Fort Lauderdale's NE 13 Street to lose 2 lanes

Figure 1 - Example of a Complete Street concept

 

By Michael Turnbell Sun Sentinel

September 15, 2015

 

One of the city's major east-west roads is going on a diet next year.

Officials want to transform a four-lane stretch of Northeast 13th Street in the Middle River Terrace neighborhood with on-street parking, bike lanes and improved crosswalks.

To do so means drivers will lose a through lane in each direction between Northeast Fourth and Ninth avenues, just west of the Florida East Coast Railway tracks.

Construction is set to begin in July 2016 and will take about a year to complete.

A public meeting is set for Wednesday to present concepts for the $2 million project.

The city wants to spur economic development, slow speeding traffic and create a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere similar to what was done on a stretch of Sistrunk Boulevard, which was redesigned with narrower lanes and wider sidewalks.

The project is part of what's called Complete Streets, a national program that rebuilds or retrofits roads to make it easier for people to cross the street and walk to shops, ride their bikes to work or catch a bus.

The city tested the concept for about a week in May by closing off lanes with plastic poles between Dixie Highway and the railroad tracks.

City planner Karen Mendrala said the test slowed traffic and made it easier for pedestrians to cross the street. "Residents were seen biking and skating within the protected outer lane," she said.

Mendrala said businesses near the railroad tracks want the lane reductions extended east of Northeast Ninth Avenue. The city is reviewing whether that's possible with the current funding.

Figure 2 - Example of a Complete Street Concept

Making the lane reductions permanent isn't sitting well with some drivers who use the road as a speedy alternative to congested Sunrise Boulevard a few blocks to the south. The road, which runs from U.S. 1 to Powerline Road, carries about 14,000 vehicles a day.

"The sudden appearance of traffic cones that were apparently delineating new curb installations was quite confusing," said Chris Lovell, of Fort Lauderdale. "Not one person I talked to…felt it was a good idea to limit traffic on such an important cross street for local residents."

But Tim Smith, a former city commissioner and president of the 13^th Street Alliance, said the project can't come soon enough.

"It's sure to transform the business portion of 13th from a dangerous, ugly roadway, devoid of almost any community shopping, to just the opposite," Smith said. "Most of those opposing don't want traffic slowed. But to most of us, that's the objective."

Northeast 13th Street was originally a two-lane road but was widened to four lanes in the mid-1970s. Today, it's home to a mix of middle and lower-middle class homes and stores, churches, parking lots and gas stations. Earlier this year, Warsaw Coffee Co., a Seattle-style industrial chic coffeehouse, opened, drawing big crowds.

Activists along 13th Street have been pressing to beautify the area for years.

Several years ago, Fort Lauderdale placed three African statues along Northeast 13th Street as part of a long-sought revitalization effort.

mturnbell@tribpub.com, 954-356-4155, Twitter @MikeTurnpike, Facebook at SunSentinel.com/concreteideas

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-lauderdale-13th-street-diet-20150915-story.html

 

 

 

Friday Funny

 

 

 

Gene Dempsey, City Forester

Public Works Sustainability Division

Office - (954) 828-5785  Fax - (954) 828-4745

GDempsey@fortlauderdale.gov

 

 

 

Shape your parks' future!

We need your ideas! The City of Fort Lauderdale is developing a Parks and Recreation System Master Plan. Tell us how you'd like to use your parks, open spaces, trails, and athletic facilities by attending one of our community meetings. For more information, call 954-828-7275 (PARK) or visit www.playfortlauderdale.com and join the conversation today!       City of Fort Lauderdale Parks & Recreation 1350 W. Broward Boulevard Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312  www.fortlauderdale.gov/parks

 

City of Fort Lauderdale Park(ing) Day Event - September 24 8am - 2pm

 

One of the many reasons to plant trees

Sorry, I don’t know who gets credit for this one. 

 

 

 

 

Green Roofs Serve as Vital Wildlife Habitat

The world's best thinkers on the urban future

 

June 19, 2012

 

Green roof’s provide the benefit of natural heating and insulation, a lovely space to escape to amidst the bustle of city-life, but new research shows that they are also providing a vital refuge for birds as they fly through on their way to somewhere else.

Dustrin Patridge is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University, and he’s been tracking the insect life – as well as monitoring which birds are stopping over.

Reporter Rachel Nuewer visited Partridge for Ecomagination to get a closer look at these beautiful green roofs, and the research that Partridge is doing.

