Willoughby Plaza was one of the very first asphalt strips formerly dedicated to cars that was closed to vehicles, taken over and transformed into a space for pedestrians, helping to inaugurate the city’s popular if occasionally controversial NYC Plaza Program. Before Times Square and the Broadway Boulevard, before the new Grand Army Plaza or Fordham Plaza, before Janette Sadik-Khan even became DOT commissioner, there was Willoughby Plaza.

And now it is permanent, a thoughtfully designed, well-integrated piece of the streetscape rather than a bastardized piece of roadbed dressed up as well as DOT and the local business groups could manage. This is the dream for all 50 (and counting) of the city's new temporary plazas, and 16 finished spaces are already in the works. But standing in the freezing cold with Commissioner Sadik-Khan and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz trading barbs, one wonders how many more plazas might be in store for the city.

"It's a pleasure when the commissioner and I can be on the same side of a project," the Beep said, a veiled reference to his disputes with DOT over the Prospect Park West protected bike lane, among others.

Past disputes aside, both agreed this was not only a boon for pedestrians but also shopkeepers and landlords.

"You saw the frenzy of new interest from retail stores and restaurants like Shake Shack and Panera Bread, and it's just a wonderful sign of the energy that's coming to the downtown streetscape," Commissioner Sadik-Khan said. "It doesn't take an economics degree to understand just how much pedestrian space can contribute to the bottom line of local businesses."

"This is a new landmark for Brooklyn," she added.

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who helped secure federal funds to pay for the project, concurred. "This has already become a destination for people walking and biking over the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, and this new plaza will bring more people here to stay," she said.

After the ribbon cutting speeches—which lasted all of seven minutes, no doubt due to the frozen ears everyone was suffering from—Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney pointed out to The Observer that this is about much more than pedestrians, but involved a full overhaul of sewer and utility pipes and lines under the street. "It's an infrastructure improvement as much as anything, and this is just the cosmetic side of it," Mr. Burney said, gesturing around the plaza, which had new planting beds and christmas lighting strung from the trees but was otherwise little more than a very large and generous 14,000-square-foot sidewalk.

Inside Shake Shack after the event, Commissioner Sadik-Khan spent a few minutes discussing the future of the plaza program with The Observer. First off, why had it taken so long for this plaza to go from temporary to permanent? Five years is actually the average time for city capital projects to get approved and built, Ms. Sadik-Khan explained, once all the various agencies and approvals, contracts and designs are factored in.

She stressed that lots of community outreach, something she has emphasized with every one of these projects, as adding time, but time worth taking. Contrary to popular belief, the plazas are only installed after a community group or local business improvement district requests them.

"It depends on what the construction season looks like, but pretty soon, these are going to be popping up all over town," Ms. Sadik-Khan said.

Various surveys, reports and community board votes have shown widespread support for most of these plazas. Still, some politicians have vowed to reverse the mayor and his street reshapers once he leaves City Hall. Is this program established enough to continue once Ms. Sadik-Khan and her cohort is gone?

"This is set in stone," Ms. Sadik-Khan said, pointing out the window. "And all across town, the public is setting it in stone. If you look at the demand, at the applications that are in the door, there's just no end in site to the number of communities that want more pedestrian space and more space to meet and sit down and create a more livable community."

And it was not just local residents pushing for these new plazas. "You have to understand, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, working on behalf of the business community down here, has been pushing for this for years," Ms. Sadik-Khan said. "And we're seeing the same push all across the city. Businesses get it. They get that additional foot traffic is better for business."

"It's not only a safety project, it's not only a livability project, it's an economic development project," Ms. Sadik-Khan added. "So it's really a triple-bottom-line win for communities all across the city."

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.

The power biker. (Getty)

The redesign of 34th Street has come in for its fair—or unfair, depending on perspective—share of criticism in the lead up to today's launch of Select Bus Service on the thoroughfare. One person who would gladly board that bus, so to speak? None other than Robert Caro.

The Observer was interviewing Mr. Caro for an article about infrastructure investment—or lack thereof—in the country and the region. (Read all about it in this Wednesday's paper.) We were discussing the way the Bloomberg administration has been reshaping the city in the manner of Moses, if on a far smaller scale, which led The Observer to mention the opposition to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, often compared to "Moses in a skirt." Mr. Caro said he did not understand all the griping.

