Huh? (FX/Tumblr)

At today's press conference unveiling the new and improved parking signs for Midtown, quite a few reporters questioned the actual need for redesigning the street signs. Both Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and City Councilman Dan Garodnick said they had received complaints about the old signs and agreed they required "a PhD in traffic" to decipher.

Among those flunking out on their TCATs? None other than the brilliant Louis C.K.

The Observer was just on the phone with Michael Bierut, the celebrated designer whose firm Pentagram helped the city redesign the street signs. (You can read more about what actually went into the signs in Wednesday's print edition of the paper, and the unusual emphasis New York tends to put on our signage—we're a busy city.) During our conversation, Mr. Beirut reminded The Observer that the first episode of the third season of Mr. C.K.'s show Louie, the title character spends the opening and closing credits puzzling over an embellished version of the city's parking signs.

"It's a sign that's been exaggerated, but only slightly," Mr. Beirut said. "Most New Yorkers would look at that and think it probably existed somewhere because some of our signs were that confusing."

The first scene mostly consists of Mr. C.K. and another driver just making confused faces. "I can't..." Mr. C.K. mutters, before reading off some of the absurd regulations.

"Is it after midnight?" his flummoxed compatriot asks.

"Yeah, but it's also after midnight," Mr. C.K. responds.

One sign reads "2 hour parking, 6 a.m. - 5 a.m., Mon. thru Fri.," the kind of vague window that would confuse anyone. The sign below it reads, "Parking of vehicles only authorized." Bureaucratese at its finest.

The second scene only gets even more ridiculous as they try and puzzle out the meaningless green circle:

No more parking PhDs required. (Matt Chaban)

Park this way. (Matt Chaban)

Twitter has changed the way we communicate, and now it may change the way we drive, at least around Midtown.

This morning, the Department of Transportation unveiled new parking signs that greatly simplify and clarify on-street parking regulations. As Tranportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan joked, "We used to have signs with 250 character on four different signs in three different colors. Now we can say it in about 140 characters on a much clearer sign."

The new signs, common throughout the city's business districts, now feature two separate but similar sections, one for commercial vehicles (in red font) and one for passenger vehicles (in green). There will be 6,300 new signs deployed in the coming months in Midtown, roughly between 14th and 60th streets and Second and Ninth avenues. Similar signs will come to the Financial District at a later period, and then on to the outer boroughs' main commercial areas. The city began rolling out the new signs in October, and 450 have already been installed.

Related: Michael Bierut diessects his new signs and why Helvetica never would have worked >>

Unlike the old signs, which were in a mishmash of colors, fonts and styles, the new ones are in a unified format, putting the length of time for parking first, then the days and times. And no longer are they the creative work of the Department of Transportation's sign shop, but instead a collaboration with Michael Bierut and a team at Pentagram. Among the small but important innovation are the formatting of the signs and the location of the font (justified left, rather than centered, which is considered more legible).

"It shouldn't take a PhD in transportation to understand these signs," Ms. Sadik-Khan.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the new signs would help not only reduce confusion on the streets but also save New Yorkers money. "One of the great things about these signs is they will result in fewer parking tickets for New Yorkers," Ms. Quinn said. "No longer will you say, 'Wait a minute, I thought the sign said you could park there.' These signs will make sure that what you see is what the rules are."

The signs came about after Councilman Dan Garodnick, who represents parts of Midtown and the Upper East Side, proposed a bill to make them clearer. "I always had constituents coming up to me and complaining about how confusing the signs are," he said. When the department heard about the bill, Ms. Sadik-Khan said she told Mr. Garodnick "why bother with legislation," and they set out to come up with new signs.

He said this served an important civic purpose, as well. "The sad part of it is, people deliberately think the city is deliberately trying to confuse them" in order to trick them into tickets," Mr. Garodnick explained.

While the signs may not seem like much, Ms. Sadik-Khan said she views them as equally important as paving new streets, laying down bike lanes or creating pedestrian plazas. "Reducing the clutter and bringing clarity to the rules greatly improves the look of our streets," she said.

