Noah Kazis
Noah joined Streetsblog as a New York City reporter at the start of 2010. When he was a kid, he collected subway paraphernalia in a Vignelli-map shoebox.
Before coming to Streetsblog, he blogged at TheCityFix DC and worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Toledo, Ohio. Noah graduated from Yale University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the class politics of transportation reform in New York City. He lives in Morningside Heights.
Recent Posts
Everyone’s On Board for East Harlem Bike Lanes — Except NYCDOT
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Is there any neighborhood in New York City that has asked for more and received less, in terms of safe street improvements, than East Harlem? In 2010, days after it was announced that the First and Second Avenue protected bike lanes were on hold between 34th Street and 125th Street, Community Board 11 members blasted […]
Developer: I’ve Walked Away From Projects Because of Parking Minimums
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Housing is harder to build, more expensive, and often lower-quality as a result of the city’s parking regulations, according to one New York City developer. Alan Bell was a high-ranking housing official in the Koch administration before co-founding the Hudson Companies in 1986. Since then, Hudson has built 4,250 affordable and market-rate housing units in […]
DOT to Extend East Side Bike Lanes to 57th, But Mostly With Shared Lanes
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The First and Second Avenue bike lanes on Manhattan’s East Side will only be extended from 34th Street to 57th Street this year, not up to 125th Street as advanced in a plan that won community board approvals in 2010. While First Avenue will receive Manhattan’s first northbound parking-protected bike lane above 34th Street, the […]
New Study: The Parking Placard On That Car Is Probably Illegal
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What happens when you put a police station, a courthouse, and borough hall in one place? Utter lawlessness. In a new report [PDF], Transportation Alternatives looked at the dashboards of the vehicles parked in the civic centers of each borough. In areas just a few blocks wide, hundreds of vehicles were displaying placards boasting of […]
Domenic Recchia: There’s a Place For Bike Lanes, But I’m Not Telling Where
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“I’m not against bike lanes,” City Council Member Domenic Recchia told the New York Times after forcing DOT to scrap plans for a four-mile painted bike lane along Bay Ridge Parkway two weeks ago. “I believe there’s a place for them.” I’d like to believe Recchia. After all, there are currently no on-street bike lanes […]
To Get Safer Streets, Traffic Lights and Stop Signs Aren’t the Answer
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When faced with the question of how to fix a dangerous street, the first instinct of many New Yorkers is to call for the most familiar symbols of regulating cars: the stop sign and the traffic light. Nothing, they think, could more effectively force dangerous drivers to stop speeding through their neighborhood than these familiar […]
PlaNYC 2.0 Reactions: Rachel Weinberger, UPenn Professor
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Streetsblog has been gathering responses to last week’s release of PlaNYC 2.0. This is the fourth installment. Read the first, second, and third parts. In a phone interview with Streetsblog yesterday, Rachel Weinberger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an architect of the transportation section of PlaNYC 1.0, gave us her take on the update of […]
Swap the Suburban Payroll Tax for East River Bridge Tolls — Deal or No Deal?
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Five Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Bonacic, are making transit advocates an offer they can probably refuse. The payoff is appealing: state authorization for bridge tolls on the East River bridges. But the price they are demanding in return, the total repeal of the payroll mobility tax outside New York City, is too high […]
PlaNYC 2.0 Hints at Parking Reform, Touts Bike-Share, Lacks Transpo Focus
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Four years after Michael Bloomberg launched New York City’s sustainability agenda with congestion pricing as the marquee item, transportation reform is no longer the centerpiece of PlaNYC. The first in what should be a series of regular four-year updates of the plan was released this morning, and it includes 132 initiatives. While those encompass significant […]
DOT to Red Hook: No Streetcar For You
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Proposed Red Hook streetcars aren’t worth the cost, according to the city DOT. In a presentation to community groups last Thursday [PDF], DOT revealed the results of its streetcar feasibility study and recommended against the construction of a line that would run from the Smith/9th subway station into Red Hook and up the waterfront to […]
Henry St. Placard Abuser Fends Off NYPD By Mixing Church and State
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At this point, it’s hardly news that the length of the Henry Street bike lane was filled with parked cars yesterday (see here and here). Being a Sunday, it was par for the course, though still infuriating, that churchgoers were taking advantage of an informal agreement with the police to snatch that lane away from […]
To Curb Congestion, Parking Reform Must Be in PlaNYC Update
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Three years ago, the Regional Plan Association held a panel on congestion pricing at its annual conference. The title of the discussion was “Making Cars Pay Their Way.” At the 2011 conference last Friday, a similar panel on curbing traffic took the more generic title, “Strategies to Manage Congestion.” The difference is telling. Instead of […]