Upper West Side

Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7's parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the traffic signals in the park, it's not clear how to move forward. Some bright news is on the horizon for cyclists hoping to use Central Park for transportation, however: Two east-west routes through the northern end of the park should open this summer.

Since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has promised to take his approach to street redesigns, first put into place by the Columbus Avenue working group, borough-wide, Streetsblog decided to check in with him to see just what this process would look like.

The Upper West Side is offering the city a lesson in what a mature and constructive response to bike lane growing pains looks like.

The parks committee of Manhattan Community Board 7 restated its support for shared bike/pedestrian paths through Riverside Park and Central Park last night. In Central Park, the shared paths would create new east-west routes through the park, while in Riverside, the community board is fighting against the Parks Department's surprise imposition of dismount signs on what was once a part of the greenway system.

We talk a lot about windshield perspective on Streetsblog, so with his latest salvo against safer cycling and walking, CBS 2's Tony Aiello has done most of the work for us.

A taxi driver plowed onto the sidewalk at the corner of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue this morning, knocking into a signpole marking a stop for the crosstown bus. Lisa Sladkus of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance was there and snapped this picture.

Council Member Gale Brewer has struck a deal on the Riverside Center mega-development, sending the 2,500-apartment project through two City Council committees and on a track to final approval. The deal increases the number of parking spaces allowed at Riverside Center to 1,500, far more than the community board or even the City Planning Commission had approved.

Even by its own math, the City Planning Commission seems to have approved 430 parking spots too many at Riverside Center, the new development slated to straddle 60th Street on the far West Side.

After a chaotic committee meeting Monday, Manhattan Community Board 7 was able to discuss the implementation of the Columbus Avenue protected bike lane far more productively at its full meeting Tuesday night, according to people who attended. The discussion of the new street design may lead to the creation of a community board task force charged with helping Columbus Avenue merchants work out their delivery issues.