Archinect - News

New York City releases RFP to transform Park Avenue into a verdant, public space

2024-08-30T08:00:00-04:00

Earlier this week, the City of New York released a request for proposals (RFP) to redesign a portion of Park Avenue, between East 46th Street and East 57th Street, by adding greenery, public seating, concessions, and safer crossings for pedestrians.

This section of Park Avenue sits atop the Grand Central Terminal Train Shed, which is currently undergoing a major rehabilitation by the City and the MTA. The project includes replacing the train shed roof structure and waterproofing membrane, along with enhancing Park Avenue, which will be removed and reconstructed in stages as underground work occurs. The street will be restored with an expanded median for pedestrians. Its redesign aims to enhance public space, promote sustainable transit options, and foster community for residents and visitors.

The New York City Department of Transportation is seeking design services from a contractor with a background in landscape architecture or urban design to fill the wider median with elements,...

New York City is testing out new bike lane barriers across three boroughs this summer

2022-06-13T15:28:00-04:00

The city is experimenting with new types of bike lane barriers to separate cyclists from traffic ahead of what’s typically a busy summer biking season. It plans to install the materials in five locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. It will also put up a new type of barrier in the Bronx to protect a bus lane there.

If effective, New York City’s Department of Transportation could include the new rubber and concrete barriers and curb designs as part of its plan to reinforce 20 miles of bike lanes in the city by the end of 2023. These barriers can effectively separate bike lanes from vehicular travel lanes without large-scale installation operations. The city also recently began deploying Jersey barriers, modular concrete or plastic barriers used to separate traffic, to secure bike lanes. The test for these new bike lane barriers is to see how effective they are in preventing vehicles from driving over them. The first of the barriers will be installed in Union Square this coming weekend. A protected bus lane pilot lane will also be installed in the Bronx.

This initiative aligns with Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to spend $900 million to build more bus and bicycle lanes throughout New York as part of the Streets Master Plan, passed in 2019, requiring the city to build 250 miles of protected bike lanes ...

LA's new Sixth Street Viaduct is about to change common perspectives on public urban space

2022-03-28T12:34:00-04:00

Once it opens, construction will start on public playing fields, gathering areas, green spaces and a dog park at the foot of the bridge on the Boyle Heights side, and a performance stage and green spaces on the Arts District side. And cyclists can gear up for the fall unveiling of a 10-foot-wide bicycle lane going both directions on the bridge, which they can access from the bike lane at the river via a steep spiraling ramp. It is a ride that will take some energy.

LA architect Michael Maltzan spoke about his desire for the reborn cinematic landmark to be received as a public space that is suis generis within the available Downtown and Boyle Heights vistas, which are mostly blocked by hilly areas and typified by a lack of public space.

“The bridge is really meant to be a civic armature, to turn infrastructure into something that weaves together the city and connects communities. It's really going to be an observatory,” he told KCRW's Frances Anderton. “It gives you a different image, a different picture, a different view, a different vantage of the city that you think you know very well.”

Previously on Archinect: LA's famed 6th Street Viaduct now has its first span in place

Maltzan also discussed his built-in challenge for Angeleno cyclists, a group he counts himself among that has exploded since the beginning of the pandemic and plays a pivotal role in the city’s comprehensive 2035 mobility plan.

“You have to put in a bit of an effort to earn ...

The Brooklyn Bridge’s infrastructure improvements are kickstarting a renaissance for bicycling

2022-03-25T13:18:00-04:00

The Brooklyn Bridge finally caught up with the COVID-19-era rise in cycling last year after the city opened a dedicated bike path on the iconic span’s roadway. It was one of the signature initiatives in the final year of the Mayor Bill de Blasio administration, and advocates lauded the addition, which was also the first reconfiguration of the bridge since old trolley tracks were permanently removed in 1950.

Bicycle traffic on the bridge increased by more than a quarter from 2020 to last year. The jump is indicative of an overall city-wide trend, which has seen New Yorkers’ biking habits increase at a rate of 33%. The numbers likely correlate to the pandemic-era decrease in subway ridership caused by fears of viral contagion and an increase in violent incidents.

New York inaugurated 30 additional miles of dedicated bike paths in the past months, leading to a marked increase in traffic on the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges (although DOT noted a minor decline in the use of the Williamsburg Bridge). The (almost) 139-year-old structure had previously only allowed for very uncomfortable biking on its crowded pedestrian walkway before construction was completed in the fall, after which the AMNY recorded a whopping 88% increase from the same months in 2020.

