J Rabinowitz

Stop lights are fewer than in Manhattan but still way too many. However, building underpasses at busy intersections to avoid the lights gets around that without requiring full grade separation. Just have protected lanes in between major intersections and 2 to 4 underpasses per mile at major intersections. Not costly compared to building subways, but now you have top notch bicycle infrastructure.

Supporters of building a bicycle and walking path across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge are gathering tomorrow in Bay Ridge to rally for the project. The MTA released a preliminary report this week evaluating the prospects for a path, and it depicts a more complex undertaking than many advocates expected. The advocates working for walking and biking access on the bridge aren’t deterred and say the fact that the MTA is taking the idea seriously is a major step in the right direction.

The Verrazano Bridge opened in 1964 without bicycle and pedestrian access, an oversight that advocates have been trying to correct for a long time. In 1997, the Department of City Planning hired Ammann & Whitney, the firm that designed the bridge, to study the feasibility of adding a bikeway [PDF]. Since the bridge is controlled by the MTA, the city’s report largely sat on a shelf since its release nearly two decades ago.

More recently, a coalition of advocates renewed the push for a Verrazano-Narrows path under the banner of the “Harbor Ring,” a loop of connected bike paths around Upper New York Bay.

After advocates earned endorsements from elected officials, last year the MTA hired consultant WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff for its own feasibility analysis. On Tuesday, the authority briefed advocates and the press on the preliminary results of the study [PDF].

The document examines three options: Building paths on each side of the bridge’s lower deck, a similar plan on both sides of the upper deck, and a new, lower crossing parallel to the existing bridge. The new span would have a vertical lift to allow ships to enter the harbor.

The most complex part of the project is on the Brooklyn side, where the bridge paths would descend to ground level and connect with the popular greenway in Shore Park. The bicycle path, on the north side of the bridge, would follow a long, swooping switchback ramp over John Paul Jones Park. The pedestrian path on the southern side would be accessed via a stacked series of ramps closer to the water’s edge.

The complicated engineering contributes to the project’s cost estimates, which consultants put at between $300 million and $400 million. MTA board member Allen Cappelli told the Advance the cost was “very difficult to justify.” Council Member Debi Rose said it was “daunting,” and Assembly Member Nicole Malliotakis also said cost could be an obstacle.

The numbers may seem big compared to the estimates in DCP’s 1997 report, which said a new bike path could cost an inflation-adjusted $60 million. That plan proposed adding paths between the bridge’s suspender cables, which consultants told the Advance is not a realistic option.

Advocates are looking to work with the MTA on the project’s details, including modifying the design for ramps on either side of the bridge. “[The Harbor Ring] urges their engineers to also add a more robust range of possibilities,” said Harbor Ring committee member Dave ‘Paco’ Abraham. “These include potentially converting an existing vehicular lane as well as crafting more direct approaches to a pathway which could mimic the existing roadbed rather than building brand new ramps from the greenway below.”

Removing a lane of car traffic on the bridge might be less expensive, but could face challenges from traffic engineers and local politicians who otherwise support biking and walking access on the bridge.

One of the reasons the MTA decided to do the feasibility study now is because the agency will be taking on a major reconstruction of the lower level, which hasn’t been rebuilt since it opened in 1969. Replacing the existing structure with modern, lighter materials could make it feasible to add new paths on either side of the lower level. To accommodate the paths, consultants say the lower deck will have to shed approximately 12,000 tons of weight.

The upper deck is currently being reconstructed with newer, lighter materials and will accommodate a new high-occupancy vehicle and bus lane, slated to open in 2017.

“Though pathways’ implementation is already long overdue, such serious deliberation has never before been put into this already widely popular concept,” Abraham said. “While all details to better connect the boroughs are extremely preliminary, it is most certainly in the city’s best interests to ensure valuable public resources bring the structure into the 21st Century.”

The rally begins at noon tomorrow on Shore Parkway at the end of Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge. The final feasibility report, part of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Master Plan, is expected sometime next year.

This is incorrect: "because the more that word gets around that you could get a ticket for breaking the law on your bike, the more that bicyclists will follow the law." The actual result will be that fewer people will get around by bike. They will see NYPD enforcement as arbitrary harassment that makes cycling a costly/inefficient mode of transport.

