For all of the readers, commenters, contributors and colleagues who have made Streetsblog such a powerful tool for transportation policy reform, high-quality online community and fun and interesting job: Thank you. It's been a great four-year run.

I'd say that I'll miss you guys except I'm sure I'll still be seeing you around. I will be moving over to The Open Planning Project's board of directors and I plan to continue to write and work on livable streets issues, among other things. If you want to keep up with me, you can follow me on Twitter @naparstek. I'll be dusting off and redesigning the old Naparstek.com blog as well. And it looks like we will probably be doing a going-away party on Friday, February 5. Stay tuned for details on that.

Naturally, I've been spending some time taking stock of these last four years and I can't help but find myself amazed at how far New York City's livable streets movement has come.

It's almost hard to believe that when we started this blog, ideas like physically-separated bike lanes, car-free Times Square and bus rapid transit were mostly considered crazy or impossible in New York City. It's remarkable to recall that as recently as August 2006 we lamented the fact that the leaders of cities like London, Paris and even unglamorous Chicago were rolling out ambitious transportation reforms and long-term sustainability plans while our own mayor chortled, "We like traffic. It means economic activity. It means people coming here."

When I first pitched the idea for Streetsblog to Mark Gorton in January 2006 (almost exactly four years ago to the day), New York City's streets were improving but still, for the most part, were ruled by a 1950's traffic engineering mindset aimed at maximizing the city's capacity to accommodate motor vehicles. While other world cities were rapidly reclaiming their public realm with bike infrastructure, car-free streets, bus rapid transit and congestion pricing, New York City government still seemed to view traffic as something like the weather -- a force beyond the control of mere mortals. Though few issues touch New Yorkers lives more personally on a more regular basis, transportation was a third-tier issue at City Hall and in the local press.

Streetsblog helped to change that. We initially had four goals in mind: First, we aimed to generate more of an awareness of our issues by creating a new journalistic beat ranging from the intense, neighborhood-level battles over bike lanes to the big question of how New York City planned to address the challenges of climate change. Second, we wanted to educate and excite policy makers, press and regular citizens about the transportation and urban planning best practices that were emerging in other world cities. Third, we hoped to establish an online community and discussion forum for the people who were working on and thinking about these issues. And finally, most of all, we intended to watchdog and reform New York City's Department of Transportation. We wanted Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and his staff reading our blog. We wanted them to feel mildly embarrassed about the way that New York City's transportation policies were lagging behind those of other cities. And we hoped to create a new, more ambitious set of expectations for what New York City's DOT could do.

And we did it. Streetsblog, in many ways, exceeded -- and continues to surpass -- the wildest expectations that Mark and I originally had for it. Today, with Janette Sadik-Khan at the helm, New York City's DOT is pushing a bold program to create "sustainable streets" through the prioritization of pedestrians, transit and bicycles. The agency is not just reformed, it is transformed, and widely considered the leading example for transportation agencies in other U.S. cities to follow. We certainly can't take all the credit for the great improvements taking place on New York City streets these days and we fully recognize that there is a whole lot of work yet to be done. But looking back at these last four years, I can't help but think of Danish urban designer Jan Gehl's oft-repeated quote: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

Likewise, it has been gratifying this last year to see Streetsblog grow and succeed in other cities. Streetsblog San Francisco is proving that the model that we created here in New York City can be just as powerful and effective in another city. Streetsblog Los Angeles is demonstrating that even a low-budget, one-man version of Streetsblog can reap substantial results. And Streetsblog Capitol Hill, the only news source covering federal transportation policy as a daily beat, is showing that we can have a tangible impact on the national level as well.

Our national blog network has also been a real eye-opener. When we launched Streetsblog in the spring of 2006 there really wasn't anything else out there quite like it aside from BikePortland.com.

Take a look at our Streetsblog Network map today. There are now more than 300 locally-oriented livable streets blogs in 45 states. Sure, the "Tea Party" movement gets all of the media attention. But I believe these 300 livable streets blogs and the tens of thousands of readers who visit them on a weekly basis represent one of the most vibrant, genuine and rapidly growing new grassroots movements underway in the United States today. It will take time -- building new communities and changing the physical design and infrastructure of existing cities is a slow process. But this is the start of a movement that is transforming the American city and the American way-of-life in some very fundamental and positive ways. Streetsblog will continue to play a critical role in spreading the ideas and connecting the people who are building this nationwide movement.

I will be leaving you in very good hands here at Streetsblog. Ben Fried will continue to edit and run the blog in New York City, with Bryan Goebel in San Francisco, Elana Schor in Washington D.C. and Damien Newton in Los Angeles. Sarah Goodyear will still be building and managing the national blog network and developing and improving our online community. Livable Streets Initiative managing director Carly Clark will be picking up the slack on the fundraising and development front, pushing ahead with plans to open up local editions of Streetsblog in new cities. Streetfilms, of course, will still be doing the great work that they do. Nick Grossman and the TOPP Labs crew will continue to do an amazing job of designing, developing and maintaining our web sites. And TOPP founder Mark Gorton will continue to provide invaluable financial support and strategic direction to the whole crew.

So, thanks again for your readership and support these last four years. As for all of you regular Streetsblog commenters -- I'm pretty sure I heard more from you these last four years than my own wife and kids. You guys all better show your faces at my party. You know who you are. Larry.

