The death of 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse, who was cycling with his father in Downtown Brooklyn on September 6th when a mail truck struck him while turning on Livingston Street, didn't come as a surprise to those familiar with the area, the Daily News reports. Michelle Dougherty, a Brooklyn Heights mother of three, calls the intersection "extremely dangerous. Last year I saw a boy who was hit by two cars." Transportation Alternatives spokesman Wiley Norvell agrees......

Northside Car Service, the dominant livery cab company in Williamsburg, has become the target of a boycott after an accident with a cyclist last week. In a widely circulated email, a friend of the unidentified cyclist—who himself called for a boycott in a Gothamist comment Friday—says that on September 10th the driver made an “irrationally fast turn” from Kent onto North Seventh, forcing the cyclist to "slam on the brakes, flip completely over the handlebars,......

Surprising no one, the cyclist who was captured on videotape being violently slammed off his bike by a rookie cop during a July Critical Mass ride plans to sue the city. In his first interview, Christopher Long also tells Chelsea Now that after Officer Patrick Pogan knocked him to the curb, he stood over Long and asked, "Do you wanna try that again?" Long also says he thinks Pogan "is going to be a scapegoat......

50-year-old Jonathan Milstein was struck and killed by a school bus in Park Slope yesterday morning, the second cyclist fatality in Brooklyn in less than a week. (On Saturday, 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse was fatally struck by a mail truck downtown.) The Brooklyn Paper reports that Milstein was riding west on President Street and was trying to make the light at Eighth Avenue, a block from Prospect Park, when the collision occurred. No passengers were on......

On July 30th, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly promised that New Yorkers would be able to send video and text straight to police in a “relatively short period of time.” And he actually delivered! The image software, which cost about $250,000, also serves the city's 311 non-emergency hot line, so don't hesitate to gather cell phone video of potholes and graffiti. According to WABC, New York is the first American city with the capability to accept......

A lawyer for the cyclist who was shown on video being violently shoved off his bike by a rookie cop during a July Critical Mass ride says that prosecutors will drop the charges today. Officer Patrick Pogan wrote in his report that cyclist Christopher Long had been weaving in and out of traffic and deliberately tried to hit him with his bike on the night of July 25th. The video, as you'll recall, told......

The DOT's $700,000 transformation of a seven block stretch of Broadway into a pedestrian esplanade with tables, chairs and planters is complete, and the Times has taken the anxious pulse of local workers lounging on their lunchbreaks. The consensus? A nice gesture, but it's only a matter of time before a cab swerves into the tables and turns the urban oasis into a scene of unspeakable carnage. Some choice observations from the men and women......

Downtown Express takes a look at that half-mile pedestrian walkway at West Street, where, due to construction, cyclists are supposed to dismount and walk their bikes from Chambers Street to Albany Street. Unsurprisingly, pretty much nobody obeys the rules, and last month a cyclist reportedly hit a woman in the leg on purpose after she yelled at him and his buddies to walk their bikes. Now one community board member is talking about requiring licenses......

Twelve city council members are calling on Manhattan District Attorney Robert M Morgenthau to drop the charges against Christopher Long, the cyclist who was seen being bodyslammed to the curb by a rookie cop in a videotape of a Critical Mass ride on July 25th. The council members – who include Rosie Mendez, Letitia James, and Alan Gerson but not mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn – are also demanding that Morgenthau open a wider investigation into......

NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters yesterday that in a “relatively short period of time” people will be able to send “video and text straight to 911 to increase the flow of information.” Kelly didn’t go into details about how the technology would work, but he did say that “generally speaking, it’s helpful when people record an event taking place that helps us during an investigation.” The commissioner’s statement would seem to include recent “events”......

Environmental group Times Up! is taking advantage of all the publicity generated by the video of a cop shoving a cyclist off his bike by reminding everyone that this is hardly the first such incident, nor the only one caught on video. The group points out that in 2007 one Richard Vazquez was taken down by a cop in Times Square during a Critical Mass ride, and in 2006 Adrienne Wheeler, a Critical Mass legal......

That video depicting a rookie cop bodyslamming a cyclist to the curb in Times Square? Just routine policework, according to the president of the police union. Apparently 22-year-old rookie Patrick Pogan was simply acting "under direct orders” when he spotted cyclist Christopher Long “creating a hazardous condition for the public and took action," union head Patrick Lynch told reporters yesterday. See, the video actually proves Pogan was just doing his job:Instead of slowing down or......

The cyclist who was videotaped being body slammed off his bike in an apparently unprovoked attack by an NYPD officer during Friday night’s Critical Mass ride has been identified as Christopher Long, a 29-year-old resident of Bloomfield, New Jersey who works at the Union Square Greenmarket. His boss tells the Daily News that Long is an Army veteran and "mild-mannered environmental activist." Craig Radhuber, 54, was riding behind Long Friday night and describes incident:......

Another Critical Mass ride, another stunning display of police brutality. Watch as one of New York's finest violently shoves a cyclist off his bicycle, launching him through the air to the curb at 46th street and Seventh Avenue during Friday night's monthly Critical Mass ride. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/world_news/NYPD_Knocks_Cyclist_to_Curb_Unbelievable'; Although a judge ruled in 2006 that the monthly Critical Mass bicycle rides could proceed without a permit, the NYPD's stance remains somewhat adversarial. Though the city......

Surprise! Without a formal public announcement, the city has been moving ahead with a $700,000 plan to shrink part of Broadway in midtown from a four-lane to a two-lane street and use the rest of the space for a public esplanade, which the DOT is calling “Broadway Boulevard.” The change will be complete on August 15th, when the east side of Broadway between 42nd Street and Herald Square is turned over to a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway, teeming with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters....

