Noah Kazis

How the Holiday Blizzard Paralyzed NYC (NYT, News) Plowing Slowed By Abandoned Vehicles… (NYT 1, 2) …But Post, David Greenfield Blast Bloomberg For Clearing Bike Lanes (Post 1, 2, Yeshiva World News) Tri-State’s Welcome Letter to Cuomo: Reform NYS DOT, Focus on Buses (MTR) NY1‘s New Yorker Of The Year: Janette Sadik-Khan New Yorkers Now Pay More For Transportation, From … Continued

Significantly more New Yorkers are counting on trains and buses to get to work than at the beginning of the decade, according to new information from the U.S. Census. The data confirms the trend toward transit identified in NYC DOT's Sustainable Streets Index and offers a fascinating portrait of how New Yorkers' commute habits have changed in the last 10 years. Streetsblog's analysis shows that commuters are shifting away from the automobile across the state.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The fight for scarce street space is always fierce in New York City, and as DOT's efforts to install bike and bus lanes across the city have revealed, the most contested zone of all is probably the curbside. On commercial streets, drivers can't get enough of the underpriced on-street parking while businesses want curbside access to load and unload deliveries. The result is rampant double-parking, cruising, and ultimately congestion -- slowing down buses and creating more dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. In some cases, local displeasure about curbside dysfunction manifests itself as opposition to seemingly unrelated livable streets improvements, like the Fifth Avenue bike lane in Park Slope.

Last week Streetsblog sat down with David Bragdon, the new head of the city's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, to talk about next year's update of PlaNYC. A new version of the city's sustainability plan is set to be released on Earth Day, 2011 (that's April 22), revising the 2007 roadmap for a city that prioritizes transit, biking, and walking.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

New York State might be home to more transit riders than any other state, but when it comes to the transportation policies on the books, we don't look quite so green.

Back in August, Mayor Bloomberg appointed David Bragdon to succeed Rohit Aggarwala as head of the city's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. At the time, Bragdon was the elected leader of Portland's regional government, Metro, and an influential decision maker in that region's famously progressive planning. Sustainable transportation advocates on both coasts said New York was lucky to get him.

More headlines from Streetsblog Capitol Hill