Photo courtesy nrvlowdown. Cyclists are complaining that NYPD squad cars have been parking on the Queensboro Bridge bike path, forcing riders to pass by through a narrow 18 inch gap. A DOT spokesman explains they requested police presence on the bike path after two collisions between cyclists and workers painting the bridge. In areas where work is being done, there are signs posted "periodically" instructing bike riders to dismount and walk. But the work is......

Bike-friendly city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told reporters last night that August's street closures in Manhattan will be back next year. The Summer Streets program, which prohibited traffic on a 7-mile stretch from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on three consecutive Saturdays, was "clearly a hit on Park Ave," Sadik-Khan tells the Daily News. She also says it's "highly likely" Summer Streets will be extended next summer to the other boroughs. While some retailers......

Board up your windshields and lock yourself in the trunk: The squeegee men—those Giuliani-era poster boys for quality-of-life crime—are making a comeback according to the Post, which has an alarming article about the "pests." Of which there are four. But be afraid! They're congregating near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and a Hells Kitchen elevator manager tells the tabloid, "They get very aggressive. I was like, 'Dude, don't even think about it!'" The Post......

Damn teenagers. For years now, Astoria residents have been living in fear of rock-throwing punks who climb onto Amtrak’s railbed along the Hell Gate trestle and toss projectiles at their houses, cars and yards. Locals like Loretta Csikortos place the blame squarely at the foot of Amtrak, who she thinks should pay for repairs to her son’s Ford Mustang, which has a shattered windshield and dented trunk. Residents are calling on Amtrak to beef up......

The DOT's $700,000 transformation of a seven block stretch of Broadway into a pedestrian esplanade with tables, chairs and planters is complete, and the Times has taken the anxious pulse of local workers lounging on their lunchbreaks. The consensus? A nice gesture, but it's only a matter of time before a cab swerves into the tables and turns the urban oasis into a scene of unspeakable carnage. Some choice observations from the men and women......

Photo courtesy MaoSayWhat. Despite the economic tailspin, developers are still moving forward with luxury residential buildings that – assuming anyone can still afford to occupy them – will result in 170,000 new cars on city streets by 2030, thanks to city regulations requiring new developments to contain a minimum number of built-in parking spots. That estimate comes from public transit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, who held a press conference at City Hall yesterday urging the......

Photo courtesy istolethetv. The first Summer StreetsSaturday took place over the weekend, with the city barring motor vehicles from 6.9 miles of streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street and Central Park. Cyclists and pedestrians reveled in the car-free oasis as the vehicular traffic was replaced by music, dance, yoga and other exercise classes from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. But some drivers, retailers and garage owners were less enthused. Mark Barbosa, a......

Surprise! Without a formal public announcement, the city has been moving ahead with a $700,000 plan to shrink part of Broadway in midtown from a four-lane to a two-lane street and use the rest of the space for a public esplanade, which the DOT is calling “Broadway Boulevard.” The change will be complete on August 15th, when the east side of Broadway between 42nd Street and Herald Square is turned over to a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway, teeming with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters....

A number of police unions representing different segments of the NYPD filed a joint complaint against the City with the Board of Collective Bargaining, saying that Mayor Bloomberg's effort to cut the number of park-anywhere-you-feel-like placards is an economic hardship and a violation of state labor laws. The suit does acknowledge that there is nothing in union contracts regarding the issuance of placards, however. One of Bloomberg's anti-congestion initiatives has been to reduce the vast......

Although no one was actually killed, Friday was a tough day for Manhattan pedestrians. Three separate cars careened onto sidewalks; and so many people were hit that it's unclear how many were run down. The mayhem began in Chinatown shortly after noon. A driver reportedly was attempting to back into a parking space when he accidentally jumped the curb and six hit people sitting on a park bench and passing by. The victims were hit......

Since the cost of a barrel of oil jumped $11 on Friday, helping the stock market drop 400 points, gas stations in the area made sure to raise their prices, too. The Post reports that many stations were charging $4.50/gallon or more! While the AAA says national average for gas has gone over $4/gallon for the first time this weekend, many gas stations in the area have been near or above that for a few......

Starting Monday, alternate-side-of-the-street parking will be suspended on residential streets in Park Slope until further notice. The parking reprieve is being granted while the city changes all the signage to reflect a big change in the alternate-side parking rules: On street cleaning days, the duration of the “No Parking” times will be cut from three hours to 90 minutes in Park Slope. This also means that until all the new signs are in place –......

A Mercury Mariner hybrid SUV (leased by Rep. McNulty), a Cadillac DeVille (Rangel's ride), and a Lexus LS 460 (what Rep. Meeks leases) Representative Charles Rangel is proud of his leased-through-Congress 2004 Cadillac DeVille. And he even offers rides to constituents, so they can discuss issues. Rangel told the NY Times, "I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody. And when they say, ‘This is nice,’ it feels......

Picture of triple-parkers from Gerritsenbeach.net Passing a vehicle across a double line in New York State is a 3-point offense. It's difficult to find out what the penalty is for parking across a double line. New Yorkers are overly familiar with egregious parking jobs, but GerritsenBeach.net had to admire the triple-parking job that some neighbors accomplished recently. Apparently, the diagonal hash marks on the left of the road indicated to one driver that the......