And Al Gore and the folks at Repower America say call your U.S. Representative today because you can be sure the guys from the coal industry have made their calls. Here's Al...

OK. I’ve finally succumbed to Twitter and I’m using it to keep track of interesting quotes, observations and tidbits at the 17th annual Congress for the New Urbanism
conference in Denver. There’s a lot of great stuff happening here and
plenty of interesting people. I’m not sure how much of that I can
convey in 140 character text bursts. But I’m a professional haikuist so let’s see what I can do.

You can follow me @naparstek. 

And you can follow other conference attendees at #cnu17.

We
are excited to announce the official launch of Streetsblog Capitol
Hill. With major transportation, climate and energy legislation coming
before Congress in the next year or two we felt that it was critical to
have a talented journalist down in Washington D.C. covering the issues
on a daily basis. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation
and the Wallace Global Fund the Livable Streets Initiative has hired
reporter Elana Schor
to cover the federal beat for us. DC.Streetsblog.org (as it’s known to
your web browser) will be her new home. Sarah Goodyear, editor of our national blog nework, and talented writers like Ryan Avent will be contributing to Streetsblog Capitol Hill as well.

Broadly
speaking, we hope to do two things with this new edition of
Streetsblog. First, we aim to make it a high-quality daily source for
news and analysis of federal transportation policy and related issues.
We want to create a blog that is a daily must-read for the advocates,
lawmakers, Congressional staffers, urban planning practitioners, policy
wonks and lobbyists who are working to shape the future of America’s
transportation systems.

Our second goal for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill is to help bring outsiders into the federal transportation
policy-making process. For decades, transportation policy on Capitol
Hill has mostly been an arcane, complex insiders game
– a game that’s been played best by highway lobbyists. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will put locally-oriented livable streets advocates on the
playing field and help them better understand the rules of the game. As
the 293 bloggers who are now members of the Streetsblog Network
make clear every day, a vibrant, grassroots movement for sustainable
transport, smart growth and livable streets is active and growing
increasingly powerful in cities and states nationwide. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will help connect these local activists to the important
action taking place inside the Beltway. 

Regular
readers will notice that "Capitol Hill" has replaced "National Blog
Network" in the tab above. Streetsblog.net has not gone away. You will
still find Sarah Goodyear’s daily Network round-up posted on all of our
blogs. Network headlines and access to the Network web site can be
found in the sidebar at right. Likewise, the RSS feed for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill can be found here.

I've lived in New York City for just about twenty years now but yesterday was my first trip to Times Square.

Sure, I've been to Times Square before. Plenty of times. But until yesterday Times Square had never ever been a destination for me. Rather, it had always been a place to avoid or, if unavoidable, a place to get in and out of as fast as possible on my way to somewhere else.

The New York City Department of Transportation's "Green Light for Midtown" plan brought me and a lot of other people to Times Square yesterday. And it kept us there. By simply removing motor vehicles from Broadway around Times and Herald Squares and inviting pedestrians in with seating, street performers, good people-watching -- and a naked cowboy -- New York City has created two great new public spaces for tourists, office workers and, yes, even jaded residents.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson squares off with the Naked Cowboy. Icon Parking Systems, the Cowboy's sponsor, may be one of the few businesses unhappy with the new Times Square. The Cowboy is pleased.

The space is still raw and unfinished and it'll be interesting to see how it works during the weekday, but my two young sons and I had a blast yesterday along with thousands of others. Times Square is suddenly a place worth visiting and staying a while (especially if you're a parent desperate for an easy, low-cost weekend adventure for your kids).

The Naparstek boys experience Times Square for the first time. ("Can we get a big TV on the front of our house too?")

A large part of the design’s success stems from the altered relationship between the pedestrian and the structures that frame the square. Walking down the cramped, narrow sidewalks, a visitor could never get a feel for the vastness of the place. Now, standing in the middle of Broadway, you have the sense of being in a big public room, the towering billboards and digital screens pressing in on all sides.

This adds to the intimacy of the plaza itself, which, however undefined, can now function as a genuine social space: people can mill around, ogle one another and gaze up at the city around them without the fear of being caught under the wheels of a cab.

A more personal Times Square: Sunning in the middle of Broadway.

No doubt some aspects of the new Times Square will be found to be successful and others not working all that well. Still, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her team already deserve a ton of credit for their willingness to experiment and innovate. During the Iris Weinshall era at DOT, the idea of removing motor vehicles from Broadway was considered a huge long-shot, a Hail Mary pass, a kind of Livable Streets Holy Grail. It was difficult to imagine a version of the New York City Dept. of Transportation that would do it. These guys and their colleagues went ahead and did it...

NYC DOT's Seth Solomonow, Janette Sadik-Khan, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, Ryan Russo and Sean Quinn at Times Square on Monday morning.

Open Planning Project executive director Mark Gorton catches some rays.

The changes underway in New York City right now are pretty breathtaking and livable streets advocates deserve some credit too. Yesterday I couldn't help but think back to a January 2005 dinner at Mark Gorton's Upper West Side apartment. Former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa was the guest of honor. Transportation Alternatives' new executive director Paul Steely White set up the event and Jody Gorton cooked up a delicious meal for Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins and about fifteen advocates and civic leaders.

