Denver’s 16th St. Pedestrian Mall

Some Inwood & Washington Heights Livable Streets members were torn between attending their own meeting and coming out to support nearby Community Board 8 this Wednesday. Brad Conover filed his own account of the CB 8 success, and Maggie Clarke reported back on the IWHLS meeting, bearing hopeful rumors of pedestrian mall possibilities for Dyckman Street. Maggie writes:

"The more I think about it, the more it would be kind of neat to try to replicate something like Boulder or Denver. They have almost a little park in the middle of the street with seating, trees, flowers, sculptures, little playing areas for the children, etc. Denver’s has two lanes of traffic on the outside for buses."

The group was happy to have an intern from State Senator Eric Schneiderman’s office in attendance. As Brad Aaron wrote earlier this week, IWHLS is seeing positive results for the hard work they’ve put into Dyckman Street, among other projects. Sample letters of support, petitions, and the Dyckman Greenway proposal itself are available as attachments to this page. They invite suggestions and comments on their broader goals and projects, and have mapped some of them out here. While efforts so far have proven mostly fruitless, the group hopes to get Community Board 12 on board for safer streets in Upper Manhattan.

In other news, New Haven Safe Streets Coalition posts that their state legislature is looking into stricter penalties for texting while driving; TA’s Brooklyn Volunteer Committee launches a new campaign with a Fifth Avenue ride; and we welcome new groups Smart Transit for Northern Kentucky, Livable Saskatchewan, and Rails for Rail.

Photo: kate at yr own risk/Flickr