"I've never met her, but I know people are knocking her," he said. "But what they should remember is that at bottom, what she's engaged in is an effort to rescue the city from an over-dependence on the automobile that hurts the city in so many ways."

During our conversation, Mr. Caro spoke fondly of what the city was, a fabric of neighborhoods and cultures, and what it could be again. It is not clear that New York is returning to those polyglot days—look at the mostly well-to-do neighborhoods bike lanes tend to serve—but Mr. Caro regards it as an improvement nonetheless.

"When Robert Moses came to power, for 40 years, he systematically starved mass-transit, both the subways and the commuter railroads while pouring the city's resources into highways, into the things that would increase its dependence on the automobile," Mr. Caro said. "So I do think we would have a more balanced transportation system without him."

And we're in the midst of that rebalancing? "Yes, I do believe so."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

We're waiting.

Can we just install bike share already?Maybe it's just us, but The Observer already can't wait for the city's 10,000-strong bike share system to get here. Just consider our experience the past two days, since the system was unveiled.

The first was heading back to the office, on 44th Street and 8th Avenue, from the announcement at Madison Square. We headed underground, waited a good seven minutes for the R-train to come, headed up to Times Square, then had to fight through the midday crowds to get to The New York Observer Building. (Never heard of it? It's the one with Birdland in the ground floor, across the street from Shake Shack.)

Total trip time? About 22 minutes. According to Google, we could have biked that distances in 13 minutes, but we know, even on one of those lumbering bike share bikes, we probably could have done it in half that time—or about as long as we were waiting for the subway alone. The trial bike we took for a spin down to 8th Avenue and back was only a four minute trip. And which is more unpleasant, sweating on a bike or in a sweltering subway station?

Then, yesterday, The Observer was running late to the Jane's Carousel opening in Brooklyn Bridge Park. We thought it was happening in a different part of Dumbo, to boot, so we took the F-train instead of the A-train (yeah, yeah, you'd think we just moved here, it is embarrassing). Ten minutes of running around could have been cut down to three or four—assuming we could comfortably navigate the cobblestones.

Then, we hopped back on the A-train to meet up with the wife in Chelsea for the David Bryne opening at Pace that our friend put together. It took seven minutes to walk down 25th Street, something we could have biked in two, which is maybe a little extreme. But hell, we're a neurotic bunch, and is there really any other way to pull up to a David Bryne show than on a bike?

City officials and transportation advocates, in discussing the new bike share program, talked widely about how it is not so much a new piece of infrastructure as "an extra layer to our ferry, subway, bus and taxi network" as DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said Wednesday. And our experience seems to prove this. Running late for a meeting or a date? Just can't wait to get where you're going? The sidewalks are especially crowded? Grab a bike, and off you go.

This makes the new East River ferry service make a lot more sense, for example, and all that new development on the Far West Side. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper than building a new subway, or even a bus line. In fact, it's free.

Despite the bicycle backlash of the past year, The Observer is going to go out on a limb and say the bike sharing program will be even more popular than the gearheads imagine. If only we were patient enough to wait for the system to be complete next summer.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

As part of her vision, City Hall is attempting to implement a bike-sharing network that would allow residents to rent a bike to get from place to place. Docking stations or kiosks would be constructed to house the rental bikes.

Many cities in the U.S. already have such programs. City Hall clearly would like New York to get with the program. But local neighborhoods and elected officials, tired, perhaps, of being lectured about the benefits of cycling, have begun to push back. They want input on the location and construction of the kiosks. City Hall has agreed to consult with communities, rather than simply impose the plan. That’s a wise move.

Because the bike-sharing network would be run by a vendor, there’s some question about whether this constitutes a franchise, which requires City Council approval. But in a way, that’s irrelevant. City Hall has to listen, especially after several episodes during which top officials appeared to be out of touch with public opinion.

Transforming New York into a bicycle-friendly city may truly be a laudable, visionary idea. Future generations may well bless the memory of Ms. Sadik-Khan. But at the moment, it seems clear that the public has concerns about the nuts and bolts of the bike-sharing plan.

