Capital New York

brianvan commented on At a tightly coiled Citi Bike announcement, more questions than answers

I could think of a couple of good reasons for a bit of opacity on how the program is being run. On the other hand, I don't know what the public benefit would be for drilling down into the fine details about launch dates and prior delays. I think a lot of potential concerns are mostly nullified by the fact that the system is self-funded and is not relying on city or state funding; if they're screwing anyone with delays, it's not us. (The financing/branding setup, consequently, adds a motive for opacity; if I were Citi or any other flagship sponsor, I would expect privacy as a condition of financing that which is already a controversial concept, if not a potential operational mess) It's misguided to treat the bike share program like a city-run project. The DOT is doing little other than provisioning street space for the docks & storage for the equipment. Their execution partner on this is a privately held company that doesn't have to answer to the press at all. While it's disappointing that they didn't make it for July 2012 or March 2013, I see little reason for public attention to any pre-launch internal issues. If there are post-launch issues of safety or accessibility, it's a different story

Posted on April 16th, 2013 9:36am

brianvan commented on Christine Quinn won't touch congestion pricing (anymore)

Proof that the mayor needs to be an expert at regional planning and politics, and can't get by just on pandering to cherry-picked voting tranches. Eventually those outer-borough voters are going to eat her alive and she will go down in NYC history as a monster. She's capable of better than that, if she would just accept that being mayor is out of her league, clearly. Serve the city, not yourself.

Posted on February 15th, 2013 11:41am

brianvan commented on Polls aside, Bloomberg's bike lanes are at the mercy of his successor

This is a political game, and if the game is to put up bureaucracy in the way of installing more bike lanes, it's going to flip the other way if anyone tries to remove them. This is the worst news for Louise Hainline and Iris Weinshall, the principals in the PPW bike lane suit, because they certainly want the city to remove the bike lane WITHOUT having to get unanimous approval from the Park Slope community board. It makes any possibility of them winning their case disappear. How clumsy of them, because it's their pressure on de Blasio and Quinn that would make either candidate even mention the issue in the first place. Don't these candidates have any agendas to talk about above and beyond carving out bicycle lanes from the backstreets they're currently installed on? I'd hope so, that's not much of a mayoral platform in the post-Sandy, post-Occupy-Wall-Street, post-stop-and-frisk, post-mortgage-bubble era.

Posted on February 13th, 2013 6:44pm

brianvan commented on The swoon-proof Ray Kelly, in charts

So, the populace somehow thinks that the concept of Ray Kelly as a public figure is completely divorced from the leadership at the agency he helms? Cause that's a pretty solid explanation for these numbers.

Posted on January 18th, 2013 2:16pm

brianvan commented on An old idea about elevated bike lanes resurfaces, to the dismay of cycling advocates

I agree with a possible "limited" use of viaducts for bikeways. Put sidewalks on them too (with a very significant barrier between sidewalk & bikeway, of course), if they're in Midtown, because the tourists would love them. Unlike highway viaducts, these structures can be light and mostly non-obtrusive, so neighborhood blight wouldn't be much of a concern. Yes, an approach ramp might be a bit of a climb, but many cities have similar ramps to access rail-trails and change-of-elevation junctions, and no one complains. If designed well, they work nicely without presenting much difficulty. It's also worth noting that the city once had many, many more elevated train lines than it does now, particularly in Manhattan. The city was fine with them, and still is fine with the remaining ones (which were mostly constructed over 80-100 years ago). There is probably great potential in making street-friendly structures with modern architecture and materials if you don't have to build it to support tractor-trailers or heavy subway trains.

Posted on October 10th, 2012 10:46am