The topic of discussion that evening was Broadway and it's potential to be a truly great, pedestrian-only public space. Peñalosa believed it was possible and he was inspirational in laying out the vision. Project for Public Space president Fred Kent had been thinking about the idea for 30 years and he provided the historic perspective. ITDP director Walter Hook had seen pedestrian streets work all over the world and he talked about international best practices. Tompkins had to live with the daily consequences of whatever happened at Times Square and he reminded everyone of the political realities. At the time it seemed a little far-fetched, this notion that Times Square might someday be a mostly car-free space. But here we are five years later and it's happening along with lots of other good stuff.

It was from meetings like this one that the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign was born and ideas like physically separated bike lanes, car-free streets and a less automobile-dependent city were popularized and made politically possible in New York and beyond. If you've been a part of New York City's livable streets movement, today's a day to pat yourself on the back. As Danish urban designer Jan Gehl says: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

The Naparstek boys riding last year's Summer Streets event... wearing helmets.

A Canadian Broadcasting TV crew doing a documentary on biking is filming me as I take my two sons to school on our Dutch cargo bike today. While the kids always wear helmets, and I do too when I'm commuting or riding longer distances, I often don't bother to wear one when I'm taking the kids to school in the bakfiets (also known around our house as the Cadillac Bikescalade). 

There are a few reasons why I tend to go helmetless. First, I'm a pretty careful, slow-riding cyclist in general, and even more so when I'm carrying kids. The ride to school is a short trip on residential streets marked almost entirely with bike lanes in a neighborhood where motorists are relatively respectful and aware of bikes. Walking across a street at an intersection with two young kids in tow often feels more dangerous.

Second, getting the kids out the door in the morning involves quite a bit of schlepping and hassle as it is. My own helmet sometimes just gets lost in the shuffle (as does my four-year-old's lunch). If the two-year-old is whiny or we're running late I'm not turning back to get the helmet. It's all about momentum.

Finally, I just don't like the way the helmet looks when I'm riding the bakfiets. This is less and issue of fashion (because lord knows I have no fashion sense) and more, I think, an issue of public perception.

The first time I ever saw a cargo bike in action was on my U.S.-German Marshall fellowship trip to Copenhagen in 2006. In Copenhagen I saw people using cargo bikes to cart their kids all over the place. I rarely saw an adult wearing a helmet. It made an impression on me. This lack of protective headgear -- or any special bike gear, for that matter -- is one of the things that, to my eye, made biking in Copenhagen seem so remarkably convenient, casual, safe and part of regular daily life. It didn't matter what you're wearing. In Copenhagen you just hop on a bike and go.

The sheer sense of normalcy conveyed by streets filled with helmetless, kid-toting Danish cyclists seemed to me to do more to encourage bicycling and promote safety than any personal equipment or piece of infrastructure I'd ever seen back home. And the numbers back that up. Somehow, despite the lack of headgear, Danish, German and Dutch cyclist injury and fatality rates are a fraction of our own.

We know from the work of Peter Jacobsen that one of the most surefire ways to make urban bike transportation safer is to increase the number of cyclists on city streets. There are a lot of proven and effective ways to encourage more people to get on bikes. Compelling everyone to strap a styrofoam shell to their head is not one of them -- at least not in the world cities with the safest streets for cyclists.

Yes, I'm still going to continue to wear a helmet on the vast majority of my bike rides and I'd encourage every New York City cyclist to do the same. While cyclists have achieved a real safety-in-numbers effect in Copenhagen and are beginning to do so here, many New York City streets are still dominated by aggressive nincompoops in overly large motor vehicles.

Still, I'm leaning toward wearing a dignified hat on this morning's bike ride rather than a helmet.

As you may have noticed, we’ve got a new reporter here at Streetsblog, Elana Schor.
Elana will be covering this year’s big federal transportation story
down in Washington D.C. with an eye towards helping transit advocates
and livable streets activists gain a better understanding of what
has typically been a very inside-the-Beltway, highway-oriented process.
If you have tips, comments or questions for Elana, email her: elana
[at] streetsblog [dot] org.

Elana
has covered Capitol Hill for more than four years, most recently as a
staff reporter for The Hill, The Guardian, and the Talking Points Memo
blog. Her work has also been published by MarketWatch and the Biloxi
Sun-Herald. She holds a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern
University, and lives in Washington’s very walkable Mount Pleasant
neighborhood. 

Streetsblog’s national work is being funded by grants from the Surdna Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund.

Regarding
this national work — here’s a question for you: What would you like to
see Elana cover in the coming months? Or, more generally, how would you
like to see Streetsblog approach the federal transportation issues?

I’ve found that Streetsblog tends to work best and engage readers most when we focus on the hyper-local and hyper-personal
side of policy issues. Yet, unlike neighborhood street fights and
seemingly timeless issues like sidewalk cycling and rolling stops,
federal transportation policy often feels too big and distant to get a
handle on. It sometimes feels more like a spectator sport, taking place
on this whole other playing field where, I think, locally-oriented
livable streets activists often don’t feel like they have much
influence.

So, this is going to be our challenge in the
coming months: Cover the federal transportation policy process in a way
that makes Streetsblog a daily read for national advocates, elected
officials, Hill staffers and U.S. DOT personnel while also making the
issues engaging and tangible to grassroots livable streets activists.
By making transit coverage more accessible, the goal is to take the
blinders off policymakers who have historically been beholden to
moneyed lobbies rather than new ideas.

