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
SUV Driver Sends Brooklyn Delivery Cyclist to the ER
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An SUV driver hit and injured a delivery cyclist at the intersection of Dean Street and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn at around 10 p.m. last night. Photos sent to us by reader Wayne Bailey, who came across the scene shortly after the collision, seem to show that the cyclist was on his way to deliver […]
UWS Struggles to Solve Central Park Bike Crackdown, Likes East-West Paths
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Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7’s parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the […]
Prospect Park West Lawsuit Hearing Postponed Until May
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The first court date for the Prospect Park West lawsuit has been pushed back two months. Though Brooklyn Civil Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan was originally scheduled to begin hearing the case tomorrow, the case is now scheduled for May 18, according to the court system’s online information. The city Law Department, which will represent […]
Jim Brennan’s Office: MTA Will Not Lose Another $170M in State Budget
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The MTA will not lose another $170 million in budget negotiations, according to the office of Jim Brennan, who chairs the Assembly’s authorities committee. As we reported yesterday, two open issues in budget negotiations threatened $170 million in funds for the MTA. The Senate Republicans were trying to exempt schools from the payroll mobility tax, […]
Road Diets But No Bike Lanes for Two Queens Traffic Calming Projects
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DOT presented plans for two Long Island City street redesigns to Queens Community Board 2’s transportation committee last night. One, a standard road diet, would calm traffic on 44th Drive by replacing one moving lane in each direction with a painted median and left turn bays [PDF]. The other, a novel design for a single […]
Pop-Up Café Expansion Faces Critical Community Board Vote Tonight
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When DOT installed its first “pop-up café” over a few parking spaces on Lower Manhattan’s Pearl Street last summer, the 14-table public seating area helped increase business by 14 percent at its two sponsoring restaurants. With New York City still recovering from recession and much of the city starved for public space, DOT has moved […]
Assembly and Senate Would Strip Another $170M From Transit Riders
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When Andrew Cuomo released his executive budget in February, it included a $100 million raid on dedicated transit funds. As Cuomo hammers out the budget in negotiations with the State Assembly and Senate, however, it seems that the MTA could lose up to another $170 million. Both houses of the legislature are seeking cuts and […]
Gale Brewer Introduces Bill to Make Central Park, Prospect Park Car-Free
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Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced legislation today that would restore Central and Prospect Parks to their original car-free status. Brewer’s bill would ban private vehicles from using the park drives in either park; official vehicles would still be allowed to use the roads. Brewer’s legislation would also commission a study examining […]
Road Diet for Macombs Road Wins Unanimous Bronx Community Board Vote
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DOT’s plans to improve pedestrian safety along the length of the Bronx’s Macombs Road [PDF] received a unanimous vote of support from Bronx Community Board 4 last night, according to District Manager José Rodriguez. The plan puts Macombs on a road diet and reconfigures dangerous diagonal intersections that lead to drivers taking fast turns across […]
Law Profs: PPW Lawsuit Unlikely to Succeed
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Suing the city has earned the well-connected opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane a lot of media attention, but ultimately their lawyer, Gibson Dunn’s Jim Walden, will have to show up in court and make his case that the lane was illegal. According to the legal experts we spoke to, that case looks […]
New York Has 81,875 Metered Parking Spaces, And Millions of Free Ones
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Today’s New York Post story about City Council Member David Greenfield’s desperate push to squeeze a few more parking spaces out of New York City curb space reminded us of this neat little chart, which shows the total number of parking meters in the city, broken out into single-space meters and muni-meters. If Greenfield and […]
Nancy Gruskin Launches Delivery Cyclist Safety Campaign
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Nancy Gruskin, who founded the Stuart C. Gruskin Family Foundation after her husband was killed by a cyclist in Midtown two years ago, launched a new campaign to educate delivery cyclists about the rules of the road this morning. The “5 to Ride” campaign will ask restaurants to pledge to teach their delivery cyclists five […]