This is also incorrect: "Anyway, no 'bike crackdown' can touch you if you stop at red lights...". They NYPD will issue tickets for any number of other non-infractions. One may ultimately be able to have such tickets dismissed, but the hassle and time involved are still real detriments to the joy and efficiency of cycling in the city.

Veggie with Hummus paste. Okay so you’re in a hurry, maybe 6-7 people are nearby coming to your house to meet up or whatever, this spread is a quick solution. Do it fast but not sloppy is always my entertaining motto. I hate the word “entertaining” when it comes to serving people food I mean […]

Bosnian writer and diplomat Hajrudin Somun‘s essay in Today’s Zaman makes the argument, looking at France and Hungary and Italy and Turkey and elsewhere, that right-wing authoritarianism–near-fascism, even–is doing well in Europe outside of Russia. These things can spread.

Something strange is happening with the good old lady Europe. It seems as though it is returning to the previous century, to the outbreak of World War I, which will be commemorated with pomp in Sarajevo at the end of June. Has she already become saturated with neoliberal dogma, or will she be occupied by galloping corporate neoliberalism? Such gloomy conclusions could be heard after the recent elections in which 28 European countries brought a wave of far-right politics, unseen in the old continent since World War II, to the European Parliament (EP).

Aside from that trend, which is being widely analyzed, there is a simultaneous phenomenon that has drawn my attention even more. It is a warning of the merger between this xenophobic and racist offensive on the European west and the authoritarian “managed democracies” to its east, in and around Russia. Regardless of the political temperature’s drop to Cold War levels between Moscow and the West, particularly due to the Ukrainian crisis, the Russian influence in rightist European circles has become almost equal to that which communist Russia had over Western socialist and leftist movements. “While the European Union has joined Washington in denouncing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the chaos stirred by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Europe’s right-wing populists have been gripped by a contrarian fever of enthusiasm for Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin,” Andrew Higgins wrote in The New York Times.

Here we are coming to the original source, the real cause of and accurate term for this phenomenon — Putinization. It has already entered Wiktionary, which found that it was first used in 2010 to mean the conversion of a democracy into a one-party state. The Georgian media wrote about the “Putinization of Georgia” after the “Rose Revolution.” The anti-Barack Obama American media have mentioned “the Putinization of American Politics” as well. Hans Küng, the controversial Swiss Catholic theologian and head of the Tübingen-based Global Ethic institute, criticizing former Pope Benedict XVI in Der Spiegel, said: “In the past, the Roman system was compared with the communist system, one in which one person had all the say. Today I wonder if we are not perhaps in a phase of ‘Putinization’ of the Catholic Church.”

It is no wonder why former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi praises Putin, because they belong to similar Machiavellian schools of rule. The French National Front’s (FN) leader, Marine Le Pen, has even pleaded for the creation of a strategic alliance with the Kremlin in the form of a new “pan-European union.” Despite Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and the interdependence between the European and Russian economies — about 6,000 German companies are working in or for Russia — it is unlikely that such a political union would be possible. Pro-Russian feelings in Western Europe are part of a tactical populist rhetoric to gather anti-American and euroskeptic voters. Alain de Benoist, a French “rightist” philosopher, has said Russia “is now obviously the principal alternative to American hegemony.”

Tagged: clash of ideologies, democracy, european union, fascism, hungary, links, russia, turkey

Happy New Year! Here’s your challenge. You—yes, you—right here, right now, have a chance, nothing more, a slim reed of a chance, at a year that counts.

So I’d be willing to bet you’ve been cutting back on the sugar and vowing to get to Inbox Zero. 2014 is the year you will finally floss! And make junior vice president assistant director!

But wait.

Before you get carried away by your Evernote file of Paleo recipes and your elaborate new system of Outlook sub-folders — you have a bigger opportunity here. Being the person you were put here to become.

I believe, first, in a humble, simple truth: that each and every one of us is here to live a life that matters. And we must do so by making each and every moment of each and every day of each and every year that we are privileged to live count.

And while dental hygiene is important, I’d like to postulate four resolutions that will help you create something that matters even more: a year that counts.

