[Hey did you see we have a new ride to Queens Aug 15th to eat our way through the street food carts? Join us!]
“Summer Streets takes place on consecutive Saturdays August 7, 14 and 21 from 7:00 am – 1:00 pm. The 2010 route connects the Brooklyn Bridge with Central Park with recommended connections along low-traffic streets to the Hudson River Greenway, Harlem and Governors Island allowing participants to plan a route as long or short as they wish. This event takes a valuable public space – our City’s streets – and opens them up to people to play, walk, bike, and breathe. ” via NYC DOT
Don’t forget this year there will be dumpster pools on the streets! Three Dumpster pools will be located on the east side of Park Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. The pools will be open 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. via NYT
You might remember last year of a major dispute between the Hasidic community and bicycle community in Williamsburg regarding the Kent Ave bike lane. While that lane though redesigned stayed, last week the DOT stripped 14 blocks of bike lane off the street neighboring Bedford Ave with no warning or community voice. Bedford Ave bike lane provides a direct connection for cyclists to the the Williamsburg bridge – possibly the most highly trafficked bike commuter bridge in the city. The community is understandably upset considering how much work and community support must go into installing a bike lane. Apparently removing one requires no thought at all.
Yesterday Gothamist reported that a few people were arrested by the Shomrim or local watchdogs for trying to repaint the lane on Bedford though other sources report no one was actually arrested. Regardless, a group called “OccupyEverything” succeeded in repainting the lane anyway!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of checking out the Bixi bike share demo on Union Square. Bixi, a combination of the words bicycle and taxi, is a bike share program currently used in Montreal. Their service is went into effect May 12, 2009 with 3,000 bicycles available for self-service at 300 stations across three boroughs. If you google the program you will find that people complain about the high fees – from $5 (day) to $78 (year) for a pass + usage fees, I’d have to agree. I mean would you use it at that price?
It was still nice to see, as NYC is proposing to roll out their own system for sustainable transportation improvement.
Only about 1% of commuter trips in New York City are made by bicycle, so as part of its strategic plan, Sustainable Streets, DOT intends to double that number by 2015 and triple it by 2020.
For more photos check out Flickr. For info on the proposed NYC bike share, check out Streetsblog.
