By Scott Etkin
Delivery trucks, passenger cars, bike-docking stations, pedestrians, and many more, are in a constant competition in New York, vying for access to the curb. This overcrowded situation is what the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) hopes to remediate through its “Smart Curbs” pilot program, scheduled for a tryout in one of the city’s most densely populated areas: between West 72nd and 86th streets, from Broadway to Central Park West.
As part of the research phase of this project, DOT is seeking input from locals about what you think about how curb space is used, what currently works well, and what should change. This online feedback map is one place to leave your opinion – it will remain open until at least the spring, a DOT representative confirmed with West Side Rag. Or you can join the discussion at one of these workshops:
Monday, January 8: In-Person Workshop
- Location: P.S. 9 Sarah Anderson, 100 West 84th Street. (No advance registration required.)
- Time: 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, January 10: Virtual Workshop
- Location: Zoom, registration required. Participants can register for the workshop at: https://bit.ly/SmartCurbsUWS
- Time: 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
The Smart Curbs program, announced in September, is a partnership between DOT and the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District. The goal is to lessen congestion on street curbs and create safer streets with fewer traffic jams.
“You see it every day – there’s a lot of demand for a very limited space,” said Jonathan Hawkins, a DOT representative, at a Community Board 7 meeting in October.
In the spring DOT will present a plan based on the research it’s gathering now, with the pilot set to launch in summer 2024.
“We’re calling it a pilot because the process is a pilot. But to be clear, the intent is not to make all these changes and then undo them,” said Hawkins. “We’ll evaluate them and if anything isn’t working, then we’ll make adjustments.”
Hawkins said many of the potential changes are “established regulations and programming” that would not require City Council action or rule changes. “This is the headline of the [City’s] Curb Management Action Plan,” said Hawkins. “So City Hall is behind it.”
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Good idea but honestly I’m glad to be outside this zone and observe without actually experiencing whatever strange things they want to experiment with. Whatever works can be expanded.
Please no restaurant sheds in the street. Keep curbs for parking so people can get to businesses.
Seems like a good place to point out that our local businesses are mostly supported by NYC residents who are using public transport or are just walking to get to businesses. The restaurant sheds are far better use of space than 1-2 parking spots and are far more beneficial to our neighborhood restaurants.
UWS Dad,
FYI some-many owners/managers of restaurants actually drive in.
So? They’re free to pay for garage parking, not sure why we should provide cheap parking on public streets.
While garages close down and there’s less garages. Garages are also harder to get one’s car into and out of for work purposes. But the Upper West Siders who are urbanists don’t care, if it drives up the cost of their goods and services, they’re glad they’re pricing everyone else out. Maybe the UWS should’ve remained the gritty place it was 40 years ago? Maybe the UWS should never have been “sanitized” the way it has been over the past 40 or so years.
Restaurant shanties take up much more than 1 or 2 spaces. Many of go mostly unused. Some restaurants use their shed more than others but in the winter especially they are unused eye sores. They create shelter for rats and homeless.
The people who own and work at local businesses sometimes live in areas where accessing the UWS would take multiple transfers or a cumbersome transit commute which urbanists don’t care for. On the flip side there’s residents who have to head to hard to reach areas. Not everyone solely operates within the gentrifed NYC universe.
The City’s budget is tanking – cuts in essential trash, education and other services.
NYCHA is in perennial bad shape, the shelter system is overwhelmed.
However, the DOT budget seems to be in fine shape?
Not understanding how the City can focus on this – not a priority need – while really essential services are worsening.
Charging market prices for parking on the upper west side would generate $237 million per year. We can’t afford to keep giving valuable public space away for free. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-24/how-parking-benefit-districts-could-transform-new-york-city
Charging market rate prices for parking, then taking more parking away to raise prices isn’t market rate. It’s a push to push out unwanted people from this city.
This is going to generate some amazing comments at WSR.
Head-scratching farce of ‘for the public good’.
These so-called ‘safer streets’ and “smart curbs’ verbal contortions are nothing less than regulatory capture disguised by euphemisms and slick branding.
What this is -if we’re being honest, is out-of-control ‘public/private partnership’ giveaways -and yes, the ongoing waging war on cars’ (privately owned cars-Silicon Valley APP investor corporate owned cars are OK however!?). This municipal plan, as so many others currently, is able to be facilitated because those who’ll be most negatively impacted-elders, the disabled among them-are the least conversant on-line, on social media and whose opinions will never be part of the final assessment.
They are ‘disappeared’ and considered irrelevant.
What we continue to see, is the hecklers’ veto of those who are dismissed as an inconvenience. To wit and as an obvious example-the tiny minority of bikers who claim to be ‘the community’ and who feel their right to their entertainment and unfettered mobility on barricaded “Open Streets”preempts the legal and ethical rights of those relying on door-to-door car and para-transit mobility freedom-the elderly and the disabled: 1% of NY CITY residents have a disability .8% of people commute by bike https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecity.shtml
The DOT and yes, our city government -including most of the City Council, as well as the Borough Presidents and indeed Mayor Adams, are demonstrating a callous ableism which is discriminatory, disenfranchising and belies the virtue signaling which
is astroturfing on behalf of the entitled -those whose idea of for the ‘good’ is just plain good for themselves!
PS There is a Federal lawsuit underway against the DOT under Title II discrimination.
https://www.nycaccessforall.org/_files/ugd/c88376_c98257010e7d43ba9662307ba7e00967.pdf?index=true
11% of NY CITY residents have a disability -please correct the typo in my prior comment. IT’S NOT 1%…but rather 11% which is the accurate number
No more giant rat infested piles of trash bags on the streets! This is literally the biggest problem I face on a daily basis and (like Biden at LaGuardia) makes me feel like I’m living in a 3rd world country.
