Walking Is Transportation

WHICH WILL IT BE--A PUBLIC PARK, OR MORE PRIVATE-PROFIT TOWNHOUSES?

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WHAT HAPPENS TO 38 ACRES
NEAR THIS CORNER IN NEW BRIGHTON
MAY VERY WELL DEPEND ON WHAT YOU DO TODAY.

TOGETHER,
WE CAN MAKE
THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THIS . . .






(Photo of the actual site
taken May 22, 2009.)



 

 


. . . AND THESE.





(Photo by Flashon)

WHICH WILL IT BE?

According to information received from Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, Staten Island's land conservation organization, the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, has already begun.

ULURP would authorize the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to purchase a 38-acre parcel within Goodhue Center, a New Brighton facility owned and operated by the Children's Aid Society.


Located within a site bounded roughly by Prospect, Lafayette and Brighton avenues, Goodhue Woods is the last large tract of undeveloped land on Staten Island's north shore.

The Parks Department purchase offers the community an opportunity, in concert with our political leaders, to chart a different course from the one the developers prefer. And that is to acquire Goodhue Woods for public use as a public park. This purchase also carries forward, its essence unchanged, the vision of the property's last private owner, Sara Goodhue, who in 1918 donated the land for the community's greater good.

(Photo of the actual site taken May 22, 2009.)

WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY
TO MAKE GOODHUE WOODS
STATEN ISLAND'S
NEWEST PUBLIC PARK

You don't have to follow every suggestion below. But please, pick one (or more) and follow through. Let's make this happen.

Write a letter.
--To Mayor Bloomberg, City Hall, New York, N. Y. 10007
--To the Staten Island Advance, 950 Fingerboard Road, 10305; or silive.com
--To your political representatives, asking for political and monetary support for the acquisition of the property (the mayor is reportedly considering a large donation)

Attend a hearing and express your support.
--Parks Department presentation and public hearing, Staten Island Community Board 1 Land Use Committee, June 1, 8 p.m., at the board offices, One Edgewater Plaza, Clifton, Suite 217. Information: 718-981-6900.
--Community Board 1 will vote on the Parks Department's proposed purchase at its Tuesday, June 9 meeting at All Saints Church, 2329 Victory Boulevard, Willowbrook. Please attend the public contact session, which begins at 7:30 p.m. Information: 718-981-6900.

BLESSED WITH DENSITY

WITH MORE PEOPLE, YOU GET . . . MORE

Though they arrived in St. George too late, real estate bubble-wise, to find many takers for their "It's the next Hoboken!" fantasy, the developer crowd now marketing St. George/Tompkinsville as 'Downtown Staten Island' has gotten one thing right, in my opinion:

A walkable New York City neighborhood located 1/2 hour from downtown Manhattan can support greater density.

What kind of density, in what form, and where, are all valid questions, but out of the question for the purposes of this post. My point here is straightforward: with more people come more of everything. Including more offbeat, crazy or eccentric events, experiences, and people. That's why I live in a city. The city.

It's not that slightly weird stuff doesn't happen everywhere; it's simply that more of it happens where there are more people to make it happen. As, for example:

A CLOWN IN
THE DRIVER'S SEAT

Good thing my neighbor and friend Marc Zimetbaum had his digital camera at the ready when he spied this Clown-in-a-Car, sitting in the driver's seat on St. Marks Place in St. George, outside the Curtis High School gate.

Turns out he was just killing time prior to a scheduled appearance at a children's birthday party across the street at Castleton Park apartments. The unidentified man put on a particularly winning smile for Marc's camera.

But wait. There's more:

TALE OF A TEPEE

A few days later, my friend Steve Nutt, a potter and fiber artist from Ward Hill, was riding his bike through St. George. 

He was proceeding northwest on St. Marks, approaching Hamilton Avenue--about a half block from the location where my friend Marc spotted the Clown-in-a-Car just a few days before.

As Steve approached the corner, he saw the conical object at right out of the corner of his eye. Luckily for me, he had brought his camera along, just in case.

Thanks, Steve and Marc, for documenting two of the loonier aspects of two representative days in the life of St. George, which would not have been complete without clown and tepee.

More on pedestrian access to Staten Island's Greenbelt

Sculpture: Victoria Bellinger, Silver Lake, S.I. ( victoriabellinger.com/index/html )

Unfit for pedestrians

Last August, I walked from home to the perimeter of Staten Island's Greenbelt, whereupon all pedestrian amenities vanished and I was forced to continue my walk in a gully at the side of the road, along with the beer cans, bottles and other assorted trash thrown there. Drivers whizzed by, leaving only a very few feet between me and them. It was scary and I was mad.