I’m convinced that the
local activists are key. The hundreds of thousands of people across
America who are working to make their own communities more bikeable,
walkable and transit-oriented are the most powerful force for pushing
federal transportation policy in a smarter more sustainable direction.
We’ve just got to get informed and engaged. Elana is going to help us
do that.

U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, made his morning commute to New York City on the LaGuardia shuttle. "Not a bad way to come," he told the ABNY crowd, before adding, "Train or shuttle. We've done it both ways."

Here are a few notes from LaHood's talk and my brief conversation with him afterward:

• NY1 gave prominent play to LaHood's comment about New York City's $354 million in congestion pricing money still being available but, to be clear, this wasn't a major point of his talk. It was actually more of a side note in response to Council member Dan Garodnick's question about whether the Obama Administration would continue the Urban Partnership program's effort "to create the incentives to move people out of their cars and onto transit." Regarding the hundreds of millions of dollars that our geniuses up in Albany rejected last year, LaHood said, "That money is still sitting around. It's on the table somewhere. I think it’s in our office still. We offered it up to Chicago but like New York they couldn’t get their act together."
  
• U.S. DOT is teaming up with former Bloomberg Administration all-star Shaun Donovan at HUD to focus on transit-oriented affordable housing. LaHood framed this project as going "hand in hand" with the Obama Administration's commitment to high-speed rail. Donovan, LaHood said, is "one of the most innovative people in America; a very creative fellow."
  
• LaHood said almost nothing about the upcoming federal transportation bill except that DOT is taking "a hard look at how we fund transportation" and they want "to give cities like New York more flexibility in how they spend Uncle Sam’s dollars."
  
• Though you don't really get the sense that LaHood lives and breathes transportation policy like, say, New York City's Janette Sadik-Khan, a lot of the right words are coming out of his mouth these days. Yesterday's talk wasn't limited to roads, bridges and zillion dollar mega-projects. The Obama Administration, he said, is committed to a transportation policy that will "enhance mobility, support a cleaner environment and help make our communities more livable." LaHood is clearly making the connection between transportation policy and urban development. He said (and I'm condensing this a little bit): "What we’re trying to do is take some of the resources we have on the transit side and connect them with what Secretary Donovan wants to do. We want to create livable communities. Portland is really the model for it. We want to create housing opportunities so that people can walk out their front doors and go wherever they want to go without getting into an automobile. That’s really the goal."

Amen, Secretary.

After the talk I introduced myself and Streetsblog to LaHood and told him that we'd like to sit down with him for a Q&A in Washington D.C. some time soon. LaHood said that he had his own blog too, The Fast Lane. Had I seen it?

"Of course," I said. "Streetsblog readers are big fans. But what do you think about changing the name of your blog to The Fast Track?"

Someone in the background, I think one of his staffers, laughed. LaHood stopped walking and gave me what I took to be a who-is-this-insane-person kind of look.

"We think Fast Lane works pretty well," he said, and headed off to a medal ceremony for the ferry crew members who rescued US Air Flight 1549 in the Hudson River last winter.  

Having observed New York City traffic enforcement pretty closely these last three years as editor of Streetsblog, I can safely offer the following advice to would-be murderers: If you ever need to kill someone in New York City, do it with a car.

As long as you are sober and licensed, you can go ahead and run over a 4-year-old and his babysitter walking in the crosswalk and drive off with nothing more than a failure-to-yield summons. You can plow your 2008 Ranger Rover into a bike commuter at a busy intersection and count on the NYPD only to interview the passengers in your vehicle, your buddies, before closing the case and letting you drive home despite numerous prior convictions on your driving record. You can rip down the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan at 60 mph, kill a woman, flee the scene, refuse to take a Breathalyzer test and get a plea deal for a mere eight weekends in jail because the victim happened to have a couple of drinks before she got in the way of your speeding Mercedes SUV. You can even let your van slam into a class of preschoolers walking on the sidewalk with their teachers, kill two of them, traumatize the rest, and be assured that the NYPD, the District Attorney and the local media will treat the case not as manslaughter or negligent homicide, but as an "accident."

When a construction crane falls or a New York Giants wide receiver accidentally discharges his gun, New York City's law enforcement community flies into a frenzy of justice-seeking. But when the killing is done by a sober, licensed driver, you can pretty much hear crickets chirping at the District Attorney's office. Though the total number of traffic fatalities and injuries has declined in recent years, for the friends and families of the 271 people killed by automobiles on New York City streets in 2007, the concept of "traffic justice" was virtually non-existent.

With Manhattan's 89-year-old District Attorney Robert Morgenthau finally stepping down, this year's campaign to succeed him is a great opportunity to make sure the next DA is committed to doing a better job of protecting New Yorkers from reckless and negligent drivers. Streetsblog met with Manhattan District Attorney candidate Leslie Crocker Snyder to learn more about where she stands when it comes to traffic justice.

* * * * *

Though Snyder acknowledged that she has "never been an expert in traffic-related issues" she said the horrific killings of preschoolers Diego Martinez and Hayley Ng in Chinatown have brought these issues to her attention and she is "learning more."

She believes the Manhattan DA's office has become "stale and reactive" and non-responsive to community concerns with the same man at the helm for 35 years. Rather than ignore traffic fatalities as Morgenthau has done, Snyder would bring killer-driver cases before grand juries. "I would want a grand jury to know the law of criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault and reckless endangerment," she said.