Not-so-fun fact: According to the city’s DOT, it’s illegal to lock you bike to anything other than a bicycle rack. Thankfully, it’s not a law that seems to be enforced, but anyone who’s commuted by bicycle long enough will have the experience of finding the sign you locked your bike to removed so workers can tear up the sidewalk. The problem is that there are now approximately 131,000 cyclists in New York City and only......

Streetsblog points out a handy new website called Ride the City that’s beta testing a version of Google Maps integrated with ideal cycling routes. The New York City site lets users plan a bicycle commute from point A to point B in any borough, choosing between the “safest” route along as many bike lanes and greenways as possible, and the “fastest” route which lets you plot the most direct course by bike. All known bike shops along the route also come up on the map....

Streetfilms had five camera operators covering yesterday’s suspenseful rush hour race between a cyclist, driver and MTA commuter, and they’ve quickly edited together a video of the competition, which takes a bit of inspiration from Mike Figgis’s split-screen movie Time Code, sometimes showing the contestants battling it out simultaneously. And Streetsblog also points us to today’s New York Sun, which is reporting on a sudden bike shortage at shops around town. Some bike shop owners......

The 7th Annual “Great NYC Commuter Race” went down this morning, with three commuters racing to see who could get from Fort Greene to Union Square during rush hour in the least amount of time. Social worker Jamie Favaro traveled by bicycle; April Green, who works at an art foundation, took a foolish bus/subway combo; and photographer Emmanuel Fuentebella made irresponsible carbon footprints with his car. And like the story of John Henry, the......

As Bike Month NYC winds down, over two thousand cyclists filled the Brooklyn streets yesterday for the fourth annual Tour de Brooklyn. This year’s 18-mile family-oriented ride was moved up a week to coincide with the Brooklyn Bridge 125th birthday festivities. Borough President Marty Markowitz kicked things off on Water Street near the bridge, sending cyclists on a leisurely ride that wound through DUMBO, East Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, and the Evergreen Cemetery,......

Former Talking Head David Byrne had a crosseyed and painful bike ride home the other evening – and briefly ended up in the hospital. According to Byrne’s own blog, he’d spent the night drinking and dining with his special lady friend and artist David Shrigley. While cycling home, the Grammy-winning artist’s bike tire “slipped on the cobblestones of West 14th St.” Even sober, that uneven surface can be treacherous, and the tipsy Byrne went down......

Yay for dog days! Over the weekend, Times's Up! held its first annual Doggie Pedal Parade, highlighting bicycles adapted to transport pets and the benefits of adopting homeless animals. Bicyclists learned how to pimp their bikes for their pups pets and then humans and canines alike celebrated with a Pupnic at Washington Square Park's dog run.......

Rich Conroy is the Bicycle Education Program Director at Bike New York, a cycling safety and education group in New York City and the organizer of the 5 Boro Bike Tour (which occurred this past weekend). Rich and the people he works with are not bike advocates--they leave political action to others and focus on the practical safety of being a cyclist in the city. The group conducts clinics to teach kids to ride bikes,......

Spring is upon us and, with NYC bike month starting Thursday, the surge in bicycle commuting is expected to continue apace. But an increase in bikes also means more bike thievery – as one trusting bike owner found out last week when he let a stranger “try out” his ride. And just because your bike is locked doesn’t mean it’s safe. In 2006, this video surfaced showing how little passersby seem to care when someone......

Having to move out of and in to apartments in the city is not a fun task. One group of avid bikers decided to try an apartment move with just their two hands, two feet and two wheels. In just under four hours they managed to complete the Brooklyn-to-Brooklyn move, which included the contents of a one-bedroom apartment. At one point they pass another man who is helping a friend move with a U-Haul, something......

Continuing their misguided and terribly executed orange bike campaign, DKNY has infiltrated YouTube with a 1 minute 53 second clip of a model speaking out in support of the company's great..."humanitarian cause"? The video starts off showing two models mowing each other down with fake miniature cars as an orange bike lies on the ground...probably not the best way to negate the whole ghost bike thing. Hear that children: you could take a cab and......

Photo: Claire Houston Curious about the fate of all those orange bikes with the DKNY website that were locked up around town? The ones the police didn’t cart away (some were illegally chained to trees) are being picked clean for spare parts. The tone deaf Fashion Week publicity stunt was presented by DKNY as an effort to promote cycling in New York, and the company did help raise awareness by, uh, distributing bicycle maps in......

The League of American Bicyclists has awarded New York City a bronze medal for bicycle friendliness. League representatives met with Mayor Bloomberg and DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who sometimes cycles to work, at City Hall yesterday to present the award. Though bronze is the lowest rung on the friendliness ladder, New York City is the only community in the region to be designated a Bike Friendly Community (BFC). While the total number of cycling fatalities......

Mike Bloomberg may end his tenure as the Mayor of Pothole Repair. Under Bloomberg's watch, the city has filled 1.25 million potholes since 2002. While anybody that hits potholes with their bike or their car surely thinks the city missed a few, Mayor Bloomberg assures us that they are doing what it can to fix them. In his first public appearance since returning from Asia, Bloomberg said, "Now, potholes are as much a part......

The architect who was in the construction site trailer crushed by 14,000 pounds of steel that fell 25 stories from a crane may never walk again. Doctors believe Robert Woo was likely paralyzed; his mother said, "He might not walk again...I've been telling him he's lucky to be alive." It is amazing Woo is alive - seeing photographs of the site, it's incredible he survived - but given the amount of construction and development......