Watch “Eating on a Green Roof” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pESYN9TfN2w

Source: Ecomagination

 

 

 

Denmark Might Be Winning The Global Race To Prevent Food Waste

Sidsel Overgaard

September 01, 2015

 

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Claus Holm, a Danish celebrity chef, demonstrates at a festival on the Danish island of Fyn how expired products lurking at the back of the fridge can still be delicious. Sidsel Overgaard for NPR

 

At a festival on the Danish island of Fyn, Claus Holm, a fast-talking Danish celebrity chef, is sniffing and mixing into a pot of stew an ingredient he calls "totally forbidden." It's cream, and it expires today.

Danes' increasing willingness to buy and consume items like just-expired dairy products has helped make them, arguably, the world champions in the fight against food waste. According to a recent report from the Danish government, Danes now throw away 25 percent less food than they did five years ago.

Holm is one of many people who have been working to make that so, and it's why he's here today: to prove that expired products lurking at the back of the fridge can still be delicious. For two hours, he works his way through kitchen carts piled with a messy array of stickered-up products: bruised basil, tired baguettes, squishy tomatoes and huge hunks of slightly graying meat.

To Cut Food Waste, Spain's Solidarity Fridge Supplies Endless Leftovers

A few years ago this might have been radical performance art. Today, his audience smiles appreciatively, but doesn't seem to need much convincing. Danes today throw out 104 pounds of food per year on average compared to an estimated 273 pounds per person per year in the U.S.

If Holm is an ambassador in Denmark's anti-waste movement, then the queen has to be Selina Juul, a peppy 35-year-old who emigrated from Russia as a teen.

In 2008, after years of dismay at the amount of food she saw landing in Danish trash cans, Juul started the organization Stop Wasting Food.

Farmers and retailers often get the brunt of the criticism when it comes to food waste, but Juul decided to start at the other end.

"I thought, 'Who can we move? Well, we can move the people.' So we started focusing on the people," she says.

Juul created a Facebook group and two weeks later started appearing in the national media, where she has been a regular figure ever since.

It was an efficient strategy, given that individual consumers are responsible for 36 percent of food waste in this country, compared to retailers (23 percent), the food processors (19 percent) and primary producers (14 percent), according to figures from the Ministry of the Environment and Food.

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A customer browses a display of fresh fruit for sale outside a Netto store, operated by Danske Supermarked, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company says Danish consumers have helped push it to cut back on food waste even more. /Freya Ingrid Morales/Bloomberg/Getty Images

But Juul says her seven-year effort to poke and prod consumers is starting to trickle up the food chain.

"Now, because it's become a trend of not wasting food, the companies and the food producers and retailers are starting to act as well," she says. "Compared to other countries, Denmark, at the moment, has the most supermarkets doing something to reduce food waste."

Maia Lindstrøm Sejersen, a spokeswoman with Dansk Supermarked, Denmark's largest retailer with four chains and an online store, would counter that the company's supermarkets have always been careful about waste.

New Nordic Food Gods Loosen Up On Strictly Local Cuisine

"It's just good business," she says. "Any grocer would rather sell something than throw it away."

She says Dansk Supermarked's chains have sold food near expiration at reduced prices for decades. But while buying these items might once have been considered a sign of poverty for consumers, it's now a badge of pride. And the company has responded by piling reduced price goods in dedicated areas, marked with special signage.

But, she admits, the recent movement to prevent food waste has pushed grocery stores to improve further, particularly in one area.

"Fruits and vegetables have always been tricky because they have to look lovely and fresh," she says. "Sometimes maybe we've been too quick to say 'this needs to go.' But now that people are so focused on food waste, we can, for example, take the outer, [wilted] leaves off a head of lettuce and sell it at a reduced price."

And, she says, even more than consumer pressure, what's going to make the biggest difference in reducing retailer waste is technology that enables better tracking from farm to fork. She points to SAP, a new IT system her company has had in place for just under a year. It's already helped one of her company's chains pinpoint bread as one of the most wasted items. With that knowledge, stores are now ordering less and have dedicated more space to selling older bread at a discount, all of which has reduced bread waste by 60 percent.

Meanwhile, Juul and her army of volunteers say there's still plenty of opportunity for consumers to reduce food waste even more. For example, a Stop Wasting Food survey released just this week suggests that half of all Danes have been shoving leftovers to the back of the freezer — and tossing them out a year later.

"This new number is showing that we're postponing our food waste," says Juul. "We're just pushing it into the future."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/01/436292784/denmark-might-be-winning-the-global-race-to-prevent-food-waste?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150901