Noah Kazis

Upper West Side residents can ride with a new sense of safety and comfort on the recently installed Columbus Avenue protected bike lane, but between 81st and 82nd Streets, the bike lane has been consistently blocked by a minivan owned by Quality Florist, a local business located on that block.

With two days until the City Planning Commission votes on the parking-heavy Riverside Center mega-project, the commissioners had a chance yesterday to ask any final questions about the project before the vote. As it happened, they didn't bring up parking at that section of the meeting, but parking was a hot topic elsewhere on the commission's agenda, including a pair of requests for special permits to build more parking below 60th Street.

The City Planning Commission is likely to approve a 1,260-space garage for the Riverside Center mega-development at its meeting this Wednesday, according to multiple sources. That's space for hundreds more cars -- causing more congestion and more pollution -- than requested by the Upper West Side's representatives. It's yet another case where the commission and planning chair Amanda Burden have disregarded the sustainability goals of PlaNYC when shaping parking policy.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

With November 2 just 11 days away, it's probably time to concede that Andrew Cuomo won't offer any constructive ideas for solving the state's transit funding crisis before election day. After avoiding taking any stands while outlining his infrastructure plan, Cuomo happily joined in the gubernatorial debate's MTA-bashfest, trotting out the old and discredited "two sets of books" line. Yesterday, the former HUD Secretary released his "urban agenda," in which the only item on transit calls, banally, for limiting service cuts if possible.

New Yorkers think their city is very livable, a new survey conducted by the Municipal Art Society shows, but livability isn't equitably distributed across the five boroughs. To make the city truly livable, said panelists today at an MAS conference, New York needs to figure out how to bring its best features to all neighborhoods.

A fantastic new visualization of 16 bike-share systems around the world lets you see how people are using public bikes from London to Melbourne. You can watch animated graphics, for example, of bikes getting picked up in one part of town and dropped off in another during rush hour. The site, created by Oliver O'Brien, a researcher at University College London, also lets you compare bike-share usage from city to city.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Curious about exactly why the MTA decided to raise the price of the 30-day MetroCard but leave the base fare where it was at $2.25? We got our hands on the MTA's demographic information about who uses each fare payment method on New York City Transit.

The complete list of TIGER II grants has been released by U.S. DOT today, after members of Congress revealed many winners last week. In keeping with the department's livability goals, the list is filled with transit projects (especially streetcar lines), efforts to bolster the country's non-trucking freight network, and fix-it-first projects aimed at deteriorating roads and bridges.