Dare ya! (Getty)

It is clear by now, if it has not always been, that the opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane do not trust the city's Department of Tranportation.

They have insisted the project was "trial" with virtually no proof that this was ever the city's position. They have dismissed city-run studies of traffic data that show the lane has improved traffic flows and reduced injuries. And they have sneered at the considerable majority of their neighbors who have voted time and again in favor of the project. Still, the efforts of Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes persist, especially now that their lawsuit against the lane has been returned to court on a technicality. The group's response has been to offer the city a settlement that essentially amounts to little more than a barroom dare.

In a letter to the city Law Department shared with The Observer, attorneys for the Neighbors group offer to drop all charges if a "fully independent, mutually-agreed-upon expert," paid for by DOT, will produce an "objective study" of the bike lane's traffic and safety impacts, and this expert finds, through "scientifically accepted standards and the resulting raw data," that conditions have indeed improved. Because clearly the city's own study was not objection.

But here's the kicker. "If, however, the study demonstrates that traffic or safety conditions have not improved, or have worsened, then DOT will concede that the Bike Lane has failed to achieve its stated objective (calming traffic) and will remove it."

In the annals of transportation chest thumping, this is almost as good as the time MTA chief Joe Lhota got in a fight with one of his fellow board members and told him to "be a man" and stand up to him.

The greenway gauntlet has been thrown.

"My clients have offered a completely reasonable mechanism to resolve the claims in the lawsuit, about which DOT has so bitterly complained," Neighbors attornewy Jim Walden said in an email. "Hundreds of community members earnestly believe the bike lane has compromised safety, so the Independent safety study my clients propose represents sound public policy."

He said that paying for the study would be cheaper than continuing litigation. But what would be even cheaper would be just dropping the suit outright.

The city said the so-called settlement is nothing more than yet another media blitz from the bike lane opponents, and they could not take it anyway, as it would cede all legal authority, which the city not only must maintain for reasons of responsibility, but the city also fully believes it will prevail in the case.

"This offer—designed to maximize press coverage by rehashing their prior distortions—is rejected," Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo said in a statement to The Observer. "The Prospect Park West bike lane has already been subjected to the most thorough analysis and review of any bike lane in history. The petitioners simply reject and misrepresent the results of these reviews, and are now seeking to move the goal posts yet again."

The Department of Transportation study in dispute found that the lane, which cut traffic lanes on Prospect Park West down from three to two while eliminating some parking spots along the mile-long stretch, found that traffic accidents had gone down 63 percent and speeding had been reduced by 74 percent. Bicyclists riding on the sidewalk had fallen by 46 percent, while the vehicular throughput, or amount of cars traveling the stretch without traffic, remained unchanged. Meanwhile both a poll by the city and local Council Man Brad Lander found that more than 70 percent support the new lane.

Opponents counter that there is data from the local precincts that demonstrate an increase in accidents as a result of the lane. Perhaps they should bring it with them when they are next in court.

"We remain confident that, just as was the case with the three other claims in this lawsuit, the court will see through the petitioners' one remaining claim and again dismiss the remnants of this lawsuit," Mr. Cardozo said.

Not so fast. (Getty)

While it seemed like the bicycle backlash of a year ago had finally cooled off, and those larcenous lanes were here to say—won't someone think of the motorists!—the cold war is back this winter. The Columbus Avenue bike lane expansion was rebuffed by the local community board, bike share has been delayed a few extra month, Steve Cuozzo thinks bikes are a cancer on the city (O.K., so what else is new?), and now opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane have finally won a court case.

After complaints over the lane were ignored in court in the spring, Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes appealed the results to a higher court, which today ruled that the lower court had to reconsider the case on technical grounds. The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that judge Burt Bunyon erred in dismissing the case as lacking merit, and now a hearing must be held over the lane (you can read the one-page decision here).

