Sarah Goodyear

Mayor Leads Times Square Rally for Congestion Plan (NYT, Post, Daily News) RELATED: Congestion Pricing Campaign Steps Up (NY Sun) Straphangers on 7 Get Chance to Rate the Ride (Daily News) Second Ave. Subway Plan Adjusted for Food Emporium (NY Sun) McDonald’s in UK to Use Frying Oil for Fuel (Greenbiz) China Rejects Binding Emissions … Continued

The debate is over, and as of today the Ninth St. bike lanes are swiftly becoming a reality.

A bike-share station in Lyon, France

Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:

The Village Voice took a trip down lower Broadway earlier this week to see how smoothly the new bus lanes were flowing. The answer? Despite reports of stepped-up enforcement, change is not coming quickly to the traffic culture of Lower Manhattan -- as you can see from the picture at right, which shows a bus trying to lay claim to a spot in the "buses-only" lane.

Over on the New York Times's City Room blog, Sewell Chan reports on opposition to the July 8 closing of the West 72nd St. exit ramp from the West Side Highway, a move that has been fought in court for years by neighborhood activists. The off-ramp is being demolished at the request of the Extell Development Company, which is constructing the massive Riverside South residential complex, to enable the extension of Riverside Boulevard, the complex's main street. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has tried to make the case that poses a security risk, issuing a statement that said, in part:

Congestion-Pricing Campaign Focuses on Asthma (Daily News) City Prepares to Regulate Pedicabs (City Room/NYT) Nuclear Expansion Is a Pipe Dream, Says Report (Guardian) Truck Parking Lot in Brooklyn Driven Out (Daily News) New Bus Shelters Vandalized (Gowanus Lounge) Personal Traffic Alerts, with Custom Data (NYT) China Urged Omitting Pollution-Death Figures (NYT) Chrysler Signs China Manufacturing … Continued

Bumpy Start for Bway Bus-Only Lanes (Daily News) New Jobs for NYC Transit Officials (Daily News) Use Congestion Fees for 2nd Ave. Subway (NYT, Letters) Manhattanites Would Pay on Way Out (NYT) Planners Aim to Untangle Grand Army Plaza Knot (Brooklyn Paper) Blackout Insurance: Solar City Rooftops (City Limits) Placard Parking Plague on Pierrepont (Brooklyn … Continued

An article in Sunday's New York Times discussed the decline of stickball and other games on city streets:

This eye-opening map from the Sightline Institute's blog uses US Department of Energy figures to demonstrate how individual states stack up against nations from around the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from energy use. The figures are especially astonishing when you look at the population comparisons (which can be found in spreadsheet form here). Just a couple of examples: Arizona, with 5.6 million residents, produces comparable emissions to Nigeria, with 122.8 million. And 19.2 New Yorkers manage to produce as much as 68.1 million Turks. Overall the map represents a comparison of fewer than 300 million Americans to more than 1.5 billion people in the other nations listed.