NYC Department of Transportation

Photo by Jennifer 8. Lee via nytimes.com

We first heard about the Department of Transportation's Urban Art Program last month when we reported on Brooklyn's much-hyped secret dumpster pools.

When we went to check out that installation, we ran into a D.O.T. staffer who chatted with us about how the program reflects the agency's ongoing re-imagination of public space.

Yesterday, the D.O.T. unveiled the first two exhibits to hit city streets in conjunction with the program's new pARTners initiative, in which artists compete for money to do art installations, like murals and sculpture, in public places. One of them, as The New York Post reports, is a plywood sculpture resembling children's blocks in the East Tremont section of the Bronx. The other, which Jennifer 8. Lee profiles on City Room, consists of two miniature green roofs placed atop bird nesting boxes in Red Hook:

montreal.bixi.com

Bike-sharing got a big boost Thursday morning, August 20, when the New York Post reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once skeptical that bike-sharing systems could work in New York City, shifted gears and said that such a system would be “ideal” here.

Cycling advocates had even more cause for optimism later that day when the city’s transportation department set up a bike-sharing demo in Union Square.

It was the latest in a series of such events to teach New Yorkers about a system, prominent in cities like Paris, Barcelona and Montreal, in which bikes are rented out in short intervals at self-pick-up and drop-off points throughout a city.

At Thursday’s demo in Union Square, which was by Bixi, a Montreal-based bike-share company that recently enlisted Boston and Minneapolis as the first U.S. cities to implement its services, Bixi employees and D.O.T. staffers were teaching curious passersby about how bike-sharing works, and there were about 10 docking stations set up with bikes available for people to ride around the square.

Transportation Commissioner (and local cycling hero) Janette Sadik-Khan happened to be checking out the demo when we stopped by around 4 p.m.

This morning, City Room broke the news that eight city bus shelters on two 34th Street lines are getting real-time bus arrival indicators so riders can know how many minutes of waiting they have left before the next bus shows up.

The installment is part of a pilot program launched by the M.T.A. and the city's transportation department that will be evaluated over the next six months and potentially expanded to include more stops and routes, according to a press release Mayor Bloomberg's office sent out this afternoon.

From the City Room report:

Tracking systems are commonplace in other major cities like London and Washington, where subway straphangers know exactly when the next train will arrive. (The accuracy is high, even if not 100 percent.) In New York, electronic displays are already installed on the L train.

It is not the first time that New York has tried to provide bus customers with a more precise estimate of when their rides will arrive. In fall 2007, the city tested a similar satellite-based system along First and Second Avenues, which also included digital signs that displayed the number of minutes until the next bus.

That system was plagued by technical errors and was abandoned after just four months. Transit officials said the 34th Street pilot program would avoid the same problems.

The announcement of the program comes a week after Mayor Bloomberg announced a wide-ranging campaign platform to improve the city’s mass transit infrastructure.

The mayor pledged to install some form of tracking technology along half of the city’s bus routes by 2013. His plan also noted that buses along 34th Street will use “mesh network technology, similar to that used to track military vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

There's more on 2nd Ave. Sagas and Streetsblog. The full press release is after the jump:

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

It's official. The long-coming bike access bill, which at one point last month sparked some infighting between city councilmen and comptroller candidates David Yassky (the bill's author) and John Liu (who was criticized for stalling the legislation), has cleared the Council's transportation committee and is headed for a vote by the full City Council tomorrow, July 29.

We've been following the bill, which is designed to encourage bike commuting by requiring commercial building owners to provide bicycle access and storage, for the past few months, and you can find our full coverage here.

In anticipation of the bill's passing in committee, Mr. Yassky, Mr. Liu, D.O.T. Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White and various other officials and bike/sustainability/public health advocates gathered on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge this morning to celebrate.

Read the release Mr. Yassky's office sent out after the jump:

Photo by Antonia Belt

Back in June, Jocko Weyland, one-third of the trio behind Brooklyn’s much-hyped dumpster swimming pools, attended a dinner event at a Lower East Side arts space on the second night of the New York Bicycle Film Festival. There, Mr. Weyland got to meet a real New York City celebrity—Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, whose pro-cycling, pro-pedestrian, pro-public-space agenda has made her something of an urbanite rock star.

 “I’m not usually one for fanning out at this late age,” said Mr. Weyland, 42, “but after hearing her speak I was like, ‘I’ve gotta meet this woman!'"

When he finally got his turn, (Mr. Weyland offered the rather hip analogy that trying to talk to Ms. Sadik-Kahn at a bike event is like trying to talk to Thurston Moore at a Sonic Youth concert), he took the opportunity to tell her about the dumpster pool project, which has turned a junky lot near the Gowanus Canal into something of an urban oasis, complete with cabanas, bocce ball, grills and, of course, three fully functional, chlorinated, lifeguard protected, 8- by 22-foot dumpsters-turned-pools.

At the time, the site—the location of which Mr. Weyland and his colleagues, David Belt and Alix Feinkind, at the futuristic SoHo-based urban design firm, Macro Sea, are keeping secret for security reasons (or at least trying to!)—was still under construction. They’ve since been hosting private parties and film screenings. It's safe to say the pools have become the latest cool-whacky thing (as in “Look at this cool whacky thing!”) to infiltrate the New York blogosphere.

