Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read her previous posts.

I’ve suddenly developed a mild case of urban envy of…Washington, D.C. That’s right, as of today the not-exactly-progressive town has something New York is sorely lacking: a bike station. Funded by the District and the U.S. Department of Transportation and built by Mobis/Bikestation, the 1,600-square-foot facility offers secure parking for 130 bikes, a changing room, lockers, rentals, and repairs. An annual membership costs $100, or you can buy a daily pass for a buck. Cities like Seattle, Santa Barbara, and Long Beach, California, (where Mobis/Bikestation is based) have already had success with these facilities, but the D.C. station is the first of its kind on the East Coast. Which raises an important question: How useful is a bike station sans showers during warm, humid eastern summers? Perhaps I should reserve my jealousy for Chicago, whose McDonald’s Cycle Center offers showers and towel service. I could get used to the name.

About 350 train enthusiasts weathered this past Sunday’s thunderstorms to board the New York Transit Museum’s vintage Independent Subway System (IND) fleet Nostalgia Ride. The tour began at the Transit Museum’s headquarters in downtown Brooklyn and made its way up the A line to the MTA’s 207th Street overhaul yard in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The Transit Museum conducts these exclusive vintage-fleet tours a few times during the summer (although the next one isn’t until June 2010, you can expect surprise runs in December) as a way for the community to experience what old New York was like—with overhead fans swinging, electric circuit smells galore, and clever advertisements. Check out more photos from Sunday’s tour after the jump. Read more…

Click the image to view the proposal.

Every Thursday we’re posting excerpts from notable 2009 Next Generation proposals that didn’t quite make the final selection featured in the May issue of the magazine. (Click here to check out previous selections.) This week’s proposal is a little different—called World Wide Rail: A Tale of the Necessary Future, it takes the form of a comic strip (!), in which the authors, Copenhagen’s Stig Hessellund and Jacob Bro Knudsen, envision a zero-carbon society linked by a worldwide rail system. Click the image above to begin a slide-show presentation of their proposal—and, as always, leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments form below.

(Note: Next week we’ll be taking a break from our regular Thursday Next Gen posts to prepare a final roundup of the remaining 2009 Notables. Stay tuned for that story in early August.)

David Sokol sits on one of the planters that run along Broadway between 35th and 34th Streets, a block recently closed to automobile traffic.

I’ll admit I was dubious when the gravelly painted areas popped up overnight around Broadway and 23rd Street last year. I was happy that the eight lanes of traffic that I frequently had to cross (but could never manage in one traffic light) were now down to five. But I had doubts about anyone wanting to sit in the middle of traffic. I was wrong. All summer long people gathered around the café tables, lounging just a planter away from speeding cars. So when I heard about the DOT closing sections of Broadway around Times Square and Herald Square, I was ready to celebrate. In fact, I asked writer David Sokol if we could meet in Herald Square so I could take it all in for myself. I had, prematurely, visions of Broadway as a grand pedestrian boulevard running the length of the city. But despite the weekend celebration with movies and beach chairs in Times Square, what we found at 35th Street today was just a road blocked off by traffic barrels. Instead we grabbed a spot in the preexisting pocket park, beneath a clock monument to James Gordon Bennett, where we could at least watch the activity, or what there was of it, on Broadway. Here’s the extent of the dialogue that the project inspired in its current incarnation:

David: “It’s anticlimactic, but there’s hope.”

Kristi: “Right now, it’s just about redirecting traffic. There’s no reason for people to be in the street. But first you have to claim the space, then you can convert it. People are at least using it to cross.” Read more…

Click the image to begin the slide show

Last Sunday, despite the nonstop rain, Metropolis’s associate art director, Dungjai Pungauthaikan, and its picture editor, Sarah Palmer, joined an estimated 30,000 other hearty souls on the 42-mile TD Bank 5 Boro Bike Tour. The ride began in Lower Manhattan and made its way into the Bronx, through Queens and Brooklyn, and, finally, over the Verazzano Bridge into Staten Island. The tour traversed bridges, roads, and highways not normally accessible to cyclists, and provided exciting views and a sense of community rarely felt in the crowded streets of New York City. Here, Dungjai and Sarah present a slide show of images from their water-logged trek.

The tour kicked off Bike Month NYC, which includes such events as National Bike to Work Day, commuting and repair workshops, and a variety of other tours in New York City and beyond.

Nielus, by Kaspar Spurgeon, Minos Tzouflas, Susan Hasselbrook, and Diana Thomas

Last week, at the New York International Auto Show, Nissan unveiled two craftily styled versions of its Cube microvan, a five-door MPV (that’s “multipurpose vehicle” to you) that will become available in the United States next year. Read more…