I stopped wearing open-toed sandals walking along Broadway at night because of the rat infestation!!!!!
Why are restaurant street sheds allowed to block the entrances to residential buildings?
There are several on the West Side (and many more throughout Manhattan) where the restaurant street sheds are really long, beyond the restaurant lines – and block access to the entrance to the next door building. Also blocks visibility including building address/number.
One example, noticed a situation (omitting restaurant name 🙂 where the Access A Ride could not pull up
Wouldn’t it be wiser to have outdoor restaurants and sheds on office buildings and not residential buildings? I wonder if tenants on the 1st and 2nd and possibly even 3rd and 4th floors get fumes from the restaurant not to mention the noise under their windows.
In some areas like the East Village, LES, shed music is on all night and there is lots of noise – no sleep for people who live above –
Input only from locals who are ambulatory and happy to be out after dark and in cold weather? So retro. So asleep. So self-embarrassing!
There’s a Zoom workshop for on Jan. 10 for those who can’t attend the Jan. 8 meeting at Sarah Anderson school. person. Registration link is in the article. (I don’t know DOT’s definition of “workshop” but I assume that participants will get a chance to air their opinions.)
Simple, comprehensive solution:
Charge restaurants a fee for sheds (I think this is happening?) So the have to make a real decision on it. Doesn’t have to be a lot, but have some teeth.
Similarly, require parking stickers for much of the neighborhood. Again, not a lot, but something. So revenue is generated, especially from those who register out of state. And make them available to those with a W2 showing they work in the area. But also make sure there is at least some meter parking for visitors.
Constantly re-evaluate Citibike dock usage. And try to put them in places where they don’t take up parking spots.
Having meaningful penalties for double parking and parking by hydrants. Don’t let them off easy or let them have bulk ticketing deals. Encourage Amazon, FedEx, etc. to rent retail space and drop off packages in the middle of the night so they are less disruptive.
Meaningful penalties for bikers and e-bikers who blatantly violate rules (particularly going the wrong way on a one-way or in a bike lane, as well as running lights).
Parking stickers is transportation alternatives wet dream. First they’ll push permits, then jack up the prices to “market rate”., then ten years down the line argue that those with resident stickers are privileged and wealthy and shouldn’t be allowed to park on the street at all.
Get rid of scaffolding and restaurant sheds.
Y-e-e-e-s!! Why on earth has fabulous New York City been looking like a third world for years now? .. Scaffolding covering at least one building on every block on the UWS and never removed. And Sheds that are used no longer that look like storage dumps.
What’s happened to our formally beautiful neighborhood.?
Don’t you just love it how they add smart to something that is so stupid you just want to scream. They pulled out of the same bag Adam’s pulls out “affordable housing”.
Form malfunctioned and I was unable to leave my suggestion for ALL streets to drill some holes in the asphalt at the corners so that the water and ice that accumulates there after raiin and snow can drain off.
The DOT and CB7 care little for community input. This is the same farce we went thru when Peter Frishauf of W103 presented the “redesign” for the W103rd street corridor to DOT without community input, on zoom, English only, during Covid when half the city left and people were dying. We were then given a rigged Town Hall where Trans Alt members were allowed to speak. Some came in from Brooklyn.
Twenty desperately needed parking spaces by residents and essential workers were eliminated on a narrow street. This street has had no record of car accidents since 2016.
Transportation Alternatives, the multi-million dollar lobby supported by Mark Gorton, the Robert Kennedy Jr anti-vaxer advocate and hedge fund president (Tower Research Capital LLC) and his “OpenPlans” started under the Bloomberg Administration, is behind the growing privatization of our streets by Silicon Valley Venture Capital corporate interests-namely for-profit car-shares, car-hires as well as Lyft owned CitiBikes. TA and its ‘sister’ donation arm, StreetsPAC, has “donated” to all our politicians.
Mark Levine, our boro president has locked down our Community Boards with a question added to “do you own a car”. Anyone who says yes on the application will not be appointed to their community board.
The middle class and families can not afford the housing nor garages here, and are leaving. There is no public transportation alternative to enter or leave the city. Instead of bike lanes, all our bridges should have light rails instead of bike lanes.
Less than 1% of New Yorkers commute by bicycle (55,000 out of 8.47 million). NYC DOT – Bicyclists – Cycling in the City
The same folks who don’t want you to own a car are financially invested in e-micromobility (e-bikes); invested in Uber and Lyft; invested in Getaround and their financial interests count with the DOT and the Mayor -but the rest of us are considered irrelevant.
Although Schools and Hospitals will have major budget cuts because of the “migrant crisis”, D)T is receiving a $63.4 million increase.
so basically they want our streets in NEW YORK to be filled with homeless, poverty stricken population, ppl who only go on foot an d bike no more business
we cannot load or unload , we cannot deliver safely, we cannot cross from our car to the
street on Amsterdam, we cannot shop safely, we have no place to put our cars,
all senior care , our food delivery to seniors our medical supplies, they wont be able to
take a walker out of the car to the sidewalk. Where are we going with this
taking ppl to doctors will not be happening, any longer. The stress is a nighmore and your ideas are going to just turn the city a soup kitchen, Yes ppl will be able to line up for food
Please just give us normal safe sidewalks and meters and places to shop, deliver , drop off
take care of our children ,pets, seniors and friends in a safe smart way.