New report highlights inequities and shortcomings of NYC Mayor de Blasio's Open Streets program

2021-10-19T18:47:00-04:00

A new report released by New York City-based, non-profit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives reveals the deficiencies of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Open Streets program, an initiative formed in the wake of the pandemic to create safe, socially distanced outdoor space for New Yorkers. Less than half of the Open Streets are currently active, with further flaws in the form of inequitable access to and quality of those that are operational.

The report titled, Open Streets Forever: The Case for Permanent 24/7 Open Streets, was formed through a data collection effort that included nearly 800 reports from volunteer surveyors who visited all 274 Open Street locations across the five boroughs this summer. The report finds that Mayor de Blasio’s program has fallen short of the promised 100-mile mark for street closures and has failed to serve all New Yorkers equally.

According to the report, only 46% of listed Open Streets were actually active, which is equivalent to 24 miles. Of these, 3...

UPenn study uses biometric data to identify unsafe urban infrastructure

2021-07-21T17:08:00-04:00

A new study published in Accident Analysis & Prevention shows how biometric data can be used to find potentially challenging and dangerous areas of urban infrastructure before a crash occurs. Lead author Megan Ryerson led a team of researchers in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the School of Engineering and Applied Science in collecting and analyzing eye-tracking data from cyclists navigating Philadelphia’s streets.

As explained in a piece by Penn Today, current federal rules for making safe transportation interventions require the notation of crashes. This reactive approach relies on previous human cost before new considerations are made. Seeking to minimize harmful events altogether, Ryerson and her team sought to capture data on human behavior to better understand what factors make an area unsafe rather than previous data.

The team developed a quantitative methodology to evaluate cognitive workload, a measure of mental effort put forth by someone in response to certain tasks, in cyclists when faced with various infrastructure designs.

One of the main findings was a correlation between locations with disproportionately high numbers of crashes and consistent biometric responses that indicated increased cognitive workload. While high cognitive workload doesn’t mean a person will definitely crash, it can be inferred that one is less effective in processing new information, which could lead to d...

Olson Kundig designs new mixed-use high-rise along Atlanta's BeltLine

2021-05-21T13:57:00-04:00

A new mixed-use high-rise development designed by Olson Kundig is currently under construction along Atlanta’s BeltLine. Led by developer New City, LLC, 760 Ralph McGill Boulevard is a 1.1 million-square-foot project that includes office space and street-level retail organized around a central public plaza. The project, which is located on the site of a former Georgia Power operations center, also includes HKS as executive architect and Brasfield & Gorrie as general contractor.

760 Ralph McGill Boulevard is currently under construction along Atlanta's BeltLine. Photo: Google Maps/Luke Canan

“We’ve always felt this unique site gave us the opportunity to do something truly iconic,” says Jim Irwin, president of New City, LLC. “The new buildings expand local civic and cultural amenities, as well as introducing a modern new workplace for our future tenants.”

760 Ralph McGill Boulevard was designed to create new urban connections between Old Fourth Ward Park and the rapidly revitalizing A...

New York City unveils plan to convert roads into open, public spaces

2021-05-17T16:09:00-04:00

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced the “Open Boulevards” program, a new initiative to enhance and expand ten multi-block corridors to create more open space throughout the city. The plan builds off of last year’s “Open Streets: Restaurants” program, which transformed miles of streets into open space for diners, cyclists, and pedestrians to enjoy while also assisting small businesses during the pandemic.

With Open Streets, designated areas had limited vehicle access and no through traffic was permitted. Only vehicles that were parking, picking up and dropping off, delivering, and performing essential services were allowed, advised to to be extremely cautious and to drive five miles per hour or slower on the streets. Temporary full closures were also in effect, which completely halted vehicle access, including parking, on certain streets. Additionally, according to Andrew Rigie, the head of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, the program has so far allowed about 100...

Personal car use will drop 10% by 2030, study says

2020-02-14T14:55:00-05:00

Private car travel will decline in the world's largest cities by 10% over the next decade, according to a study from research consultancy firm Kantar, revealed this week at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum. Based on the survey, Kantar predicts greener means of transport will represent nearly half (50%) of all trips taken in cities in 2030, with cycling to increase globally by 18%, walking to increase by 15% and public transit use to increase by 6%.

According to Smart Cities Dive, the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum surveyed 20,000 city dwellers across 31 cities to better understand how their preferred methods of travel might change over the next decade. The10 cities that will see the biggest change in green transport are Manchester, England; Moscow; Sao Paulo; Paris; Johannesburg; Guangzhou, China; Milan; Montreal; Amsterdam and Shanghai, Smart Cities Dive reports.

