Special Reports
Streetsblog Basics
Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project: Ten Years On
March 1996: Residents in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Boerum Hill are tired of their streets absorbing overflow from the nearby Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Neighborhood groups have tried repeatedly to convince the City to protect the neighborhoods from rush hour through traffic. So far, the City has done nothing but promise further study. DOT officials have even criticized residents for not wanting to serve as doormats for Manhattan-bound motorists. Residents are now considering civil disobedience to protect their safety and quality of life....
October 26, 2006
DOT Announces Five Bus Rapid Transit Corridors
Sketches from an internal BRT Study depicting the three general types of stations: A) Major Station: Includes extended canopy with windscreens and seating. Icon and full platform pavement treatment. B) Standard Station: Shelter with Icon and full platform pavement treatment. C) Minimum Station: For locations with narrow sidewalks: Icon and platform edge strip only. Bigger image here.
October 24, 2006
Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway: Important Meeting Tonight
The Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway Inititiave is one of the most inspiring and visionary development projects going in New York City right now. The project is very grassroots. Over ten years ago, three Brooklyn residents, Brian McCormick, Milton Puryear and Meg Fellerath got it in their heads that Brooklyn's waterfront should have a bike path and linear park just as good as the popular Hudson River Greenway in Manhattan (see the rendering of Columbia Street at right).
October 12, 2006
Streetfilms: Park(ing) Day San Francisco
Park(ing) Day San FranciscoA Clarence Eckerson StreetfilmRunning time: 6:51 - 22.05 MB, QuickTime
September 25, 2006
Bloomberg Sustainability Announcement
As we reported this morning, Mayor Bloomberg is in California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a major policy announcement on a major, long-term, environmental sustainability initiative. The key components of the Mayor's plan include:
September 21, 2006
Parking it in Midtown
Today is International Park(ing) Day. Also known as a "parking squat," Park(ing) is a quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings. Here is how Park(ing) Day is being celebrated this morning in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street:
September 21, 2006
Dead Ball
Whatever you think of the idea of a highrise cluster in Downtown Brooklyn, you have to worry that the sponsors of the Atlantic Yards project suggest that creating jobs and housing justifies the kind of planning that discourages street life. Among the lowlights of the marathon August 23 "public hearing" on the draft Environmental Impact Statement covering the Atlantic Yards, consider these signs:
August 29, 2006
“Atlantic Yards” Public Hearing
Wednesday, August 23, 2006, 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.New York City Technical College (Klitgord Auditorium)285 Jay Street, Brooklyn
August 23, 2006
Having it Both Ways in the “Atlantic Yards” DEIS
Combing through the massive Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the "Atlantic Yards" project in Brooklyn, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign has found at least four instances of the strange, Hamlet-like soliloquy, exemplified below.
August 14, 2006
New York Magazine on the “Atlantic Yards” Project
For a few years now, the city's media elite has studiously avoided serious, honest coverage of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. That is why it is so refreshing to see that this week's New York magazine is running the single best story on the mega-development project that I have yet seen in any mainstream press. It's by political reporter Chris Smith and it is a must-read.
August 7, 2006