Noah Kazis

Here at 113th and Broadway, the curb is normally used to house an empty car. After being transformed by a team of Columbia planning students, however, it could provide a downright luxurious living space for normally-cramped students. The makeshift dorm room had two walls, a TV and cabinet space, a four-poster bed and, on the table, a copy of The High Cost of Free Parking.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Get ready to reclaim your curb tomorrow. It's Park(ing) Day, the annual celebration of streets as public spaces. This year, 51 parking spaces in the five boroughs will be liberated from the chore of private car storage and given over to the full creativity of New Yorkers. Here are a few choice concepts:

A hearing on the Riverside Center mega-development yesterday revealed a popular hunger for a more walkable West Side and perhaps some interest from the City Planning Commission in the same. Extell Development is looking to build a housing and retail complex, including 1,800 parking spaces, on this waterfront site equivalent in size to two Manhattan blocks. Public testimony called for a slew of urban design improvements to their plan, including reducing the amount of off-street parking, integrating the site with the surrounding streetscape, and working towards burying the elevated Miller Highway.

This has been a deadly week for New York City pedestrians, with three New Yorkers losing their lives in traffic collisions in three days, and another in critical condition.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Select Bus Service remains on track to debut on October 10, confirmed NYC DOT and the MTA at a meeting of the project's Community Advisory Committee last night. Bus service improvements along the corridor are as crucial as ever and will be bolstered by camera enforcement, which DOT announced would be in effect starting in November. The changes that take effect in 25 days, however, won't be the full complete streets package originally promised. Above 34th Street, bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands were unceremoniously stripped from the plan some time this spring.

The combination of the Bicycle Access to Garages law and the market's invisible hand are bringing cheap bike parking to locations across Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. As of last month, every garage operated by Edison ParkFast, one of the largest parking companies in the city, is offering bike parking at the rate of $1 per day or $20 per month.

Outside Cooper Union yesterday evening, the sidewalks were packed with news cameras, security squads, political campaigners and activists pressing passersby with their plans for the MTA. Inside, the transit authority held the first of ten mandated public hearings on its proposed fare and toll hikes. Though attendance was sparse, the citizens who lined up to speak in all but unanimous opposition to the fare hike spared no venom for whichever target they chose, the MTA or the state government.

A driver hit and killed a three-year-old child in Queens at around 4 p.m. today, according to the NYPD. Streetsblog first learned of the fatal collision via a Twitter report which said the child was struck at the intersection of 89th Road and 211th Street in Hollis. The NYPD's public information department can't confirm that information or any other details yet.