Steven Fleming's Velotopia paints a city built for cycling

2017-08-15T13:00:00-04:00

No disciples of Le Corbusier, Harvey Corbett, Robert Moses or Norman Bel Geddes have been to Velotopia. That means there are no highways and no racks of car-parking stations. Neither have any disciples of Ebenezer Howard been there to suggest that development be clustered around satellite towns with train connections back to the core.

Steven Fleming (previously featured in our Working Out of the Box series), founder of the Dutch bike-centric planning consultancy Cycle Space, recently published a new book that lays out an utopian city built around bicycles as the main form of transportation. In Velotopia people enjoy their daily commutes, the flow of traffic is smooth and the development is mixed use and compact.

Velotopia Photograph: Courtesy of cycle-space.com

Indoor bike parking spaces match the anticipated number of beds allowing trips to start inside the home. Photograph: Courtesy of cycle-space.com

An edited excerpt in The Guardian showcases Fleming's wry thought experiment. Velotopia is as circular as the topography has allowed, for the usual reason that citizens are always clamouring to live near the civic centre.Development has been restricted to level ground and city limits have been restricted to a diameter of 15km. That ensures average commuting distances of less than 7km and average trip times of less th...

Is biking good for you even if the air is heavily polluted?

2016-05-23T20:01:00-04:00

...Given all the harm we know air pollution can cause, does cycling actually help, or could it hurt? After all, I’m not breathing in the foul fumes of a truck when I’m sitting inside an air-conditioned train. I’m certainly not breathing them in deeply, as I would while huffing and puffing on my cycle. Air pollution kills more than 5 million people every year, yet there has been no analysis of the costs versus benefits of city cycling. Until now.

Long story short: keep biking. Researchers found that, in almost every city around the world, the health benefits of biking "far exceed" the damage than can be caused by breathing in dirty air. Even in the worst polluted cities in the world, you have to ride at least 60 minutes a day to be more harmed than helped.

For more on the dirty air polluting cities around the world, check out these links:

These fascinating GPS doodles were 'drawn' by cycling the grid of the city

2016-02-09T15:11:00-05:00

Stephen Lund considers the Canadian city of Victoria his canvas and a bicycle his brush. And the paint? Strava, a GPS tracking system which marks his routes with crimson lines. So far, he has pedaled around in the shapes of critters such as an angler fish, giraffe, giant anteater, and nine-banded armadillo; mythical and interplanetary creatures such as the Siren of the Salish Sea, the Sea Serpent of Haro Strait, and the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Take a look at some of Lund's intricate "GPS Doodles," also known as "Strava art:"

Head over to Stephen Lund's blog gpsdoodles.com to find way more of this goodness and watch him explain his approach in the video from the recent TEDxVictoria below.

In spite of sleet and snow, cycling prevails in Minneapolis

2016-01-18T13:33:00-05:00

Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent [...] Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking.

Germany opens first stretch of new cycling superhighway

2016-01-04T18:18:00-05:00

The newly opened portion is just 5km (3 miles)— but the completed highway is set to span over 100km and will connect 10 cities and four universities .... Almost two million people will live less than a mile from the new cycling autobahn [...] the bicycle highway will be 13-feet wide—or almost double the width of normal cycle paths—and have no crossroads or traffic lights. [...] it’ll also be greener. RVR estimates that the route will take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.

Poor street design makes California city liable for damages in cyclist's death

2015-12-10T13:00:00-05:00

Dr. Gerald Brett Weiss ... was killed when he was hit from behind while riding his bicycle in the community of Indian Wells, CA. [...] his family won a $5.8 million judgment against Indian Wells, claiming that the city was negligent in not providing sufficient width for bike lanes or lighting [...] California is one of thirteen states that follows the Pure Comparative Fault Rule, meaning that even if the city is only partially at fault—even only one percent—the plaintiff can recover damages.

Weiss was hit from behind by an allegedly drunk driver in June of 2012, on a road that, previous to a redesign in 2005, had been marked as a bike route and had bike lanes.

More news on cycling design and safety:

Car-free events significantly improve air quality

2015-10-22T20:29:00-04:00

CicLAvia [is] a series of one-day events organized by a local nonprofit in which neighborhood streets are closed to motor vehicles so that people can walk and cycle freely... Now, a study by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has found that the event significantly reduces air pollution along the CicLAvia route and even on other streets in the communities where the event is held.

For more information on CicLAvia, visit their website.

