Jason Varone

Yesterday afternoon the Dept. of Transportation launched a new and improved web site loaded with features designed to make information more available to the public. Now you can use the DOT's site not only to watch traffic cams and sign up for e-news updates, but also to request different types of permits, report potholes, file complaints about newsracks, report damaged bicycle racks (and our favorite, request bicycle racks).

Join Transportation Alternatives and the Citizens Committee for NYC at Everything Goes Book Café in St. George on Staten Island for a screening of Contested Streets, a one-hour documentary about New York's traffic crisis and how congestion pricing can solve it.

This training video was a collaboration between the San Francisco Police Department and the SF Bicycle Coalition. The video is intended to increase police officers' awareness of cyclists' rights and responsibilities, and it is really effective. Here in New York, cyclists who complain of motorist intimidation and assault are often brushed off by the police. Perhaps the NYPD needs an instructional video like this one to help them understand the laws that relate to bicycling.

Transportation Alternatives has teamed up with cycling advocates from Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle to issue the Urban Transportation Report Card (PDF), which rates these cities' progress on greening their transportation systems. The report notes that transportation accounts for 20-60% of carbon emissions in major U.S. cities, so it is very encouraging that in each city the most significant growth occurred in bicycling, with Chicago registering an 80% increase in cyclists from 1990-2000.

Pedicabs took to the streets yesterday to protest the City's new regulations on New York's greenest for-hire transportation industry. In a press release, The Green Transport Association says that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn "dealt pedicabs a crushing blow capping our number at 325 city-wide" -- a reported 35 percent reduction in the pedicab workforce:

A tipster sent us these photos of the City's new indoor bicycle parking facility at 280 Broadway. A couple of months ago cyclists who work for the City suddenly found themselves and their bikes turned away from their office buildings, leaving few options aside from locking up to street signs and unprotected outdoor racks. This new facility, free to any City employee with a valid ID, should help commuters who work near City Hall.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz

Adam J. Schwartz, who has a really interesting looking exhibit up at the Brooklyn History Society called Up From Flames, sends along this rather intense photo of a bike crash in Bushwick. As one commenter noted after seeing the photo, "Looks like a faulty bicycle."