Streetsblog San Francisco

The L.A. StreetSummit kicked off last night with a rousing keynote address and slide show by the groundbreaking New York City DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn. Three levels of an Occidental College auditorium were packed with students, bike advocates from around the county, and others interested in Livable Streets to hear Sadik-Kahn talk about the changes that have come to New York City's streets under her and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's leadership in the past three years.

Sadik-Khan's lecture was continually interrupted by cheers and even gasps of astonishment for the "before" and "after" pictures of the now car-free pedestrian plaza in Times Square and Herald Square.

One thing that you could palpably feel from the NYCDOT boss was the sense of pride in how her department has changed the way people think about transportation and even about city government: The speech was peppered with New York City promos, my favorite of which came when she pointed out that "New Yorkers have one-third of the carbon footprint of the average American. If you're really serious about saving the planet, you should move to New York City," she said.

Addressing a packed house in Washington last night, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, posed a Zen-like ‘universalist cyclist question’.

"How many people, right now," he asked, "are stuck in traffic on their way to ride a stationary bike in a health club?"

The quip got a big laugh. But at yesterday’s launch of Cities for Cycling,
a new project spearheaded by the National Association of City
Transportation Officials (NACTO), Blumenauer urged fellow cyclists to
consider their cause "serious business."

The mission of C4C,
as outlined by NACTO President Janette Sadik-Khan, is to collect and
share best practices for the introduction of local bike lanes and other
cycling infrastructure — the type of strategies that have succeeded in
cities but not yet been added to the Federal Highway Administration’s
traffic control manual, also known as the MUTCD.

"Some
of the most celebrated and popular [bike] improvements are not even in
the national guidelines," Sadik-Khan explained, adding that C4C
ultimately aims to help develop "a new MUTCD, designed for cities, not
highways."

The C4C kickoff,
held in the shadow of the Capitol and sponsored by the Brookings
Institution, was imbued with a sense of hope for future federal and
local policies to encourage bicycling expansion. The Obama
administration had a strong presence in the room, including Federal
Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, befitting its public push for more sustainable community development.

Still,
Blumenauer and Sadik-Khan emphasized that bolstering the uneven federal
commitment to bicycling, and its urban benefits in particular, would
require hard work and political organizing on the part of bike
advocates.

Read more…

This year the New York City Department of Transportation measured a 26 percent jump in commuter cycling. Coming on the heels of 2008's unprecedented 35 percent growth, that puts the total two-year increase at a whopping 66 percent.

Much of the growth in cycling can be attributed to the installation of 200 miles of bike routes in the past three years, including innovative facilities like the cycletracks on Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, which separate car traffic from cyclists. Safer streets get more people to ride, who encourage their friends to ride, and more riders on the road means cyclists are more visible and safer. The virtuous circle is in effect here in New York.

With triple the number of cyclists on the road since 2000, we thought now would be a good time to get a reality check from riders: How's it going out there? Overwhelmingly, folks we interviewed said it is getting quite crowded on New York's streets and bridges. Good thing bikes aren't space hogs!

When we wrote about the trial pedestrian plaza on 17th Street and Market Street that DPW expects to start this May, the story generated numerous doubts about how the city would create a successful public space out of a busy street abutting a gas station. 

As commenter Josh said, "This truly is a ridiculous idea! Why would anyone want to "enjoy" a small patch of cemented area that's filled with salvage yard leftovers while inhaling unhealthy fumes from not only the cars on the busy streets that surround the designated area but by the gas station?"

Though we can't make guarantees on a pilot project that hasn't been built, we thought we'd highlight some of New York City's temporary plazas and street treatments as best practice analogs, knowing our DPW and MTA are also looking to the Big Crabapple for inspiration. 

DPW Director Ed Reiskin explained to Streetsblog by email that his goal is to keep expenses low. "As for cost, it should be minimal, since materials cost should be close to zero," he said.  "There will be some labor cost to us and MTA to put up signs, transport and place materials, and install any pavement treatments and cuts."

In New York, even the "salvage yard leftovers" have become very nice public amenities.

Read more...

With San Francisco about to embark on its first pilot street closure, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit this conversation with the Open Planning Project's Executive Director, Mark Gorton, and New York City's Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan, who has taken on the challenge of transforming NYC streets in a series of groundbreaking pilot projects. 

As Clarence Eckerson Jr. noted in the original post last October, she and her staff have done the projects quickly with innovative concepts, thinking outside the box and drawing on successful street designs from around the world to come up with a NYC model that looks like it may catch on in San Francisco.

In this Streetfilms interview, she highlights what her department has achieved in a very short period of time, including a physically-separated bike lane on Ninth Avenue, multiple pedestrian plazas (including Madison Square and Broadway Boulevard), new efforts to boost efficiency and speeds on some bus routes, and the city's phenomenally successful, Ciclovia-style street closure "Summer Streets."