Don’t give up on your dreams. If you want your year to count, don’t start with your goals. Don’t start with your plans. Don’t start with your objectives. Start with your dreams. The bigger, the more laughable, the more impossible—the better. We feel as if our lives count when—and only when—we brush against our dreams, with the fingertips of our days. When we feel them; when we know them; when we become them. Our dreams do more than “inspire” us—that insipid word so loved by TED talkers and motivational speakers. Our dreams infuse us. They sing to us of who we may become. They elevate us. For our days to count, we must feel—sometimes painfully, sometimes joyously, never easily—that our better selves are roaring, exploding, thundering to life. And our dreams are the songs that awaken them.

Never, ever give up on your dreams. Not when it’s difficult; and especially not when it’s sensible. Nothing is more senseless than the sensible choice to live a meaningless life.

Don’t be afraid to suffer. There are two reasons for human action, and economists, with their superficial talk of “incentives,” don’t understand either. Fear and love. What are you afraid of? Rejection, poverty, disgrace? Whatever you call it, here is what it is: suffering. But you must never be afraid to suffer. It’s not that suffering makes you “stronger”—for life isn’t merely an exercise in empty stoicism; and, indeed, suffering for it’s own sake is futile. Nor merely must you suffer for the “sake” of what you want—money, power, sex, fame. No: it’s that suffering is so intimately connected with love — with what makes life worth living. Your fears are not imaginary: they will, it is likely, come true. Yes, you will get dumped, axed, insulted. You will fail, stumble, falter You will hurt, ache, yearn, long, want, despair. But that is precisely the fire in which all the elements of greatness—empathy, grace, tolerance, forgiveness, perseverance—are forged.

It is no accident that the word passion arose from the Latin word for suffering. When we treat suffering as merely pain to be escaped, we sacrifice passion in the process. In a world where so many want to feel passionate about their lives and their work, very few seem willing to suffer. But you can’t have one without the other.

Suffering is the fire that melts the glass of the person you must leave behind. Suffering signals the price of growth; and we can never learn the worth of growth if we are afraid to suffer.

Seek the mystery inside the truth, not the truth inside the mystery. We’re taught to be obedient rationalists—super-nerd-brains running computer programs that optimize the lives other people tell us we should want—instead of, you know, human spirits capable of creating the lives we could live. What gets measured, goes the old adage, gets managed. So analyze, test, explain, iterate! But the universe is not just greater than what we can explain—it is infinitely richer. Can you put love in a spreadsheet? Can you iterate towards friendship? Can you explain happiness?

The truth alone isn’t enough if you want your days to counts. The mystery in the truth is where life begins to count. Why does this person love me? Did I really create that? What inspired me to break the rules and say that? What the hell just happened?!

Uncovering truths alone can help us make sensible choices—but sensible choices don’t propel to lives that matter. That leap is only taken in the instant you venture beyond certainty, beyond reason, beyond logic. And you must make that leap beyond truth every day, if you wish your days to count.

Let you happen. We, we are told, must “make it happen”; if we wish our lives to be precisely so. But that is the social philosophy of a child. Is it true that we must press the lever, if we wish to obtain the rewards we seek? Sure. If we’re lab rats—or smiling, thoughtless automatons. If, instead, we are here to live lives that matter, resonant with purpose, luminous with celebration, here is what is truer: we must let ourselves be, in every instant, who we were meant to become. We must be more than lever-pressers. We must escape our cages. We must let “it” happen. What is “it”? All that which imbues our actions with meaning; without which life is little more than an empty, meaningless performance—good and bad. Love. Yearning. Loss. Grief. Heartbreak. Tragedy. Despair. Triumph. Will. All that and more—we must let happen, if we are to grow. What stands in their way, most often? The world? No. It’s us, ourselves—it is the worst in us, that will not budge, that will not yield, that limits us. That leaves us feeling thwarted; stifled; cheated—because, in truth, we are. We are cheating ourselves of meaning when we do not let life happen—and act as we are merely conditioned to, by the cheap desires programmed into us instead: Achieve! Earn! Spend! Die!