But before all that, when Mr. Weyland mentioned the project to Ms. Sadik-Kahn, she was enthusiastic, and pointed him toward her director of strategic communications, Dani Simons, to discuss it further, Mr. Weyland recalled.

A few updates on the now controversial bike access bill since we filed our report before the holiday weekend:

Azi Paybarah spoke with Councilman John Liu, who bicycle activists are accusing of stalling the legislation that would require commercial-building owners to allow bikes to be stored in their buildings. (The bill was expected to be voted out of Mr. Liu's Transportation Committee last Tuesday and subsequently passed by the full City Council.)  

Mr. Liu spoke to Mr. Paybarah about the problems he has with the legislation, which happens to have been authored by one of his primary opponents in the race for city comptroller, Councilman David Yassky. Mr. Liu echoed concerns he raised during a public hearing on the bill last month. From PolitickerNY:

Transportation Alternatives

Tensions surfaced this week between members of the city's cycling community and Councilman John Liu over a piece of legislation—the Bicycle Access to Buildings Bill—that has yet to make it out of the City Council Transportation Committee, which Mr. Liu chairs.

The bill, which was first introduced back in 2003 and has resurfaced in various incarnations since then, would require office buildings to let tenants store bikes in the buildings, hence encouraging more people to commute to work by bike, hence advancing the bike-friendly, semi-car-hostile transportation agenda being pushed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn.

The bill was expected to be voted out of the transportation committee on Tuesday afternoon and passed by the full City Council the following day. But that didn't happen. A spokesman for Councilman David Yassky, a co-sponser of the bill and one of Mr. Liu's opponents in the 2010 city comptroller race, told Streetsblog on Tuesday: "The bill has been laid on council members' desks for eight days, which is typically what is done before a bill comes before the full council. That was done with the anticipation that it would be voted out of the transportation committee today."

Now, supporters of the bike bill are coming down on Mr. Liu because the bill remains stalled.

Image via PSFK

Apparently, alternative transportation in New York got a big PR boost from two upscale-ish brands this past weekend. From PSFK:

Anglophiles everywhere took notice when Topshop rolled out their new bicycle club concept, parking a small fleet of blue beach cruisers (decked out  with baskets and cupcake stickers) outside their flagship store and making them available for free daily rental to the public. In exchange for leaving a credit card and signing a liability waiver, would-be cyclists were granted access to a curated experience that included a bike, customized helmet, U-lock and map of Topshop-endorsed destinations throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Another instance of the NYC’s branded bike frenzy was a recent promotion executed by Whole Foods. The healthy-living corporation temporarily offered free pedicab rides around the city. The drivers would take customers anywhere within a ten block radius of the store, making it that much easier to justify purchasing that extra bag of groceries.

And while these recent campaigns have met with success, we need only look to past attempts at co-opting two-wheel culture, such as DKNY’s orange bike debacle  from last year’s fashion week, to note the difference between thoughtful events and PR stunts.

In other bike news today, The New York Times' City Room blog reports on the Department of Transportation's new bike safety campaign, Look. As the article notes, the campaign takes "a decidedly more confrontational approach, not unlike some of the more striking efforts by the city to curb smoking with ads of the amputee Maria from the Bronx," with its graphic TV ad that shows a bloodied and bruised cyclist in an ambulance. Other campaign materials include posters and postcards, and bike advocates interviewed by the Times think its a good sign for the future of cycling in New York:

“What the D.O.T. is doing is going in the right direction,” said Bill DiPaola, the executive director of Time’s Up, the environmental nonprofit organization often associated with Critical Mass rides.

Mr. DiPaola said he hoped that the campaign would extend to permanent “Share The Road” signs like those used in many other American cities.

“Cycling is improving in the city,” he said. “The more infrastructure and the more signs, we feel in the long run, the streets will be safer and there will be more respect for different kinds of transportation.”

Photo via NYCDOT

Last week, the city's Department of Transportation and the M.T.A. concluded a series of eight public workshops on the expansion of New York's bus rapid transit system, an express bus service the two agencies plan on implementing across the five boroughs over the next 10 years.

For anyone who wasn't able to attend, the D.O.T. is now seeking input online via a survey that's accessible through its Web site.

For some background on bus rapid transit, read this item we posted back in May. But here's a quick roundup of coverage from the recent workshops.

The Daily News was at the June 3 workshop in Jamaica Queens. (Nine of the 31 proposed new bus rapid transit routes are located in Queens, but when the city was rolling out its initial BRT program a few years ago, Queens residents came out against a proposed pilot route on Merrick Blvd.) From the meeting:

Flickr via 708718

Midtown traffic.

The city today continued its push to make New York's streets more pedestrian- and bike-friendly (not to mention more attractive!), by releasing a manual outlining standards for future street design.

As The New York Times reports, "The Department of Transportation will begin reviewing development plans to see whether they align with the 232-page manual’s guidelines, and promises that projects with these features will win approval quickly."

Here are some highlights from The Times review of the manual: