Good Old Days in Union Square

ByDon

Similar Posts

  • 14th St. Busway Arrives on July 1

    ByDon

    Cars will mostly be banned from 14th Street starting July 1 as the city launches a busway to help speed up traffic on the busy Manhattan thoroughfare, DOT announced Monday.

    Private through traffic will be banned between Third and Ninth avenues from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily to accommodate the pilot busway during reconstruction work on the L train’s Canarsie tunnel. Cars will still be able to make pick-ups, drop-offs, and access area garages on the street during the pilot, according to DOT.

    In April, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that buses, trucks, and emergency vehicles would be given priority on the stretch of road—the same span that had been pitched for a busway under the original L train shutdown mitigation plan but was thrown up in the air after Gov. Andrew Cuomo suddenly swapped plans to repair the Hurricane Sandy-damaged tunnel. But the city had yet to unveil a launch date or hours of operation for the pilot busway until now.

    “The 14th Street busway is great news for transit riders and neighborhood residents,” said Danny Pearlstein, the Riders Alliance policy and communications director. “By ensuring fast, reliable transit starting July 1, the busway will provide an excellent alternative to jam-packed L trains and expensive, inefficient car trips.”

    To enforce the busway, new cameras on the buses will issue tickets to those violating the street’s new restrictions. But drivers will be given warnings and tickets will not be issued until at least September, according to the DOT.

    The busway’s July 1 launch will also be accompanied by the MTA’s new M14 select bus service that will replace the current M14A and M14D routes and nix 16 existing stops—that’s down from 22 after public outcry over the slashed stops. Riders will have to swipe their MetroCards at machines lining the curb before boarding the new select bus service.

  • A Conclave of Condos

    ByDon

    Two new condos will soon be on the rise just across 5th Avenue. The larger of the two will be at 31 West 14th St. (rendering pictured below). The other one is at 5 West 13th St., the former block-through office of Social Services. Residents of the 14th St. side of our building will recall how many people mistook our building, at 12 East, for the office at 12 West. It was annoying.

  • Farmer’s Market Sales Way Down

    ByDon

    The New York Times reports:

    This season’s inclement weather affected farmers’ markets as much as their crops, and customers lost early on never really came back. Just ask Michael Hurwitz, director of greenmarkets for the Council on the Environment of New York City.

    “God, this was a tough year,” Mr. Hurwitz said. Market problems snowballed from the spring, when less produce than usual was available because of rain, cool weather and late planting on vendors’ farms. “That impacted customers coming back to market,” he said. “Spring is not for making money; it’s for getting customers in. Fall is for making money — and less people all season came to the markets.”

    Those all-important weekends, including the two biggest market weekends of the season in mid-October, were rainy, and that meant fewer shoppers, Mr. Hurwitz said. At the largest market, in Union Square, business was off by as much as 40 percent this season. The economic crisis compounded the low turnout, though on the bright side, he said, it generally kept vendors from raising prices.

    But farmers like John Glebocki had little choice. Mr. Glebocki is an Orange County farmer who sells his produce exclusively at 22 farmers’ markets, most of them in the New York City system. He figures he lost nearly 50 percent of his 80 acres of mixed vegetables, but he has faith in his customers. “People understand it’s a low production year,” he said, “and if we have to tack on another quarter a pound.”