Noah Kazis

NYC DOT is studying how to speed buses across the car-clogged Queensboro Bridge, and data the agency collected over the summer [PDF] show just how great the need is. Buses are crawling and riders are fed up. Relieving the bottleneck for riders could make transit a far more attractive option for Queens residents. One potential solution -- adding dedicated bus lanes to the bridge and its approaches -- is a PlaNYC promise waiting to be fulfilled.

Two weekends ago, construction on New Jersey's most important transit project was called to a temporary stop by Governor Chris Christie. He declared a thirty-day review period for the ARC tunnel project, which would build a new rail tunnel below the Hudson and double commuter rail capacity from New Jersey. Many worry the review is just a prelude to axing the $8.7 billion project altogether and using the money saved to patch up New Jersey's Transportation Trust Fund for a couple of years.

One of Manhattan's premier public spaces is now safer, roomier, and livelier. DOT officially opened its improvements to the Union Square area today, including new pedestrian plazas and a continuation of the Broadway bike lane into a contraflow lane on the north side of the square.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Central Park Conservancy head Douglas Blonsky wants his park to get a lot more bike-friendly, he revealed at a meeting of Manhattan's Community Board 7's parks committee last night. Not only is he working to create shared use paths that would allow cyclists to cross the park east-west safely and legally, he repeatedly announced his support for removing vehicular traffic from Central Park entirely.

The preliminary version of this year's Mayor's Management Report is out and once again, the NYPD is grading itself on all the wrong things when it comes to street safety. The MMR is supposed to supply the benchmarks and metrics for success that data-driven government depends on. It's released every year, as required by the City Charter, to serve as "a public report card on City services affecting the lives of New Yorkers." But the stats supplied by NYPD offer no insight into how effective its traffic enforcement has been.

Metro-North service in and out of Manhattan is suspended due to a large fire under the 138th Street Bridge, on the Manhattan side. According to NY1, the sound of an explosion was heard before the fire started, but no train cars were involved in the fire. A photo on Gothamist shows that the huge plumes of smoke are easily visible from Midtown, four miles away. It is not yet clear when Metro-North service will be reinstated.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Park(ing) Day keeps getting bigger every year. Since starting in 2005, it has grown each year; last year 700 parks were set up in 140 cities on all six continents. This year, it might be even bigger.

With New York City in the midst of a wholesale rethinking of its more than 500 miles of waterfront, the Department of City Planning recently released a draft of its new comprehensive waterfront plan, Vision 2020. That plan lays out both broad citywide objectives, such as a commitment to building borough-wide greenways across the city, and a long list of site-specific recommendations.