New “People’s 311” Site Maps Street Hazards

311_4.JPG Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called "People’s 311." They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs.

People’s 311 is a "crowdsourcing" response to the Street Conditions Observation Unit (SCOUT) program, a new team of inspectors dispatched by the Mayor’s Office of Operations to drive every city street (in scooters) once per month and report problem conditions to 311. McLaren and Lambert think this is something citizens could help with. They eventually plan to map all photos for a more comprehensive picture of reported problems.

Check the Stay Free! Magazine Blog for details. And for more experiments in crowdsourcing, see Brian Lehrer’s SUV count from earlier this month, and, of course, Streetsblog’s favorite project, Uncivil Servants.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

311 Is a Joke: NYPD Ignores Bike Lane-Blocking Big Rigs in Red Hook

By Brad Aaron |
In the space of a few hours this afternoon, one cyclist’s experience, chronicled in real time on Twitter, summed up NYPD’s indifference to keeping bike lanes clear of motor vehicles. At 8:00 this morning, Anna Zivarts encountered a flatbed tractor-trailer parked in the two-way Imlay/Summit Street bike lane in Red Hook. When that truck and a […]

You Can Now Tell 311 About Bike Lane Blockers

By David Meyer |
New Yorkers can now report drivers illegally blocking bike lanes via the city’s 311 website and mobile apps, according to an update from 311 yesterday. The 311 website and the “NYC 311” app enable users to report quality of life, health, and safety complaints to the city. Yesterday’s update added “blocked bike lane” to the set of “illegal parking” violations that can […]

DSNY Needs to Devise a Better Fix for NYC’s Abandoned Bike Problem

By David Meyer |
Unusable, forgotten bikes are mainstays of the NYC streetscape, hogging bike parking for months and even years before they meet the Department of Sanitation’s standards for removal. DSNY has proposed a rule change to loosen its criteria, but advocates say it doesn’t go far enough to solve the city’s abandoned bike problem. Reports of abandoned bikes have increased 43 percent this year compared to 2015, […]