Art by John Blackford and James Fisher, photo courtesy John Barnes. The decision to create artificial reefs off Delaware's coast using discarded “Redbird” subway cars from New York City has proven so successful that marine officials are struggling to cope with overcrowding. Since the state first began dropping the cars to the ocean floor, the formerly barren area has become an underwater metropolis for countless tuna, mackerel, flounder and bass. And with that comes......

A proposal by City Council Member Hiram Monserrate would give hybrid car drivers free parking at meters for a year after their initial purchase. If the legislation passes, drivers with receipts for hybrid cars could apply for the permits, which the Queens councilman says would cost the city little in lost revenue, because the taxes from new car sales would make up for the quarters lost at parking meters. But Council Member John Liu, chairman......

Mayor Bloomberg has announced a plan that will require better fuel efficiency for city's TLC-run black cars; the change is part of the broader PlaNYC initiative and follows in the tread marks of the new hybrid yellow cabs. Emissions will be halved for the fleet of 10,000 black cars, which currently release 272,000 tons of CO2 equivalents annually, making up 2% of the City's transportation related emissions. The fleet is a part of the Taxi......

Photograph of Queens native Amy Ryan, nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Gone, Baby Gone At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. You can prep yourself with the Oscar nominees list as you watch (or avoid) red carpet coverage. You could read NY Times......

Continuing their misguided and terribly executed orange bike campaign, DKNY has infiltrated YouTube with a 1 minute 53 second clip of a model speaking out in support of the company's great..."humanitarian cause"? The video starts off showing two models mowing each other down with fake miniature cars as an orange bike lies on the ground...probably not the best way to negate the whole ghost bike thing. Hear that children: you could take a cab and......

The Daily News has an entertaining story today about the possibility of the five-block radius surrounding the Empire State Building becoming a sort of Bermuda Triangle for cars. Apparently, a number of cars have to be towed from that area every day, which makes people suspicious. The common denominator: the ESB.“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider......

timely, by jakedobkin at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unconscious baby on Ralph Ave. in Brooklyn, a construction accident on Bedford Ave. and Crown St. in Brooklyn, and a found grenade at 54th Ave. and Junction Blvd. in Queens. Dave Chappelle made an unannounced appearance at a comedy club, where Radar learned he "took the stage at approximately 12:30 a.m. and didn't leave until club management turned off the lights at 4:20......

As violence continues in Pakistan in the wake of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, New York City's Pakistani population was shocked by the news, watching news coverage and holding vigils. One woman said to the Daily News, "For us, this is like losing [President John] Kennedy. She wanted peace. She wanted democracy. And she lost her life for these things." And a man told the NY Times, “I think there will be......

Monday will mark the entrance of a new taxi logo on New York cabs, in a move to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the iconic yellow cab. Cars that appear for their annual inspection will be required to sport the new logo, so the sooner you see a cab with the new look, the more recently they've presumably been inspected. The redesigned graphics feature a checked motif that is supposed to be reminiscent of......

Doug Gordon (former Ask Gothamist contributor) put almost 10 minutes worth of footage of cars entering Prospect Park after 7PM, when it's supposed to be closed to traffic, on YouTube. StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson Jr. edited it down and added a counter of how many cars actually enter over a 15 minute period - you can see that video above. We can't decide what makes us more crazed: The cars that try to squeeze through......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: 2007 MTV Movie Awards (Sunday, 8 p.m., MTV) All you have to know is that Sarah Silverman hosts, so expect wackiness to ensue. Bonus: LAist will be liveblogging, from the ceremony's greenroom. Creature Comforts (Monday, 8:00 p.m., WCBS 2) An Americanized British import from the creators of Wallace & Gromit where people in on the street interviews are animated in clay in the form of talking animals.......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York, his administration's thinking about what the city needs to do by the year 2030 in order meet sustainability goals. The plan involves 127 initiatives under the areas of Brownfield Remediation, Housing, Open Space, Transportation, Energy, the Water Network, Water Quality, Air Quality and Climate Change, but the big topic was congestion pricing. After much speculation, Mayor Bloomberg even acknowledged that congestion pricing was the......

Mets third baseman David Wright has been embraced by the public for his baseball skills, team work, and adorable face. He's been hitting a .316 average in spring training and now the Mets plan to settle up some important business with Wright: What song will be played when he goes to bat? They announced today the launch of an online fan vote at Mets.com to select Wright's at-bat song selections. The full list is......

Finally we have details about when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to town - and, more importantly, when the elephants are planning their annual walk through Manhattan. For all you pachyderm enthusiasts, get ready to stay up late next Tuesday night:Unload Stock Cars: 11:30 PM (Tuesday, March 27) The Walk Begins: 11:59 PM Time At Tunnel: Approx 12:20 AM (Wednesday morning) In Manhattan, the elephants will emerge from the......

Anyone that's ever driven a car in New York City knows that one of the hardest things to do is find a parking spot near your destination. A study released by Transportation Alternatives today finds that Park Slope may be the worst place to park. As if it wasn't enough to deal with stroller hell. The study (.pdf file), which looked at 7th Ave. between Union and 12th, finds some alarming things about the vehicle......

It's that time of the year again: When Hollywood honors its moviemaking the way it knows (and not always in equitable ways, given that Alfred Hitchcock nor Robert Altman, to name a few, have never won Directing Oscars) and America gets to watch hours of pre-show hosted by idiots. Giving commentary for Gothamist this year, Karen Wilson, Margaret Harper, and Jen Chung. 7:06PM First thoughts: Gael Garcia Bernal is so cute. Ryan Seacrest is an......