The politically connected Neighbors group, which counts Iris Weinshal, Chuck Schumer's wife and the former DOT commissioner, and Borough President Marty Markowitz among its backers, argued that the lane was a trial until last year, and thus there was time for the group to file a challenge to the lane. Judge Bunyon, however, found that the statute of limitations for the suit had lapsed. The appellate court found that time was not up for a legal challenge, but neither did the judges rule that the lane was wrong, simply that hearings as to its appropriateness had to be heard.

Indeed, the city's Department of Transportation is holding today's decision up as much as a victory for itself. "We’'re confident that the Prospect Park West bike lane is here to stay," spokesman Seth Solomonow said in an email. "We'’re very pleased that three of the four causes of action were dismissed by the Appellate Court, which also returned to the trial court one claim for a limited finding on a technical issue. We are fully confident that the trial court will decide that there is absolutely no merit to what is left of this case."

Opponents of the lane have been calling for legal discovering all along, insisting the city was hiding something—without any proof, but the suggest that something was being hidden creates an implication that is hard to deny. Now, they may get their day in court, but it still does not ensure a victory.

Still, the group remains undeterred.

“We are gratified by the Court’s decision, and we look forward to finally forcing the truth from the Department of Transportation,” Jim Walden, the Neighbors' attorney, said in a statement. “As we have maintained all along, DOT broke the rules, fudged the data, and orchestrated actual harassment against people who disagreed with its tactics. It is just shameful."

Or delightful, if you're a cyclist. "In the meantime, local residents will continue to enjoy the safety that this community-requested and supported lane has provided every day for the last two and a half years," Mr. Solomonow said.

Repeatedly, the lane has been overwhelmingly supported in local surveys and community board votes.

A bike share station at the Navy Yards, in sunnier days. (Brooklyn Spoke)

One of the victims of Superstorm Sandy was the city's CitiBike bike share program. After the program was delayed last summer due to computer problems, many of the bikes and stations that were awaiting deployment were warehoused at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Much of the yards flooded when the East River burst its banks during the storm surge, including the lot with the bikes.

But today, the city's Department of Transportation announced that the bike share system would be ready to go in the spring as promised, and even announced a date, or at least a month, for the launch: May 2013. That is two months after the department had hoped to roll out the system, in March, and there will also be fewer bikes at fewer locations initially.

“DOT has worked around the clock to restore vital transportation links following the storm and that includes putting Citi Bike on the road to recovery,” Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said in a statement. “Despite the damage, New York will have the nation’s largest bike share system up and running this spring.”

Come May, there will be only 5,500 bikes at 300 stations in Midtown, Downtown and parts of Brooklyn. That would still make the system the largest in the nation, but it is a little more than half the size of the full system, which will have 10,000 bikes at 600 stations (none of which are located in Upper Manhattan, the Bronx and much of Queens and Brooklyn, to the chegrin of some residents there and the joy of others, who are no fans of bikes).

After all this, the bridges are back—and more popular than ever. (Getty)

Mayor Bloomberg just announced at his first press briefing today that due to bumper-to-bumper traffic in Manhattan today, all East River crossings will be HOV-restricted starting tonight at 6 p.m. This means any vehicles wishing to enter Manhattan will have to have at least three passengers inside. The restrictions will be in place all day Thursday and Friday.

"We need to reduce the number of cars coming in. The streets cannot handle all the traffic," Mayor Bloomberg said. He said the city would try and figure out a way to allow people to arrange for rides, either at the crossings or elsewhere, but no details were given.

"I know it's inconvenient for a lot of people, but the streets just can't handle it," the mayor said.

The crossings only just reopened today, with the exception of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Rockaway Bridges and the flooded tunnels, the Brooklyn-Battery/Hugh Carey and the Holland, which the mayor said he does not expect to reopen until the weekend or next Monday at the earliest.

He made the same prediction about the subways, which are expected to resume partial service tomorrow, though none will be going under the rivers.