Even when the law prevents her from pursuing criminal prosecution, Snyder said, "I would meet with the families. I would hear their grief as a mother" and, at the very least, explain to them what her office can and can not do for them. "You have to be a human being and acknowledge that these families must be going through hell."

Snyder said that the biggest traffic safety complaint she hears from community leaders these days is not about reckless motorists but "bicyclists being dangerous" and "messengers running us over." If she is elected DA, she invites livable streets advocates to educate her on the issues and "meet with me regularly and make sure I'm staying on top of it."

Here is an edited transcript of my interview with her:

Aaron Naparstek: We see a lot of cases in New York City where motorists are killing pedestrians and cyclists and basically just being put back in the driver’s seat and driving away with little more than a failure-to-yield summons. What can be done to change that?

You have to be a human being and acknowledge that these families must be going through hell. Why wouldn’t you meet with them and explain what your office is doing?

Leslie Crocker Snyder: I think a lot can be done. This issue fits into my whole theme which is that this has been a great office -- I was a member of it some years ago as a young assistant DA -- but it’s gone completely stale and reactive as opposed to proactive.

Frankly I really haven’t spent a lot of time on traffic issues, but they are important. I’m hearing over and over again that messengers are running us over, bicyclists being dangerous, pedestrians are having a lot of issues and I didn’t realize until fairly recently how important this is to people and how much of an issue it is.

Now, I know that you are concerned about the Chinatown situation. Obviously I don’t know all the facts, but the obvious question is always is there any criminal liability when something like this happens. So, there are several things that I would do if I were DA. One, I would present all of the evidence to a grand jury, and that way all sides could be heard. I can’t tell you that I have a conclusion about whether there is criminal liability because it can be very difficult to prosecute someone criminally in this situation. But I’d certainly want the grand jury to know the law of criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault, reckless endangerment, and ultimately of course we would also know as DAs whether we felt that it was criminal liability. But the reason to present it to a grand jury is, number one, everyone is heard, which is extremely important, and number two, if there is no criminal liability as found by a grand jury, the grand jury has the ability to issue an extensive report to establish the issues in case like this.

AN: We should back up to one thing that you said at the top. You mentioned that you hear a lot about bike messengers endangering pedestrians. Do you hear more complaints about cyclists violating the law than motorists?

LCS: Thus far I've heard more about bikes.

AN: So, what do you hear?

LCS: I’ve heard that there’s a general feeling in a variety of communities that bicyclists just don’t follow any rules. They do what they want and are putting pedestrians in danger. It really hasn’t gone beyond that point but certain communities feel that it’s a major issue. Now what can the DA do about it? Again it depends on the situation. We don’t enforce traffic, we don't give summonses, so part of it would be working with the police department to make certain that issues like that are taken seriously.

Second, if a messenger or delivery person hits somebody the DA has to take that very seriously and do something about it. You have to send a message, as is happening in Nassau County where, for example, if you have that extra drink and you’re stopped you face dire consequences. So, people should realize the Manhattan DA is going to take a great interest in both pedestrian-vehicular accidents and pedestrian-bicyclist accidents.

If there's a death that’s questionable in Manhattan the DA should at least look into it and see whether there's something that can be done about it.

AN: Looking at your platform, you talk about protecting New Yorkers from terrorism, gangs, violent crime and domestic violence but I suspect that, statistically speaking, there’s a better chance that a Manhattanite will be hurt or killed by a stranger in a car than a stranger with a gun. Why don’t we see traffic justice as an issue on your web site?

LCS: I think it’s something I would discuss more in the future because, frankly, I’m just learning more about it over these last few months. My expertise is more in the areas of rape, murder, white collar crime, organized crime and drug-related issues. I’ve never been an expert in traffic-related issues but I’m learning more and I will be reading your blog because, obviously -- the Chinatown incident. Anything like that where kids die and you’re a parent -- I guess you don’t have to be a parent -- but as a parent it’s just the worst thing.

The point is my mind is open. I'm learning something I really didn’t know that much about. But I certainly know about prosecuting criminals and I know what a DA can do in terms of presenting situations to a grand jury. I also know that you have to be a human being and acknowledge that these families must be going through hell so why wouldn’t you meet with them and explain what your office is doing one way or another? Even if you can’t prosecute criminally, explain it to these poor people.

AN: Let me run a specific case by you to get a sense of how you would handle it as DA. Last August, a 31-year-old cyclist named Rasha Shamoon was struck and killed at the intersection of Delancey and Bowery. She was a regular bike commuter, known for being responsible and safety-conscious. Her bike was plastered with reflective tape and she wore a helmet. She was hit by a 21-year-old man driving a borrowed 2008 Ranger Rover who had already racked up six prior traffic convictions and one personal injury case in the three-and-a-half years he'd been legally driving. According to the police report [download it, it'll make your blood boil], the only witnesses interviewed were the driver’s friends, the two passengers in the Range Rover. Based on their testimony that Shamoon had run the red light at this very busy, dangerous intersection the police assigned blame to the cyclist. As Rasha Shamoon lay dying in a hospital bed, the police put the driver back in his Range Rover, he drove home and that was that. DA Morgenthau didn’t have anything to say about it and to the NYPD the case was closed. I spoke with the family and they feel a real injustice was done in the way their daughter’s death was treated by the authorities. I'll just add that while we don't know what really happened out there, as a bike commuter myself, I just find it hard to believe that an experienced cyclist would run the red light at Delancey and Bowery, particularly at night. It seems profoundly wrong for the police to have assigned blame to the victim having only interviewed the passengers of the car that did the killing.

