u/ExcuseInformal9194

Driving home tonight I watched two cars beat traffic on the eastbound Belt Parkway by taking the ramp for the horse stables just past Exit 11N, then driving straight onto the greenway and down the path to the next exit.

I've had this exact thing happen to me while I was riding there, and tonight I saw it again from my car. It's not a one-off. Drivers have figured out this shortcut and are treating a pedestrian/bike path like an open highway lane.

All it would take to stop it is a proper barrier (bollards or a gate) at that ramp so cars physically can't get onto the greenway.

Does anyone know the fastest way to actually get this in front of NYC DOT so they'll install one? File a 311 complaint? Contact the local council member or community board? Trying to get it fixed before someone gets hit.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/WxcdCFTihhN8ztxD7

It’s disgusting… this doesn’t show all of the broken glass everywhere. Can’t we just all respect one another and not treat our common space like a landfill?

EDIT: looked it up, there was another reggaeton concert with DJ Max Glazer… remember a similar mess the last time he performed here (6/26), here's a pic I took the morning after: https://imgur.com/a/GqvcNKs

I use 77th Street to get from Central Park to the Hudson River Greenway, and I’ve had three flats over the past year from glass. On July 10, I submitted two 311 complaints (broken glass and inadequate street sweeping). Both were closed by the following afternoon saying there was “no condition at the location.”

So after they were closed I walked the route myself. There wasn’t a pile of glass, but there were still multiple pieces in the bike lane. See attached pics (with a Levain cookie for scale) for what was in the first half of the block west of Columbus Avenue. It can be hard to see/avoid these in this narrow lane.

For reference, the south side is scheduled for mechanical street sweeping on Tue/Fri from 11am to 12pm. I’m curious what reasonable expectation should be here in terms of thoroughness of cleaning? And would timestamped photos taken right after the scheduled cleaning window (showing that sharp debris remains in the bike lane) be enough evidence to ask for a more meaningful cleaning standard? Should a bike lane be expected to have no clearly visible glass immediately after sweeping? Maybe there is some practical reason the mechanical sweeper misses these pieces, but presumably a human doing an additional pass would see what I saw.

I feel like this is not a crazy request given this is one of the main ways of getting from the park to the greenway, at least until they make 72nd a proper protected bike corridor. I have thought about this for only a handful of minutes so what am i missing?

Reported them to 311 which reports they’ve given them summonses 3 times but they’re always still there !

I recently went down a massive rabbit hole looking at NYC’s official crash data from the last 12 months. In total, there were about 85,000 reported crashes across the city.

A few things jumped out at me immediately, and honestly, none of them are the things people constantly argue about in the comment sections.

First, let's look at what kinds of vehicles are actually getting into these crashes:

• Cars and SUVs: They make up roughly 7 out of every 10 vehicles involved.
• Trucks, buses, and vans: About 9%.
• Bikes, e-bikes, and scooters COMBINED: Only around 5%.

The massive "e-bike vs. everyone" war you see online is basically two tiny slices of the pie yelling at each other, while regular old sedans and SUVs quietly make up 70% of the actual problem.

But here is the part that really stuck with me. Those crashes killed a little over 200 people during the year. When you break down who died, the numbers look like this:

• Pedestrians : 112
• Drivers and passengers: 85
• Cyclists : 26

Think about that: pedestrians make up less than 1 in 5 of the total injuries, but they are the single biggest group when it comes to deaths. Getting hurt or banged up in a crash is usually something that happens to people inside cars. But actually dying in a crash is very often a walking thing. Seeing those numbers definitely changed how I look at crossing the street, even when I have the walk sign.

If you're wondering where all this is happening, the worst roads in the city by raw crash count are the big highways. The Belt Parkway took the number one spot with 993 crashes in a year, followed by the LIE, the BQE, and the Grand Central Parkway. If you want to avoid the single worst intersection in the entire city, stay away from the Grand Central Parkway at Jewel Avenue in Queens.

When you break it down by borough, Brooklyn takes the crown for the most crashes (around 23,600), followed closely by Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx. Staten Island is the quietest by a mile with only about 2,700 crashes though it’s also the smallest borough, so that’s not exactly something to brag about.

NYC Intel

I pulled all ~3.9 million 311 complaints New Yorkers filed over the last year and ranked them. The single most-complained-about thing in the entire city, by a wide margin: illegal parking — 606,107 complaints, about 1,660 a day.

That beats noise. It beats heat-and-hot-water during winter. It beats rats, potholes, dirty streets — everything.

Widen it to all car stuff — illegal parking, blocked driveways, derelict/abandoned vehicles, vehicle noise — and you get ~954,000 complaints. Nearly a quarter (24.5%) of every single 311 call in NYC is about cars. In the most car-dependent neighborhoods it's closer to half: Long Island City ~48%, Bay Ridge 41%, Bensonhurst 34%.

Fair nuance so nobody @'s me: a lot of these are cars-vs-cars — people mad about a double-parked truck, a blocked hydrant, someone in their driveway. But that's exactly the point. That much conflict is the symptom of cramming too many cars into too little curb. It's the friction of over-supplying car storage, logged a million times a year.

And the same streets don't just generate complaints — they generate bodies. Last 12 months: cars injured 8,605 pedestrians and 5,075 cyclists, and killed 132 people walking or biking. 80,000+ reported crashes.

So what? Whenever someone asks "is there really public demand to take space back from cars?" — the answer is sitting in the data, screaming. New Yorkers file more complaints about cars than about anything else in the city. A million times a year. The loudest, most-repeated signal in all of NYC's civic data is people fed up with how much room we've handed to cars. Right-sizing our streets isn't a fringe ask — it's the majority, already yelling for it, one 311 call at a time.

(Data: NYC Open Data — 311 Service Requests + Motor Vehicle Collisions, trailing 12 months.)

NYC Intel

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UPDATE: Planter is back where it belongs (for now). Thanks for all your suggestions! And if you were the king/queen that moved it, hats off to you!

Forgive me for being a Karen, but I’ve submitted 5 reports over the course of 2 weeks for a daylighting planter that’s blocking the bike lane, and nearly each time it’s closed without action in two hours.

I say nearly every time because it was actually rectified after the first report (but moved back into the bike lane after a couple days). Today I filed a report at like 4:30, only to be closed without action at 7:30. Filed again just now.

Now, I’m aware 311 is useless. But I’m petty, and hoping that some day in the future there will be an analysis identifying the most incapable precincts using this data.

So if anyone wants to join in submitting reports for it, here’s the info:
- 71 smith st (smith and state, right outside Debutea)
- **illegal parking (blocking bike lane)
- recurring problem -> yes

** if you know of a better option in the app, pls let me know.

I also reported to NYC DOT. Had to use the customer service form because pretty much every complaint option listed on their website directs you to 311 🙃 would love to hear if anyone else has found a better way to get these issues resolved.