So let you happen—all of you. Free yourself. Want a year that counts? Maybe you have to end a bad relationship so that you can have your heart shattered into a million tiny aching pieces…so it can beat with a fiercer rhythm. Maybe you have to tell your NeanderBoss “no” instead of smiling and nodding like a spineless flunky. Maybe you have to apologize to someone, and look your shortcomings straight in the eye. Or maybe you have to start that company, marry that person, and put down roots — even when the ground beneath you feels like shifting sand. Or maybe you have to strike out and get lost in the unknown to find the opportunity on the other side. Whatever it is, let it happen.

Rumi once said: “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the sky”. What did he mean? Something like this: we truly know what it is to love only when we humble ourselves to what counts. Our days count—and only count—when we may love more than we could before. Think about it: if you loved your partner, job, house, city, country, family, friends, ideas…less and less every day, how would you feel about your life? Like it was empty, futile, senseless: like it hadn’t…counted.

Which instants count? They’re not the ones that fill up our wallets. They’re not the ones where we have a pretty girl (or boy) on our arms. They’re not the ones where we buy, have, possess, barter, win, conquer. They’re the ones in which humble ourselves to the meaninglessness of all that. That’s when we kneel. And come face to face with the sky.

So stop. Stop scurrying. Stop chasing. Stop worrying, envying, hoarding, scheming.

You’re free. (You always were.) And you have a choice–and a chance. At making it all count. Not just this year. But every instant. Every moment. It. Your life. You.

Here’s a great secret: you don’t only live once. You live an uncountable multitude of times; a lifetime in every day. And that’s more than enough for anyone.

And so.

The question isn’t if you’re going to die. It’s whether you’re going to live.

How things have changed when it comes to toy safety.  Back in 2008, 172 toys were recalled — 19 due to lead. In fiscal year 2013, there were 31 toy recalls — none were related to lead.

 

Our new global system to make toys safer means:

• Toys are now tested by independent, third-party testing laboratories around the world.
• CPSC and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol are at the ports, stopping toys that violate U.S. standards before they reach children’s hands. This recent video shows an example of a recent toy stoppage.
• You can shop with confidence. Just remember to use products with care.

 

Here are some things you should know:

• Five of the 11 toy-related deaths in 2012 occurred when children were riding tricycles.
• Four of those children were found in pools.
• Two other children died when they rode scooters into traffic and were unfortunately hit.

Helmets, safety gear and supervision are key for safety when children play on riding toys.

Finally, CPSC continues to be concerned with children’s access to high-powered magnet sets:

 

Here are some additional toy safety tips:

• Keep deflated and broken balloons away from children.
• Keep small balls and other toys with small parts away from children under 3.
• Supervise battery charging. Pay attention to instructions and warnings on these chargers. Some chargers lack a mechanism to prevent overcharging.

After a three-and-a-half-hour meeting that itself followed a nearly three-hour deliberation last month, the Manhattan Community Board 7 transportation committee voted 7-0, with three abstentions, for a resolution asking DOT to study safety improvements for Amsterdam Avenue. The resolution asks DOT to consider a protected bike lane, pedestrian islands, removing one of the avenue’s four car lanes, and retiming signals. It now moves to the full board for a vote on November 6.

There are many more injuries and fatalities on Amsterdam Avenue than on other northbound avenues on the Upper West Side, according to CrashStat.org. Last December, Transportation Alternatives clocked 81 percent of Amsterdam Avenue drivers exceeding the 30 mph speed limit, with one in five drivers on a weekday afternoon traveling 40 mph or faster.

“I’ve got a major concern about speeding,” said Peter Arndtsen, district manager of the Columbus Amsterdam Business Improvement District. “Something has to be done.” Arndtsen said that while the BID does not oppose or support a bike lane on Amsterdam, it would like a bus lane considered. During public testimony last night, TA showed a video of business owners on both avenues who support the protected bike lanes. Over 200 area businesses and community groups have signed on to TA’s campaign. The Columbus Avenue BID also urged the board to support a protected bike lane on Amsterdam.

This is the latest chapter in a long campaign for protected bike lanes on the Upper West Side. Community Board 7 has hosted many hours-long meetings on the issue over the years — first for Columbus Avenue, which was considered as two separate phases, and now for Amsterdam.