Jakarta's "car-free days" are only the start of the city's long journey to becoming bike-friendly

2015-09-11T18:13:00-04:00

Ask a cyclist what it’s like to ride in Indonesia’s capital – a sprawling megalopolis of 10.2 million people...More than likely, they’ll tell you it’s outright dangerous...Car-free days may be popular, but there is almost no [cyclist] infrastructure... [However, there] is hope among cyclists that bike lanes will become a priority after the city’s [mass rapid transport] system is finished in 2019. In the meantime, several young innovators are taking matters into their own hands.

As bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanes

2015-07-14T12:59:00-04:00

North Korea has installed cycle lanes on major thoroughfares in Pyongyang in an apparent bid to cut down on pedestrian accidents, as more residents are able to afford to buy bicycles. Bicycles are an expensive but increasingly popular mode of transport for many in the country where private car ownership, although on the rise, is still rare. [...] As recently as 2014, cycling was still illegal for women, though the ban was much flouted.

Copenhagen could ax its pioneering city bike program by month's end

2015-04-17T19:20:00-04:00

In 2013, Copenhagen—a city of ebullient cyclists—launched the mother of all city bike schemes. Its white bikes were fitted with motors and GPS-enabled tablets—expensive, but designed for a place whose people and visitors truly believed cycling was the best way forward. Now the city that pioneered its first shared bikes in 1995 is facing a stark possibility: no bike share scheme at all.

Senator proposes mandatory helmets for California cyclists

2015-02-13T12:56:00-05:00

Sen. Carol Liu on Wednesday announced a bill, SB 192, that will require bicycle riders to wear helmets or face a $25 fine. “Any responsible bicycle rider should wear a helmet,” Liu said ... “This law will help protect more people and make sure all riders benefit from the head protection that a helmet provides.”

California law currently requires anyone under 18 to wear a helmet when riding a bike, nonmotorized scooter, skateboard, or wearing in-line or roller skates. Liu's SB 192 bill would extend this provision to everyone, not just minors, and also require cyclists to wear reflective clothing at night – requirements that no other state has adopted.

It might seem like wearing a helmet is the first-move for safe cycling, but Dan Snyder, head of the California Bicycle Coalition, disagrees: as quoted in the Sacramento Bee, “We know that the most important thing to protect people who ride bikes is to get more people out there riding bikes. Forcing people to wear crash helmets when they ride is counter productive to that goal.” This is the same reasoning behind ”Critical Mass": organized cycling tours that flood city streets with so many cyclists as to force car traffic into submission. Safety, for cyclists, is in numbers.

In countries with a hefty number of cyclists, where infrastructural adapta...

Gensler proposes "Underline" bike paths in London's abandoned tube tunnels

2015-02-05T13:47:00-05:00

Could the answer to London’s congestion be a network of subterranean cycleways? A new project from design firm Gensler suggests that maybe – just maybe – it might. Dubbed the London Underline, the project would turn London’s abandoned tube tunnels into living streets beneath the city. [...] London Underline is being taken seriously enough in some quarters. Earlier this week, it won the Best Conceptual Project gong at the London Planning awards.

Boris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighway

2015-01-29T15:10:00-05:00

Boris Johnson today confirmed he would build Europe’s longest segregated urban cycle lane through central London after delays likely to be suffered by motorists were reduced. The Mayor approved the “Crossrail for bikes” protected route through Parliament Square and along the Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street after it won overwhelming public support.

MIT's MindRider helmet draws mental maps as you bike

2014-08-29T14:55:00-04:00

Originally developed at MIT, MindRider is a new helmet that shows, in real time, how your rides, movement, and location engage your mind. The MindRider app maps and tracks your engagement, and allows you to share your maps with others. These maps provide quantified insight that empower you to maximize your riding experience, and they are a great resource for riding communities and street advocacy.

Unlike many other biometric monitoring devices, the MindRider helmet isn't just about recording your physical activities; it's about harvesting data from normal routines to better inform public policy. The MindRider "reads" electrical activity between the brain's neurons, but the technology isn't invasive enough to determine anything beyond where on the route you're concentrating ("Hotspots") or coasting ("Sweetspots"). For an individual rider, boiling down the data into these two categories simplifies the ride experience, but with enough participants, the service can paint the cycling personality of an entire city, and provide a highly personal way to publicly engage with cycling. Maybe it can even make drivers empathize with stressed out cyclists.

While the actual helmet isn't commercially available quite yet, MindRider recently reached its Kickstarter goal to create "The MindRider Guide to New York City", a map and guidebook to the city's mental cycling infrastructure. Whether tha...

