­We had a pretty intimate & productive meeting last Thursday back in our usual haunt, the Long Island College Hospital first floor conference room on Atlantic & Hicks. To those of you who have been away for the summer, we do look forward to hearing from or seeing you again! 

1. CHAIR REMARKS

• Congrats to all who rode &/or volunteered in the NYC Century on Sunday, 9/13! If you have any feedback, please email Elena at volunteer(at)transalt.org. TA takes all feedback seriously.
  

• Congrats to all who participated in Park(ing) Day on Friday, 9/18. Check out the video on Streetsblog!

• Martha led the 5^th Avenue Bike Lane Love Spot on 5^th & Baltic Street. She got a lot of foot traffic & gathered 3-4 pages of signatures in support of the 5^th Avenue Bike Lane.
  

• Marin, Lacey & Dan led the Fix City Spot on Bedford between N. 7^th & N. 8^th – they were offering a sneak peak at their bike rack web tool (more on that later). They had a Peanuts-style “Bike Therapy 5¢: The Doctor is In” sign. Solar One provided a solar-powered laptop charger, which was a great conversation starter. They said they were there for 10 hours, but it went really fast. There was some miscommunication & the NYPD closed off the entire block, which at first seemed to defeat the purpose of Park(ing) Day but in the end proved to be a blessing. They distributed lots of Biking Rules! books.

 Fix City Spot - thanks to Marin Tockman for the photos ­

• Mark did a tour of Park(ing) Spots: in addition to the 5^th Avenue & Bedford spots he visited one on Myrtle between Clermont & Vanderbilt where Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, NY Times blog cartoon-journalist moved his Fort Greene studio into the street, & another hosted by our friends at Sustainable Flatbush on Cortelyou Road.

Bike Lane Love Spot on Fifth Avenue - thanks to Martha for the photos.

• Read the blog! I recently wrote about the Symposium on Global Trends in Sustainable Mobility, which TA & Velo Mondial hosted to kick off the New Amsterdam Bike Slam. The Symposium is about the kinship between cities such as New York & Amsterdam – what we can learn from each other. I also wrote about the fun I had volunteering for the Century at the Prospect Park Rest Stop. Sholom shares the saga of his stolen bike & how he recovered it.
  

• You are all welcome to write for the LSN blog. We want to hear all your livable streets stories. Please email me at kasia.krolowa(at)gmail.com if you have questions about how to get involved.

2. PROJECT UPDATES

• Park Circle Rehab Has Begun!

DOT held a series of workshops earlier this year & they have already begun to implement some improvements. The project seeks to reclaim parts of the circle (which is on the SW rim of the park, at the entrance to the Prospect Expressway – this is not the 15^th Street Pritchard Circle) for pedestrians, bicyclists, and horseback riders. It also seeks to green the area and calm the traffic. Check out the full Ocean Parkway Greenway-Prospect Park study, done by the Dept. of City Planning. There will be improvements for bicycles but the focus is on a unified solution for all street users – finally the Circle will come full circle. Check it out next time you are in the Park! Also, next time there is a DOT public workshop, take the time to go – they really listen to the public!

• Continuing Rehab on Ocean Parkway Malls!

This news is for those of you who were worried that the rehab of the Ocean Parkway Malls was stopping at Avenue M. Sholom reports that work is being done on the pedestrian side of M through N – the bicycle side with follow. Next up: N through O. It’s a slow process so please be patient! And please be safe when detouring at the construction.

• Biking Rules PSA Contest – videos & photos: as a committee, we need lots more photos – rumor has it the Queens committee is ahead of us. The deadline is tomorrow, Monday, September 28. Please email images to Paco at subtle116(at)gmail.com. Lois had a great photo shoot out in Flushing Meadow park last weekend, but she will need more extras – stay tuned to your email for more details. Cyclists & pedestrians of all ages needed. The winning entries will be shown in a festival at BAM on November 17.

• Bulk Order Bike Racks Project:

Dan Latorre reports that the Great Bike Rack Hunt/Fix City launch was a success. Fix City is a web tool conceived by Dan under TA Brooklyn Committee and created with The Open Planning Project (TOPP) to make it possible for the public to individually or in groups request (aka “crowdsource”) bulk orders of bike racks for their neighborhoods. At the launch, which took place last Sunday at the Be the Change You Want to See Gallery in Williamsburg, Dan & his team explained the Fix City web app & the DOT rules for deciding where a bike rack can be installed. Then they split up into 2 groups & walked around & sited racks. Afterwards they entered the info into the computer & did a design feedback session, asking participants for ways to improve the site or the initial instructions. All in all, they sited 40 racks! They are now working on the final kinks on the website. Fix City officially launches Tuesday! Watch for an email announcement. In the near future, there will be a second event, to verify all the suggested rack locations. The DOT will also verify them, but the goal is to achieve a high enough accuracy rate that the DOT can spare their staff the extra verification step…which will speed up the installation of bike racks.