As soon as I hear that people are blaming the victim -- I hate that. Let’s look at the defendant’s conduct.

LCS: Without knowing all the facts, I can’t tell you exactly what I would do. I would certainly want to investigate any death. Certainly whatever reports the NYPD did would be highly relevant, but I would conduct an independent investigation. Some responsible DA in my office would look into it and I’d want a personal report.

If there's a death that’s questionable in Manhattan the DA should at least look into it and see whether there's something that can be done about it. I mean maybe the answer would be there isn’t anything that can be done criminally, but the answer might be “Yes, there is.” Also I'm extremely disturbed by this person’s driving history, as you describe it. At the very minimum maybe there's some reckless driving or reckless endangerment charge. You don’t want someone driving who has five moving violations. That’s an outrage.

AN: It is very difficult to get access to police reports on car crash cases. I can go and see in my neighborhood how many rapes and murders and robberies and car thefts there were -- it’s all in CompStat, it’s all on the precinct web sites…

AN: It often appears that law enforcement doesn’t want to pursue these traffic justice cases because the DAs feel like they’re not going to get a win, the state laws are stacked against the victim to some extent. We wrote about a case where a woman named Florence Cioffi was run down in Lower Manhattan by a guy named George Anderson. He was driving 60 miles an hour in a Mercedes SUV. He fled the scene. He eventually came back and refused to submit to a Breathalyzer test. The woman whom he hit was crossing the street, and she was also found to be intoxicated, so the Manhattan DA’s office chose to plead out the case -- let Anderson off with a charge of DUI and leaving the scene of the accident. Anderson got 16 days in jail, eight weekends. Again, Cioffi's family felt that this was profoundly unjust. What would you do there?

LCS: That seems outrageous on the face of it, but as a lawyer I have to say I really have to know all the factors. You're reading me a newspaper account. Assuming all those facts to be true then I think it sounds outrageous, but you have to know all the facts and you have to know what the applicable law is. So for example there might be situations which shock us where there's no criminal liability, where it’s a genuine accident. But the idea is the Manhattan DA, with something that seems that outrageous, should be doing everything to make certain that if there should be a prosecution, it’s done. It sounds awfully lenient to me, it sounds awfully inappropriate. If she was drunk but didn’t do anything that she shouldn’t have done, and this guy was drunk and killed her, why isn’t that a very serious crime? Why does her being drunk have anything to do with his behavior? So I’d have to know what was her behavior. Did it just turn out that she in fact had a high blood alcohol, I mean that’s totally irrelevant. It actually sounds something like the rape shield law.

AN: Can you remind us what that is?

LCS: Sure. I co-authored the rape shield law. It protects the victim from any sex crime from having to go into details about her prior irrelevant sexual history. So here, for example, are we putting the victim on trial? Why does the fact that the victim was drunk have any impact on how we treat the defendant, unless there's something else she did while drunk that I don’t know about from that article. To me, as soon as I hear that people are blaming the victim -- because that’s what happened in my early days as a prosecutor, especially in sex crimes, it was always blame the victim, put the victim on trial -- I hate that. Let’s look at the defendant’s conduct. What did this person who was driving drunk -- why was he given a deal like that? Maybe there's an answer, maybe there isn’t, but it doesn’t appear to be one on the face of it.

Our ideal candidate
is a talented, experienced writer and reporter who knows the players in
transportation and environmental policymaking on Capitol Hill. The
ability to navigate the intricacies of the legislative process, to dig
beneath the surface, and to track the interests and influences behind
the scene is a must.

Qualifications

While
Streetsblog has a distinct advocacy bent oriented towards reducing
automobile dependence and improving conditions for pedestrians,
cyclists and transit riders, we bring newspaper-quality journalism to
the issues that we cover. Towards that end, we are seeking a
reporter/blogger with previous professional experience to do original
research, interviews, investigation and coverage of events.
Qualifications include:

• Professional journalism
  experience, ideally covering the legislative processes related to
  transportation, planning or environmental policy issues.
• A
  network of existing sources – and an ability to cultivate new sources –
  among the lawmakers, lobbyists, advocates and other players who work on
  federal transportation policy issues.
• Experience with WordPress or other blogging technologies is a plus.
• A personal passion for the issues that Streetsblog covers.

To Apply

Send a resume, cover letter, and relevant clips/links to jobs@streetsblog.org.

Streetsblog
is produced by The Open Planning Project, a New York City-based
non-profit that uses technology to catalyze civic action and social
change. This position is full-time, and the Reporter will work remotely
from Washington, DC.

I
just want to give all of you regular readers a heads up that you’ll
soon be seeing some design and branding changes implemented on
Streetsblog and the Livable Streets Network web sites.

Over the last few months we’ve created Streetsblog San Francisco, the Streetsblog.net national blog network and an entirely new program called Livable Streets Education. Organizationally, we have also begun to re-conceive our group at The Open Planning Project as the Livable Streets Initiative.

So,
it’s finally time for our graphic design and user interface to catch up
with these changes.  We’re swapping out our
current header with the design you see above. We hope the new design
will make our various sites a bit more cohesive, accessible and easier
to navigate. As always, we trust that you will let us know what you
think.