Not surprisingly, hard-working New Yorkers, being the Type-A types they are, flooded the streets on their way to work and other destinations, generally crippling the streets and reminding us all how the MTA is actually pretty awesome.

This is not to suggest that unsafe cycling is ever acceptable, but as more people take to bikes, and the city's population continues to grow, park pathways are bound to get busier. Action by users is important, but also be operators.

As it has done with Prospect Park, following another spate of high-profile injuries, the city's Department of Transporation and Parks Department have reached an agreement to change the arrangement of traffic lanes to make more room for bikes and runners and less for vehicles. The measure is meant to make everyone safer.

“Central Park is New York City’s recreational oasis and this redesign will provide park visitors with safer and wider paths to walk, jog or bike,” Parks Commissioner Veronica White said in a release.

"Central Park's signature drives will now have even clearer markings to help every park user have the best and safest experience possible," echoed DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

In almost every place, the number of vehicle lanes will be reduced to make for wider lanes for bikes and joggers. The one exception is in the lower loop, where a defacto carriage lane exists and one must remain for cars. There, new dividers will be put in to try and separate bikers and joggers, keeping everyone separate and safe.

Will this prevent all injuries? Of course not. People need to pay attention and respect everyone. But as we see time and again, the power of the paint can be quite powerful.

Don't forget to tip your driver and look out for bikes. (NYC DOT)

(NYC DOT)

Last week the city's Department of Transportation (in partnership with the fed's Department of Transportation) unveiled new LOOK! crosswalk decals and bus banners to remind pedestrians and drivers to pay attention to each other while making their way across the busy cityscape.

Now the department, along with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, has unveiled new stickers that will adorn the doors and windows of the city's 13,000 cabs. They implore occupants to "LOOK! for cyclists." These are accompanied by a new 30-second spot in everybody's favorite ad-viewing venue, Taxi T.V.

“This safety campaign takes the message to New Yorkers and visitors that you need to take a second and take a look around whenever you get out of a car,” Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said in a release. “The best protection that bike riders and pedestrians have is our attention, and there is one thing everyone can do—look.”

The idea is to make cab riders, especially those who might not be from town, more aware of their surroundings. The city has recorded seven deaths because of dooring incidents over the past five years.

Like all good taxi ads, TLC commissioner David Tassky said these new spots will really get people's attention: "We believe the stickers and video will really resonate with riders and inspire them to pause for that critical second before they open the door and exit the taxi. It’s that moment of pause that could make all the difference in the world to both a bicyclist and the taxi passenger alike.”

None shall pass.

As is his want, Gridlock Sam Schwartz is out trying to warn people about troubling traffic conditions. As Mr. Schwartz explained in a profile earlier this year in The Observer, you tell people about how terrible the roads will be, and they have a remarkable habit to stay out of their cars. After all, everybody hates traffic.

So when Mr. Schwartz says this will be the worst traffic week of the year, we are want to give the former traffic commission his due. Here's what we have to look forward to in the coming "Carmageddon" (his term, not ours, and we think it's a technical one at that).

Monday: The President and the First Lady tape “The View” approximately 1:30 p.m. on 65^th St. and West End Ave.

Tuesday: President Obama addresses the UN in the morning after 9 a.m. At noon, the President speaks at Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers on Seventh Ave. between 53^rd and 52^nd Sts.  Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative 9 a.m. Iranian President Ahmadinejad arrives at Warwick Hotel on W. 54^th St. between Sixth and Fifth Aves.

Wednesday: Iranian President Ahmadinejad addresses UN General Assembly on Yom Kippur.

Thursday: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addresses the UN in the late afternoon; he will stay in the vicinity of Park Ave. and 67^th St. until Sunday.

Friday: Bike demonstration at Sixth Ave. and Houston 6:30 p.m. Barclays Center debuts with an 8 p.m. performance by Jay-Z!

Avoid First Avenue in the vicinity of the UN all week long!

President Obama or Jay-Z: Who is the bigger draw?