Noah Kazis

We wrote yesterday about the expansion of the Park Smart pilot in Park Slope, but that's not the only neighborhood where the program is on the move. As of June, the Upper East Side became the third neighborhood to gain a Park Smart pilot [PDF]. Like a lot of things on the Upper East Side, peak hour on-street parking there is now the most expensive in the city. 

As cities across the United States open new bike-sharing systems this year, New York City's commitment to launching bike-share remains cloudy. On the semi-independent Roosevelt Island, however, momentum is building to launch a small bike-sharing system with or without the rest of New York.

They call it No-Park Slope for a reason: At many times of day, motorists looking for a legit spot in this Brooklyn neighborhood wind up cruising the streets endlessly in frustration. Because on-street parking spaces are some of the cheapest real estate in the city, drivers snap up the bargain and create parking shortages, leading to excess traffic and double-parking. In the end, everyone pays for the cheap price of parking: motorists who lose time, pedestrians and cyclists endangered by excessive traffic and double-parking, and bus riders delayed by congestion. Now it looks like there's some relief in sight.

LIRR Running at Two-Thirds Capacity, Possibly for Days to Come (Post)  While NJ Transit and Amtrak Were Delayed for Hours Yesterday (City Room) …And Daily News Points the Finger Right at Underfunding of Transit Challenger Doug Biviano Blasts Assm. Joan Millman Over Transit Cuts (Bklyn Paper)  MTR Wraps Up the Year in Albany Ben Kabak: … Continued

Court Upholds Environmental Review, Traffic Analysis for Willets Point Megaproject (City Room) After Stroke or Seizure, Livery Cab Driver Kills Mother of Five on Staten Island (Post, News) Hardly Bike Bedlam: Summer Streets Gives Kids Freedom to Ride Their Bike (News)  Ed Koch Declares Support For Pedestrian Plazas (Youtube) Williamsburg’s Lock-Gluing “Bike Crusader” Speaks in Brooklyn … Continued

One of the biggest planning stories of the last decade is undoubtedly the opening of the New York City waterfront to the public. Across much of the city, however, the automobile still occupies the prime waterfront spaces. 

A proposed amendment to the City Charter could help free certain neighborhoods from the grip of truck traffic and other unhealthy side effects of public facilities.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A new report written by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute's Todd Litman for the American Public Transit Association [PDF], the trade organization for the nation's transit agencies, reminds us that one of the most valuable benefits of transit is to our health. Summarizing the state of research in the field, "Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits" lays out the basic fact that increasing transit use is an easy way of preventing thousands of unnecessary deaths each year. 

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill