focus on reclaiming under-utilized bits and pieces of street space as public plazas and with tremendous grassroots energy in places like Hell's Kitchen, SoHo, Gansevoort, Grand Army Plaza, Williamsburg and even the occasional, random on-street parking spot -- it seems like "public space initiatives" could be a pretty exciting job description at DOT right now.

Wiley-Schwartz has been a contributor here at Streetsblog. At PPS he specialized in working with Departments of Transportation and community groups all across the U.S. on downtown street enhancement, traffic calming and bicycle and pedestrian projects. He is a national lead in the Context Sensitive Solutions movement, an articulate advocate and just a really pleasant guy to work with. Here is an excerpt from his PPS bio:

He specializes in helping communities rebuild their neighborhoods and cities by leveraging transportation funding into the development of public spaces, including streets and other transportation facilities, in part by focusing on strategic partnerships and programming.

Andy's current projects include PPS's New Jersey Smart Choices program: an outreach, education and training program to help municipalities plan and make sustainable land use decisions in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Transportation. He is also working with the Times Square Alliance in New York City, the City of Elmira, NY to revitalize the area under and around a railroad viaduct downtown, and advising the City of Indianapolis on their plan to build a "Cultural Trail" through their central business district.

And, no, this is not an April Fool's prank. It's June, people.