Those concerns are legitimate, and they deserve to be heard. City Hall should be all ears, on this project and on other big-vision plans in the final two years of the Bloomberg era.

Back in November, Rod King told The Observer the secret to New Yorker's happiness would be for everone to slow down a little bit. Or probably a lot. The city's posted speed limit is 30 miles per hour on most streets, though who honestly follows that? Eastern Parkway, Second Avenue, 59th Street, on all of these major throughfares, and a good many sidestreets, New Yorkers fly around at breakneck speeds--kind of like the way we walk and talk. Mr. King, and evangelist for the 20 Is Plenty movement, believes we could save our lives and our sanity if that is how fast everyone drove.

Now, we may not have much choice. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg, along with Transporation Commissioner Janette  Sadik-Khan and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, announced plans for "slow zones," a new pilot program that would create 20 miler-per-hour corridors in some of the city's unsafer sections. While the project is currently planned for only one street in the Bronx, do not be surprised if it spreads further. After all, the Time Square plaza, and many of its smaller siblings scattered across the city, have become permanent--and popular--and the same has been the case for more controversial bus rapid transit routes and bike lanes. Pilots have a way of taking off.

But if people will not even respect the current 30 mile-per-hour speed limit, what is to make them follow an even slower one? How about a healthy dose of guilt. From the same administration that has brought us nanny state cigarette bans and browbeating fatty-soda subway ads, the mayor now plans to introduce new street signs that will display the speed limit, except when the driver surpasses it, at which point it will switch to the commanding words "SLOW DOWN." Beside these, a Keith Herring-style pedestrian will transform into a skeleton.

Meanwhile, according to our own David Friedlander over at The Politicker, the mayor gave a full-throated defense of his transportation czarina, who has come under fire lately, mostly for the bike lane wars:

"When I hired Janette Sadik-Khan to be the commissioner of the city's Transportation Department, I urged her to be bold and to think outside the box," he said. "That is exactly what she has done. She has taken what her predecessor Iris Weinshall did so ably and took it to even higher levels."

[...]

"The bottom line is you've done exactly what we've asked. Road safety statistics show that your efforts are bearing fruit. You are saving lots of lives and making the city better," he said before ceding the microphone to her.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The two most visible figures in the war over bike lanes, NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (pro) and her predecessor, Iris Weinshall (con) ran into each other. Weinshall embraced the commissioner by the elbows and both smiled and nodded at one another.  (I didn't get my camera out in time to capture the moment.) What did she say to the commissioner? Weinshall told me, "That's between me and Janette Sadik-Khan, don't you think Azi?"

During former School Chancellor Joel Klein's remarks, ABNY's president, Bill Rudin tried hushing the crowd. After he did, Klein joked, "This was like every education meeting I've ever been to. Nobody ever listens."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, in presenting an award to the Council's Education Chairman Robert Jackson, joked he had so much spirt and energy, she feared he might combust.

Former comptroller, and current mayoral candidate Bill Thompson greeted his one-time fund-raiser, Suri Kasirer (who again is the top lobbyist in NYC). "I cam here looking for you," he said.

State Republican Chairman Ed Cox chatted with former Democratic City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz; Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. chatted with former Congressman Mike McMahon. And former State Senator Craig Johnson and consultant George Fontas worked the room.

The bill, which is supported by most of the City Council but has sat around without action since it was first introduced in 2003, was previously opposed by the Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful lobby that represents the city’s major landlords. But now the legislation has been modified—certain landlords can gain exemptions from the law—clearing the way for the administration’s support.

“I am happy to say that after considerable collaboration and exchanges of points of view, we have crafted bills that we believe will go a long way towards making bicycle commuting more feasible and attractive,” Ms. Sadik-Kahn said in prepared testimony. (More on the Council hearing here.)

Now, REBNY has retreated some from its hostile position, and, according to its president, Steve Spinola, the group is “looking at it.”

The revised bill “may work because it does permit you to get an exception,” he said.

The bill requires landlords with freight elevators to develop a “bicycle access plan” when a tenant requests bike access for its employees. To be exempt, a landlord would need to show that its freight elevators cannot be used for bicycles or that there is covered bike parking within three blocks of the building.

The Bloomberg administration also endorsed a bill that requires bike parking be built in parking garages.   

ebrown@observer.com