Rather than digging in to where the federal money is actually going and what the impact of that might be on everyday Americans, the cable nets are obsessed with the question of how many Republicans might vote for the bill and what Obama needs to do to woo them.

If there are any CNN producers paying attention, here's a suggestion: Get Angela Glover Blackwell in front of a camera, would ya? Blackwell, the founder and chief executive of Oakland-based PolicyLink has a letter in this morning's New York Times that really nails some important talking points that the American people need to be hearing right now:

To the Editor:

Your editorial about the stimulus package’s lack of attention to the concerns of low-income Americans (“Sins of Omission: The Forgotten Poor,” Feb. 2) was right on target. Though the package does include expansion of food stamps and jobless benefits, social services alone will not meet the needs of the poor.

The huge infrastructure spending already included in the package could easily be retargeted to dramatically improve the lives of millions of low-income Americans and their communities. By expanding mass transit and providing operating funds for cash-strapped transit agencies, we can create and save thousands of jobs and connect residents to economic opportunity throughout their region.

By using tax incentives to lure grocery stores to poor neighborhoods, we can create long-term retail jobs and ensure much-needed access to healthy food. By investing in successful job training programs, we can build a vibrant 21st-century work force.

The stimulus package provides a once-in-a-generation chance to make good on America’s promise of equal opportunity for all. Smarter social and infrastructure spending is vital to making that promise a reality.

Angela Glover Blackwell

After interviewing many highly qualified candidates during last month's RailVolution conference, we've hired Bryan Goebel as the site's editor and Matthew Roth as full-time reporter. Bryan is a veteran journalist, radio reporter and active San Francisco Bicycle Coalition member. Matthew recently moved to the Bay Area from New York City where he worked for Transportation Alternatives as director of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign and spearheaded efforts to curb government employee parking abuse. In addition to support and overhead provided by TOPP, San Francisco Streetsblog will be funded by a generous donation from Jonathan Weiner, a bike-commuting, Muni-riding software entrepreneur and a grant from the Wallace Global Fund.

Bryan Goebel

It's not all bad news though. San Francisco has launched what is likely to be the nation's most innovative, high-tech, congestion-busting parking reform program. This summer's Sunday Streets event (which got the green light after advocates showed Mayor Gavin Newsom our Ciclovia Streetfilm) was a popular success. And the city has hired Danish urban designer Jan Gehl to start rethinking San Francisco's streets and public spaces. Newsom's administration is saying lots of the right things lately. Wade Crowfoot, the mayor's director of climate protection initiatives, really seems to get it when it comes to livable streets. Yet, many San Francisco advocates still question whether Newsom, who has his eye on the governor's office, is more interested in results or headlines. In private, they often refer to him as "Mayor Press Release." It's clear to me that San Francisco could really use the daily focus on transportation policy, the intelligent online discussion forum, and the occasional kick in the pants that Streetsblog has been known to deliver. We look forward to working there.

Matthew Roth

But let's also be clear about our place in all of this: Streetsblog isn't just going to roll in to town sprinkling new bus rapid transit lines, bike lanes and a car-free Market Street in its wake. Sure, we hope to break some big stories and play an important role, but as it has been in New York City, Streetsblog is ultimately only as effective as the advocacy community it is part of. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, with its 10,000 members (nearly twice as many members as Transportation Alternatives in a city one-tenth the size of New York) is one of San Francisco's most powerful political organizations. Tom Radulovich at Livable City has been successful in pushing an innovative parking reform agenda among other important issues. Walk San Francisco is keeping an eye on pedestrians. And groups like SPUR and TranForm are addressing the regional transportation and planning issues. Streetsblog will be covering the work of all of these organizations and providing an online forum for their members to discuss the issues.

We're also well aware that we're not the only blog in town. The Bay Area is blessed with a number of outstanding transportation blogs: Chris Carlsson's Nowtopian, Transbay Blog, San Francisco Bike Blog, The N-Judah Chronicles and The Overhead Wire are some of my favorites. We look forward to joining their blogrolls and making San Francisco a better city for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders.

Do you want to see a Streetsblog in your city? Let us know. And if you've got any story ideas for Bryan and Matthew to cover, shoot them an e-mail.

I don't think "Talk of the Nation" is available on WNYC but you should be able to tune in via the Internet. They'll be taking callers as well.

After the jump, you'll find last week's Wall Street Journal article on Anderson and his law suit. And here, to give you a sense of where Anderson is coming from, is a choice quote from his blog:

Riding a bike in SF -- or any American city -- will never really be "a safe, attractive option," regardless of the miles of bike lanes that are eventually painted on city streets. Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so.

It's amazing that the court and 1970s-era environmental regulations have given this local gadfly such power and legitimacy, but there you have it. If you were going on national radio with Rob Anderson, what points would you try to hit?

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking.

San Francisco can't even install new bike racks.

Cyclists say the irony is killing them -- literally. At least four bikers have died and hundreds more have been injured in San Francisco since mid-2006, when Mr. Anderson helped convince a judge to halt implementation of a massive pro-bike plan.(It's unclear whether the plan's execution could have prevented the accidents.) In the past year, bike advocates have demonstrated outside City Hall, pushed the city to challenge the plan's freeze in court and proposed putting the whole mess to local voters. Nothing worked.

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest.