Last night’s three abstentions came from committee member Lillian Moore and longtime co-chairs Dan Zweig and Andrew Albert, who all spoke against a protected bike lane on Amsterdam Avenue before the vote. All three insisted they don’t oppose bike lanes, they would just prefer studies for bike lanes on other avenues.

During committee discussion of the resolution, Zweig said he didn’t trust the data showing the reduction in traffic injuries following the installation of protected bike lanes. “We had statistics from DOT that had a great deal of problems,” he said, referring to his insistence earlier this year that DOT eliminate one year of data because it showed there were a high number of crashes on Columbus Avenue before the bike lane was installed. DOT refused to cherrypick the data according to Zweig’s wishes.

Zweig then began ranting about personal experiences with cyclists riding on the sidewalk, the wrong way, and against red lights. He also said the City Council needs to pass a law requiring cyclists to use protected bike lanes where they have been installed. “Let’s get the enforcement,” Zweig said. “Let’s pass that and get that moving before we even think of asking DOT to study anything else.”

“I acquired the reputation of being anti-bike lane. You may have seen it in all the bike lobby press,” said Zweig, who opposed lanes on both Amsterdam and Columbus. He then repeated his statement from last month that protected bike lanes are “the only ones worth doing.” Just not on streets where community members are asking for them, apparently.

There were about 100 people in the room at last night’s meeting. During public testimony, 46 people spoke, and 30 of them were in favor of the protected bike lane plan. But that didn’t stop opponents from dismissing their testimony. “You’ve got a very strong lobby. You come here and you just fill the place up,” Moore said. “They didn’t really speak to the people in the community.”

Catherine Unsino, who said she used to bike in Manhattan frequently but gave it up after she felt it was too dangerous, testified against the protected bike lane because she claimed it doesn’t help the neighborhood’s seniors or those with mobility challenges. “We’re talking about improving transportation options for the most agile,” she said.

Immediately after Unsino, Sarah Young explained that because she suffers from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that affects the joints, there are days when she cannot walk much, but must still get to her job. On those days, she said, biking is the best option because it minimizes the wear on her body. ”The most dangerous part is biking to work on Amsterdam Avenue,” she explained.

Louise Klaber, 78, testified that she began riding a bike in New York in the past five years because of the new bike lanes and supports installing one for people to ride north in the neighborhood. ”I don’t bike on Amsterdam Avenue,” she said, because it’s too dangerous without the lane.

On October 3, board chair Mark Diller organized an informational meeting between board members and DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione about Amsterdam Avenue. Last night, board members who attended the meeting had completely different reports on what DOT said. Ken Coughlin, who supports a protected bike lane on Amsterdam, said DOT expressed confidence that with some adjustments like converting a section of the east-side parking lane to a travel lane during rush hours, Amsterdam could handle its volume of traffic with three full-time car lanes as opposed to its current four. Coughlin compared the situation to Second Avenue in Kips Bay, where CB 6 recently voted to support a DOT plan to replace one of that avenue’s four car lanes with parking, providing a protective barrier along the bike lane there.

But according to Moore, DOT expressed concerned about the effect of removing a lane of car traffic on Amsterdam. Streetsblog contacted DOT for clarification, but the press office said only that if the board requests a study, “questions on traffic volumes and capacities are just the sort of subjects that would be included in a traffic analysis of the corridor.”

”My purpose in getting everybody into that room is that we would all hear the same thing,” Diller said after the meeting. “You can’t help but hear it in the way that your filter leads you to.”

At the end of the meeting, non-committee board members voted on the resolution asking DOT for a study of Amsterdam Avenue. Diller, whose term as chair expires at the end of the month, voted in favor, while Elizabeth Caputo, who will be taking over as chair, was one of two board members who abstained. On the transportation committee, meanwhile, there are no term limits: Zweig has headed the committee for at least a decade; co-chair Albert has held his position even longer.

Astronaut and aspiring crafter Karen Nyberg, who since May has been working as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station, has created a stuffed toy dinosaur for her son using the velcro-like fabric that lines the Russian food containers found on the ISS and stuffing made from an old t-shirt. Nyberg posted a photo of the finished dinosaur floating in zero gravity on her Pinterest account with a caption that says, "Made in space! I made this dinosaur for my son last Sunday, September 22."


via [Laughing Squid] via [collectSPACE]