Daily Archives: May 21, 2009

Parking for 71 bikes, 60 cars, 1 bus

Just saying.

Transportation Alternatives has published a comprehensive set of guidelines for street cyclists. Applicable not just to New York City, but everywhere.

Having been flipped off by an angry dumpster truck driver yesterday(ironically, while standing well off to the side of the road), all I can say is: follow these guidelines and do your part to stop the hate.

Bike locker at NJ Transit station

The New York Times Westchester regional published a story last week about the extraordinary steps some communities have to take because they have run out of parking spaces at their Metro-North stations.

By NICOLE NEROULIAS
Published: May 16, 2009

BY the time Ned Midgley drives up to the Scarborough Metro-North Railroad station here for his 8:38 a.m. train to Grand Central Terminal, more than 800 cars have already crammed into every available permit parking space.

Valet parking? Extra fees of several hundred dollars a year? Folks who are retired or laid off, but who won’t relinquish their parking permit?

But nary a word about alternative transportation to and from Metro-North stations. Shuttles? Bikes? Unthinkable, one supposes. Except for so many for whom a short bike ride to the train could be a truly viable solution, if they only had a secure way to leave their bikes at the stations.

Westchester Biking and Walking Alliance is actively lobbying for secure bike storage at Metro-North stations throughout the County. Please join us in urging your municipal and County legislators to endorse this worthwhile project. And while you are at it, it would be worth your while to also express your opinion to Metro-North, and Region 8 of the New York State Department of Transportation.

The new pedestrian plaza at Herald Square, NYC

Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. As she prepares to close swaths of Broadway to cars next week, she is igniting a peculiar new culture war—over the role of the automobile in New York.

(Click the quote above to view the whole article.)

What is so radical about the idea that the central city is better off with fewer cars? Pedestrian-friendly zones honor our city centers, and in the long-term, dramatically INCREASE economic activity for local shopowners and taxi drivers too. Like our absence of government-sponsored health care, the United States is the only advanced industrial nation that does not follow this basic design concept in its major cities.

UPDATE (7:30 pm): Heard in the car on the way home tonight, on NPR, a cab driver: “Stupid people, streets are for cars.”