Mr. Anderson's fight underscores the tensions that can circulate as urban cycling, bolstered by environmental awareness and high gasoline prices, takes off across the U.S. New York City, where the number of commuter cyclists is estimated to have jumped 77% between 2000 and 2007, is adding new bike lanes despite some motorist backlash. Chicago recently elected to kick cars off stretches of big roads on two Sundays this year.

Famously progressive, San Francisco is known for being one of the most pro-bike cities in the U.S., offering more than 200 miles of lanes and requiring that big garages offer bike parking. It is also known for characters like Mr. Anderson.

A tall, serious man with a grizzled gray beard, Mr. Anderson spent 13 months in a California federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. He later penned pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a muckraking Northern California weekly owned by his brother that's known for its savage prose and pranks.

Running for Office

In 1995, Mr. Anderson moved to San Francisco. Working odd jobs, he twice ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, pledging to tackle homelessness and the city's "tacit PC ideology." He got 332 of 34,955 votes in 2004, his second and best try.

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date.

Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10% of the city's total trips by 2010.

The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.' "

Going to Court

In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague.

Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

Slow Pedaling

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review.

Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. "Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post.

"In case anyone doubted that you were a wingnut, this statement pretty much sums things up!" one commenter retorted.

Mr. Anderson is running for supervisor again this November -- around the time the city will unveil the first draft of its bike-plan environmental review. He's already pondering a challenge of the review.

I was pretty sure that New York City had San Francisco beat for this year's Park(ing) Day, what, with the children's reading hour and the on-street gymnasium in Brooklyn; Staten Island and Queens getting in on the act; and German tourists frolicking on the sod in front of the MoMA (all captured by StreetFilms, of course). Then I saw photos of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome admiring Rebar Group's Parkcycle -- literally, a pedal-powered park on wheels -- and I realized that we had been foiled again. Back to the drawing board New York City Park(ing) fans. We've got 12 months to come up with something better than this...

Today is International Park(ing) Day, the day when urban dwellers all around the world reclaim on-street parking spaces for purposes more creative and life-affirming than private motor vehicle storage. If you found a bunch of kids playing in an available local parking spot on a grassy, sod carpet, that's why.

Addendum: Transportation Alternatives organized New York City's first Park(ing) event in October 2005. And while Oklahoma City residents staged a similar event in 1935 to protest the introduction of the first parking meters, the generally acknowledged first modern Park(ing) squat took place in Oxford, England in 2003 when a family installed a complete living room in the middle of a residential street and watched Wimbledon on the telly. That particular event ended after an angry local motorist ran his car into their sideboard.

This year, Park(ing) Day started off as a one-off art project in San Francisco just two years ago and has emerged as a widespread grassroots movement to take back city streets from the automobile. There will 50 Park(ing) events in San Francisco, 28 in New York City and scores more in cities all around the world. Streetsblog is looking for photos of Park(ing) events around the city. Please send them to tips@streetsblog.org.

Here's where Park(ing) events are planned in the five boroughs:

• High Bridge Area
• Southern Blvd. & E. 163rd St.

• Seventh Av. & 1st St.
• Bedford Av. bet. N. 4th & 7th Sts.
• Carlton & DeKalb Aves.
• Cortelyou Rd.
• Myrtle Av. bet. Washington & Waverly Aves.

• Columbus Av. bet. 83rd & 84th Sts.
• Rockefeller Plaza
• Times Square
• Lincoln Center
• Grand Central Terminal
• Astor Place
• 1st St. & First Av.
• Penn Station
• Stuyvesant
• 9th St. & Third Av.
• Houston St. bet. Second & Third Aves.
• Broadway bet. 113th & 114th Sts.
• Midtown TBA
• 563 Columbus Av. (at 87th St.)
• Seventh Av. bet. 24th & 26th Sts.
• Seventh Av. & Charles St.

• Western Jackson Heights
• TBA in Astoria

• Everything Goes Book Cafe in Tompkinsville
• 3 Central Av. near Library

Here is another clever video from San Francisco; this one chronicles the case of the missing bike lane. I think it is safe to say that gas stations and bike lanes don't mix.

Depressed about the direction Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan is heading? Cheer yourself up by starting to plan for Park(ing) Day 2007. Friday, September 21 is the day when urban dwellers the world over pop quarters into parking meters and take over on-street spaces, temporarily transforming them into miniature parks, playgrounds, cafés and community spaces.

San Francisco is throwing down the gauntlet this year with the construction of the human-powered Parkcycle, above.

Streetsblog is looking for some New York City Park(ers) to step up and meet the challenge by building a parking space-sized studio apartment on wheels complete with Viking range, plasma television and plumbing. Take advantage of the cheapest rent in town -- on-street parking space.

Park(ing) Day San Francisco

New York City Streets Renaissance Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson happened to be in San Francisco on Thursday during International Park(ing) Day. Organized by an art collective called Rebar Group, the idea behind Park(ing) is to reclaim curbside automobile parking spaces by temporarily transforming them into grassy parkland complete with benches, tables, chairs, trees, sandy beaches, and eclectic art installations. One park(ing) spot even offered a self-serve lemonade stand.

In San Francisco over two dozen parking spots were "liberated" including Mayor Gavin Newsome's space in front of City Hall. A number of other cities around the U.S. also participated in Park(ing) day, including New York City where a curbside space on 8th Avenue near 30th Street was, for a few hours, used for something other than automobile storage.

If you have links to Park(ing) events in other cities, please send them along.