Tag: new york city

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NYC’s newly opened bike share system experiencing record membership sales

NYC’s newly opened bike share system experiencing record membership sales.

New York City opened its much-anticipated CitiBike system earlier this week, and business is off to a record start. Within the first 24 hours alone, more than 4,000 people signed up for memberships. Cincinnati issued a request for proposals in October 2012 for what city leadership hopes will be a -bike, 35-station bike share system. More from Streetsblog NYC:

Comparing the first wave of subscriptions in NYC to other bike-share cities is tough, since the Citi Bike service area is much larger than the other networks, and other cities launched at different times of year. (Capital Bikeshare in Washington, DC, is currently the largest bike-share system in the country, but it launched with only 49 stations.) Even taking into account the relatively large size of the Citi Bike service area, which will provide 6,000 bikes at 330 stations, the sign-up rate in NYC is off the charts so far.

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Could Cincinnati host the 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament?

Could Cincinnati host the 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament?.

The 2014 Big East Basketball Tournament will be its last before the ‘Catholic 7’ take over and make the conference their own. This year’s tournament, which starts tonight at Madison Square Garden, will be its last in Midtown Manhattan. After that, league sources say that they will look to host the tournament in a new location with Cincinnati being one of the finalists for 2014. Could this be Cincinnati’s next major event following the World Choir Games and preceding the 2015 All-Star Game? More from ESPN:

The current Big East, which must have a new conference name by July 1, will be left with a 10-member league in 2013: Cincinnati, UConn, UCF, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, Rutgers, SMU, Temple and USF.

Louisville and Rutgers will remain in the league one more season before moving to the ACC and Big Ten, respectively, in 2014. The remaining Big East schools are considering new sites for next year’s tournament, including Hartford, Conn.; Memphis, Tenn.; Cincinnati and Dallas.

 

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Has the United States given up on building subway systems?

Has the United States given up on building subway systems?.

Everyone knows that America’s roadways and bridges are crumbling, but the United States has also seemingly given up on its subway systems. Atlanta’s subway system was the last subway system started in the U.S., and its construction commenced in 1979. Since that time no other American city has been able to figure out the financing of a subway system with the disappearance of federal funding support. More from Governing:

The rapid pace of subway construction, especially in developing countries, has driven the number of systems in the world to more than 190, according to the Economist. One reason for the boom has to do with government stimulus programs that followed the financial crisis, allowing investment in subway construction to soar. One country that’s noticeably absent from the project lists that appear in trade publications is the U.S.

With transit funding still uncertain, given the lack of a stable, dependable funding stream from Congress, all but a handful of cities have decided to stay clear of such money-draining projects…Some might argue that we don’t need such large-scale transit systems, which are not only expensive to build but expensive to run. Indeed, debates over the pros and cons of a subway system have killed many plans while delaying some construction projects for decades, not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. Still, we can’t ignore the fact that the U.S. is becoming an increasingly urbanized country, with more people working and living in cities every year.

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City neighborhoods with the most single men, women

City neighborhoods with the most single men, women.

Single men and women are often in a quest to find other single men and women. The quest leads people to debate which cities are best for singles, but what is the truth behind the rhetoric, and how do you think Cincinnati stacks up? More from Atlantic Cities:

To figure out where the gender ratio is most skewed in each direction, we went right to the data and looked at the ratio of men living alone to women living alone in order to assess the dating scene. We also subtracted estimates of the gay and lesbian population in order to focus on men and women interested in dating someone of the opposite sex. Finally, we excluded people older than 65 since differences in life expectancy skew the gender ratio in the later years.

In most metros, the neighborhood with the highest ratio of men to women is in or near downtown, as well as in recently redeveloped neighborhoods like Boston’s Waterfront or Long Island City. The neighborhoods with the highest ratio of women to men tend to be more residential, like San Francisco’s Marina and Seattle’s Queen Anne, and more upscale (and safe), like the Upper East Side and Upper Connecticut Avenue. Some are near major retail centers, like Chicago’s Near North Side, the Beverly Center in LA, and Atlanta’s Perimeter Mall.

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NYC’s Queens neighborhood aiming to transform stretch of railway into park

NYC’s Queens neighborhood aiming to transform stretch of railway into park.

The dramatic transformation of the High Line in Manhattan has been so successful that it has influenced other urban communities to re-examine what they’re doing with their unused railroads. Just across the East River, however, Queens is aiming to transform a stretch of train track, that has been abandoned for 50 years, into what advocates are calling the QueensWay. More from the New York Times:

Now, the three-and-a-half-mile stretch of rusty train track in central Queens is being reconceived as the “QueensWay,” a would-be linear park for walkers and bicyclists in an area desperate for more parkland and, with the potential for art installations, performances and adjacent restaurants, a draw for tourists interested in sampling the famously diverse borough.

Unlike the High Line, the QueensWay would welcome bicycles. While the trestles are relatively narrow, long stretches are wide enough — up to 25 feet — to accommodate walkers and bicyclists. New bike paths could connect the park to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to the north, as well as an existing bikeway in Jamaica Bay to the south. About 250,000 residents live within a mile of the proposed park, and its backers see all kinds of ancillary benefits, from health to traffic.