Here's some of what I wrote about that incident in a post dated August 27:

"Walkers have right of safe access to the Greenbelt, just as those who arrive in cars do. We represent a fraction of the footprint of a car, in terms of the space we occupy and the impact we have on the environment. Yet cars, often with only one occupant, are provided roads that are built and maintained by the tax dollars of walkers as well as drivers. For our tax dollars, we get a narrow, dangerous strip of deteriorated macadam.

"Sidewalks should be installed bordering every main road, street or avenue in the Greenbelt. I understand the legitimate concern of those who see only another encroachment on the Greenbelt's 'Forever Wild' mandate. But providing a means of access for those who walk rather than ride is a matter of fairness and equity--a pretty fundamental ideal."

A meeting with the Greenbelt's administrator

I learned later from fellow blogger Steve Patterson of Urban Review STL.com that there is a national organization called Complete the Street which is promoting precisely this idea--but a better one than mine because it provides for cyclists as well as pedestrians.

I intend to state the No Safe Access for Pedestrians problem and suggest the Complete the Street solution at a meeting tomorrow evening of Staten Island's premier environmental organization, Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, of which I'm a member. The Greenbelt's administrator is scheduled as guest speaker, so I'll be directing my questions and comments to her.

I'll report on the meeting in a day or two.

Different day, same illegal parking

It's been two weeks since September 20, when I observed several cars parked on the sidewalk in front of a strip mall occupied by a municipal agency and a not-for-profit on Richmond Terrace between Stuyvesant Place and Hamilton Avenue in St. George, Staten Island. I took pictures of the offending vehicles and promptly posted them here.

When I returned to that location today, I discovered even more cars parked on the sidewalk, including a dark-colored SUV parked so close to the curb, it forced pedestrians into the street to get around it.

Around the corner, on Hamilton Avenue between Richmond Terrace and Stuyvesant Place, there were three cars parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street, all right near a clearly visible "No Parking Anytime" sign. This location is only one block away from, and on the same side of Richmond Terrace as, the 120th Precinct, NYPD. How is it these violators are allowed to remain unticketed and unchallenged, day after day?

What's more, this location is only two blocks from the ferry terminal, the borough's multi-modal transportation center, where the ferry docks and where the MTA-operated Staten Island Railway and most MTA-operated bus lines begin and end . Why--considering all the negatives associated with private transportation--are so many people still bringing their cars into St. George, probably the most densely developed and populated neighborhood on Staten Island, and the best served by mass transit?

It looks like it's time to spread the word--and the pictures.

Sidewalks are for parking

Strip malls inserted into urban streetscapes--like the one shown below, on Richmond Terrace between Stuyvesant Place and Hamilton Avenue in St. George, Staten Island-- are always a mistake.

These mini-malls don't conform to the existing pattern of commercial development. That is, they don't isolate parking in the back, behind a line of stores whose fronts are at the building line established by other buildings on the street. Rather, they recess the storefronts and locate the parking in front, forcing those on foot to enter a parking lot in order to reach the stores.

Worse, strip malls in urban settings erode the traditional area of pedestrian safety between sidewalk and roadway, making pedestrian use of the sidewalk contingent on the willingness of the driver to let him/her pass without challenge. In most cases, the pedestrian defers to the potentially lethal automobile.

The following photos show the strip mall phenomenon taken to the next logical step: Not content to share the sidewalk with pedestrians for access and egress, drivers who work at or visit this St. George strip mall have taken over the sidewalks, too, forcing pedestrians to walk around parked cars on sidewalks where they, not cars, are supposed to be the prime users.

In the winter, when sidewalks get icy, this situation isn't just inconvenient; it's dangerous. And winter is right around the corner.

120th Precinct, S.I.: Why aren't these cars ticketed or towed?

CROSSWALKS, TOO!

This crosswalk, also at Stuyvesant Place and Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island, is like many on Staten Island; it has a car parked smack in the middle of it. But it's hard to get too exercised over this violation of the law, except in the abstract.

That's because––though it may not be visible in this image––the crosswalk, with or without a car parked in it, leads not to a sidewalk but directly into the center of a stout and stately Sycamore tree, reportedly the favorite of Robert Moses, who planted millions of 'em throughout the five boroughs during his reign.

Still, one has to wonder: What were the DOT traffic engineers thinking?