Exploring and Collaborating on Shared-Use Mobility Services

2014-07-10T14:13:00-04:00

In June, the “Innovation in Mobility Public Policy Summit,” sponsored by the Association for Commuter Transportation, Transportation Sustainability Research Center, Mobility Lab, Transit Center, and Shared-Use Mobility Center, brought together a range of participants to discuss these themes in Washington, DC.

At the summit, elected officials, transportation entrepreneurs, academics, and developers engaged with a number of questions including, “What are new ways of solving urban mobility problems? How can we better design systems to address the needs of the public? Who should be engaged to make this happen?”

Rise in cycling expands NYC's real estate market

2014-05-29T13:07:00-04:00

As the search for more affordable real estate in New York City pushes deeper into neighborhoods that were once considered out of the way, bicycle lanes are taking on new importance. Since 2007, the city has carved out more than 350 miles of bike lanes in the five boroughs, according to the Department of Transportation. As a result, the distance from the nearest subway or bus stop has become less of a drawback for the two-wheeled set, particularly in transit-challenged areas of Brooklyn.

Biking to work in the U.S. has increased 60% over last decade

2014-05-14T13:14:00-04:00

Many U.S. cities are seeing an increase in bicycle commuters, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Nationwide, the number of people who traveled to work by bike increased roughly 60 percent over the last decade, from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 during the 2008-2012 period. This is the largest percentage increase of all commuting modes tracked by the 2000 Census and the 2008-2012 American Community Survey.

If you're feeling wonky, you can read the full U.S. Census Bureau report here. It's the Census Bureau's first report to focus entirely on biking and walking to work, with statistics since 1990.

You can also explore commuting statistics for every U.S. neighborhood in the Bureau's Census Explorer, an interactive map that breaks down commuting by commuter age, census tract, type of transportation, and total time.

In Indianapolis, a Bike Path to Progress

2014-03-05T11:07:00-05:00

Before the path arrived, Indianapolis didn’t have a mainstream bike scene — just streets designed to improve traffic flow. Now, children and the elderly have joined the spandex swarms of longtime cycling enthusiasts... The public art along the trail accentuates the path’s role as a sculptor of the city’s evolving identity. For example, Donna Sink’s “Moving Forward” is a series of seven stained-glass-hued eco-friendly bus shelters covered in lines from poems by local writers.

Protected bike lanes strengthen city economy, report finds

2014-01-22T13:07:00-05:00

According to a recent report from PeopleForBikes and Alliance for Biking & Walking, protected city bike lanes can actually encourage local business success. As trends show workers moving into U.S. cities (rather than out into suburbs), and businesses catering to a younger workforce that relies less on cars, cycling infrastructure has becomes integral to strengthening local businesses and encouraging long-term economic growth for the entire city.

A lot of what delays cycling infrastructure is the presumption that it only benefits cyclists. It can be hard to justify to citizens who don't cycle that bike lanes and bike-share programs will benefit the city at large, and not just the "cyclist" demographic. But cities have begun to take notice of the positive change that cycling infrastructure can help bring to their local businesses, in very concrete ways.

The report focuses on statistics from cities with expanding networks of protected bike lanes: Austin, TX; San Francisco, CA;...

Portland's "Bikescraper" breaks bike-parking record

2014-01-15T15:25:00-05:00

The 21-story, three-building apartment project now rising in Portland's Lloyd District will create more long-term bike parking than any other project in the nation, with four huge new storage facilities in four buildings and an on-site bike valet parking service to serve the biggest one. [...] Bike experts in Canada, Mexico and across the United States said they didn't know of any single project on the continent with more bike parking; Mexico's largest facility, at a train station, holds 800.

Portland, Oregon's new apartment complex by GBD Architects instates a new standard in bicycle infrastructure and planning, offering one bike parking spot each for its 657 housing units, plus underground parking space for as many as 547 bikes. That's 1,204 bike spots total, a number that assumes the average household will need to park 1.8 bikes. There will be 328 residential car parking spaces, squeaking by at roughly half a spot per household.

Known as Hassalo on Eighth (the four-block complex sits northeast of the corner of 7th and Holladay), the apartments fall in Portland's Inner East neighborhood, on the border of the city's center. Previously dominated by stretches of parking lots, the area could become a more active, walkable and dense neighborhood under GBD's plan. The building itself is not radically asserting the needs of "cyclists" -- a slippery and short-sighted demographic label that casts bicycle infrastructure as a radical objective of niche groups, and not just... a g...

A new L.A. identity takes shape in 2013 as city embraces urban life

2014-01-02T20:01:00-05:00

Notes on the Year: This year Los Angeles entered fresh civic territory as a range of initiatives across the city helped fuel an urban reawakening.