• Pedestrian Surveys at Kings Highway & Quentin Road in South Brooklyn

Join Murray & Sholom on Wednesday, September 30 between 5-7 PM for a pedestrian survey/petition. Five different bus lines converge at the Kings Highway stop of the B & Q trains; every evening there are very long lines of people waiting for those buses. The survey will be quick, under a minute, & it will attempt to gauge whether the people waiting for buses would bicycle to & from the subway stop if there was adequate bicycle infrastructure & street-calming in the neighborhood. Please email Murray at mlantner(at)gmail.com or Sholom at brodes20(at)gmail.com if you are interested. This is a great chance to go to a different park of Brooklyn – lots of delicious ethnic food on this happening street – or take the B/Q a few extra stops to Brighton Beach for more food & all those Russian MP3s you know you are dying to buy!

• Fifth Avenue Bike Lane Roundtable Discussion

In 2005, a tragic bike fatality stirred neighborhood groups & businesses to request traffic calming on Park Slope’s busy corridor, 5th Avenue. More than 100 local businesses signed letters of support for a new 5th Avenue bike lane. DOT responded with a combination class II bike lane/ class III shared bike route that extends from Dean to 24th street. Four years later, NYC averages thousands of cyclists daily. Hundreds of them use 5th avenue as a safe route for commuting, shopping, and living. However, there remains room for improvement.

Our vision is to extend the 5th Avenue bike lane & to provide an opportunity to connect neighborhoods like Sunset Park & Bay Ridge, parks such as Leif Ericson Park & Fort Hamilton Park, & provide safer streets for Brooklyn’s residents as well as 5th Avenue merchants, who often rely more on foot traffic than vehicle traffic.

Groups to partner with: The 5^th Avenue Committee, UPROSE in Sunset Park, PTAs of schools (MS 51, etc.), The Old Stone House, restaurants & business, Sunset Park or Bay Ride BIDs, “Greening the Ridge Festival,” Islamic groups. If you know other groups, please let us know. 

This is a terrific opportunity to take on the widespread notion that bicycling is elitist, when in fact it is a cheap, low-impact way to get around & get some sunshine.

If you are interested in taking the lead on this campaign, please email Paco at subtle116(at)gmail.com

3. ANNOUNCEMENTS

•  Community Boards are back in session, after a summer recess. Please keep an eye/ear out for your local meetings & attend them to have a voice in your local livable streets. Last year TA hosted a Community Board Jammy Jam, where people could learn about CBs & start the application process. The event was a huge success – in the past year, 6 TA members have gotten elected to CBs - so TA is repeating it in November. Recent developments: Paco is on the Transportation Board for CB 6. Mike Epstein is on CB 2. Sholom is applying to join CB 15. TA is working on a support system for TA members who are on CBs – often they are the lone voice for sustainable streets projects!

• The Fall Scavenger Hunt has moved to Sunday, October 25. The Hunt will take place throughout Brooklyn & will likely culminate at Soda Bar on Vanderbilt. We need more people to plan it & run the tallying/prizes component on the day of. If you are interested, please email Paco at subtle116(at)gmail.com.
  

• The year has flown as if it had wheels of its own! At our next meeting, in October, we will discuss our goals for 2010, so bring your ideas & make sure your brain-tank is full of creative juices. In November we will nominate people to lead our group – we’ll need a Chair, a Vice Chair, a Secretary & a Treasurer. We’ll also need leaders for each individual project/goal. If you have any questions about these roles, please email Paco at subtle116(at)gmail.com, though we will also discuss them at the meeting. Voting happens in December!

• Our monthly ride was supposed to be Sunday, September 27, but we got rained out. So it’s tentatively rescheduled for Sunday, October 11. The ride will begin at the top of 5^th Avenue at Flatbush Avenue & continue down the entire length of 5^th, ending at the waterfront greenway/Verrazano, and return either via 5^th or via parks, greenways & other streets.
  

• Sunday, September 27, at 3:30 PM is the ghost bike installation for Julian Miller, killed last week at Washington & Greene. Miller, 45, was a cyclist who was struck and killed by a motorcycle last Friday night. According to Streetsblog, he was an extremely avid bicyclist and rider rights advocate. If you want to attend, email Brian Cleary at ofcounsel2002(at)yahoo.com. If you want to get involved with the Street Memorials project in general, email Ryan at hijackthedisco(at)gmail.com.

• Join us for TA Member Drinks at City Bakery, with special guest speaker & cycle chic evangelist Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copehagenize.com. More info & RSVP here. $10 at the door; free admission if you become a member at the door.                                           

4. NEXT MEETING

Next meeting is Thursday, October 29, 2009, at 7 PM in the Long Island College Hospital first floor conference room on Atlantic & Hicks. See you there!

 Great minds at work discussing livable streets! Thanks to Sholom Brody for the photo.