Eyes on the Street

"Pull-in angle parking" on 97th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.

2008 quickly bring good news for commuters in Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens. Eric Chang of Transportation Alternatives' Queens Committee snapped these photos of the new covered bike shelter that was just installed at the Vernon Blvd /Jackson Avenue station on the 7 line in Long Island City.  The third photo is from Fort Greene where Gil Ronen (pictured) along with T.A. and Green Fort Greene & Clinton Hill were instrumental in bringing over 70 new CityRacks to the historic Brooklyn neighborhood.

A Streetsblog tipster snapped this photo yesterday afternoon. Note the Starsky & Hutch-style siren on the dashboard of the SUV hanging off the back of that tow truck. The photographer reports that NYPD tow trucks have been racking up the hours in December clearing the streets of Chinatown, and as you can see in the photo above, they are finally "towing their own".

Washington Heights. Sunday, December 16.

 Photo: Lars Klove, Sixth Avenue and 13th Street, Manhattan.

Blinding headlights make cycling difficult on a mile-long uptown stretch of the Hudson River Greenway.

It looks like 5th Precinct Commanding Officer Gin Yee, the Sheriff of Chinatown, is laying down the law once again. A Streetsblog tipster spotted these tow trucks as they were removing government placard abusers from their illegal parking spots in Chinatown. While it's refreshing to see the police "towing their own," the tipster notes that as soon as the trucks pulled away a new group of placard abusing government employees swooped in to claim the empty parking spaces.

This scene was photographed by Flickr photographer BicyclesOnly on Saturday. Read his note below. Hopefully someone will ask members of Manhattan Community Board 8's transportation committee if this sort of car crash meets their rigorous aesthetic standards. Last January, CB8 rejected a proposal to physically protect Park Avenue's pedestrian refuge areas because they didn't think bollards, barriers or planters could be made to look pretty enough. Streetsblog readers will also remember CB8's transportation committee as the group that tried to kill DOT's crosstown bike route plan for the Upper East Side last summer. It looks like CB8 is still trying to kill it. The 91st Street bike lane is on the agenda of their December 10 meeting: 

Streetsblog reader Dave Goldberg sends along a camera phone photo of the freshly striped Bleecker Street bike lane, shot between LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street. Goldberg notes: