Results tagged “janettesadikkhan”

City officials and cycling advocates gathered in The Bronx yesterday to celebrate meeting the goal of adding 200 bike-lane miles in all five boroughs in three years. Dr. Thomas Farley, city health commissioner, was on hand to trumpet the health benefits of cycling; Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe praised the bike lanes connecting the city's parks and waterfronts; and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan declared New York "the bicycling capital of the United States." The bike lane network is now the equivalent length of a bike lane running from New York City to Boston! The 200-mile initiative was launched after a 2006 report [pdf] determined that cyclists were safest in bike lanes and wearing helmets. The project cost $8.8 million, and included installing 6,100 bike racks and 1,000 guide signs. According to the DOT [pdf], there are now 70.9 miles of bike lanes in The Bronx, 138.9 miles in Brooklyn, 90.4 miles in Manhattan, 96.7 miles in Queens, and 27.6 in Staten Island. And besides helping cyclists, they make for great parking spots, too!

       

With seven blocks along Broadway in Times Square and Herald Square closed to vehicular traffic for pedestrian promenading pleasure (oh, and to ease traffic congestion too) on Sunday, New Yorkers and tourists alike have been testing out the suddenly clear streets. The Broadway pedestrian plazas are between 42nd and 47th Streets and between 33rd and 35th Streets, and in the Times Square stretch, there were lawn chairs for perambulators.

Partly in order to commemorate the city's controversial reconfiguration of Times Square into a 58,000-square-foot pedestrian plaza, the 1949 Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra 1949 Technicolor romp On the Town (pictured; more) will be screened outside for free on Monday at 12 p.m., on Broadway at 47th Street. It's also the last day of Fleet Week, and because of this—but perhaps secretly because one needs a really compelling incentive to hang out in Times Square on Memorial Day at noon on the last day of Fleet Week, traffic or not—the folks from Virgil’s Real Barbecue, who are celebrating their fifteen anniversary this year, will hand out free samples of their Memphis-style ribs directly in front of in front of Times Square Information Center (7th Ave btw. 46th and 47th). All of this will go down between noon and 2 p.m., or until the ribs run out. Also on Monday, starting at 11 a.m., Hebrew National Beef Franks will be handing out 45,000 free hot dogs (and another 30,000 coupons) on the corner on 45th and Broadway. They'll also have mustard.

NYC's DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan may be beloved by cycling enthusiasts for her radical expansion of the city's bike lanes, but to critics like Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, she's "an anti-car extremist. It's kind of easy for Ms. Sadik-Khan to be holier than thou and tell people they have no business driving. She may live down the block from the subway station—but most people don't." And John Liu, the City Council member from Queens who chairs the council’s Transportation Committee, says her agenda comes with "a sense of the elite telling the everyday people what’s good for them, and that’s simply not appreciated. I think it can no longer be ignored, the demographic groups calling for these changes versus the demographic groups that protest."

While 30 Rock writers are on the picket line, Alec Baldwin is worried about his neighborhood.. And listening to the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. This morning, during a segment where Brian was discussing the future of NYC's streetscape with Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and the Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton, the acclaimed actor and gossip target made his debut as a caller. After joking that he needed a job, here's a transcription...