NYC’s open streets program falls short of 100-mile promise, report says "Although de Blasio pledged to make open streets accessible to all New Yorkers, the report finds a lack of equity in where the program operates. Of those in operation today, 33.7 percent of open streets are in Manhattan, 32.3 percent are in Brooklyn, 25.5 percent are in Queens, 6.3 percent are on Staten Island, and just 2.2 percent are in the Bronx." (6sqft)
New York approves use of cross-laminated timber for six-storey buildings "The new regulations mean that buildings up to 85 feet (25.9 metres) tall can be built from the materials. This equates to structures of six or seven storeys." (Dezeen)
NYC’s historic Five Points neighborhood is officially recognized with street co-naming "The city has installed a sign at Baxter and Worth Streets in Lower Manhattan, marking the exact location of the original Five Points, a notorious 19th-century slum that was home to a diverse group of immigrants. Before this year’s street co-naming, there was no official marker at the site to honor the historic spot, considered to be one of the country’s first 'melting pots.'" (6sqft)
Advocates push MTA for more discount commuter rail tickets in NYC "A three-year-old program known as the Atlantic Ticket already offers cheaper fares for Long Island Rail Road passengers riding between Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn and Southeast Queens, but the MTA’s Permanent Citizens Advisory Council urged the agency to bring price cuts to all LIRR and Metro-North Railroad stops in the Five Boroughs." (amNY)
Study: A Road Pricing Scheme That Actually Cuts Driving "Unlike the U.S.’s fragmented mosaic of fuel taxes, roadway tolls, vehicle registration fees, and other piecemeal road funding sources — none of which even begin to cover the costs of maintaining America’s streets, much less the broader social costs inherent to an auto-centric transportation approach — the app took into account virtually every social impact of participants’ transportation choices, and translated them into francs and cents. Those included not just commonly taxed things like emissions, but also 'noise and greenhouse gases, safety risks and health effects, lack of seats on public transport, congestion on the roads, [and] also the operating and maintenance costs for the transport infrastructure.'" (Streetsblog USA)
