Mayor Bloomberg's recent announcement that a new station could be built at 10th Avenue and 42nd Street on the Number 7 line extension is welcome news for a project whose fate has been intertwined with the evolving story of the Far West Side of Manhattan.

It's hard to remember now, but just five or six years ago, the economy was booming, Manhattan real estate was sky-high, and developers couldn't nail down enough sites for the construction of new residential and commercial towers. At that time, the Far West Side -- with its ideal location between Midtown and the Hudson River waterfront and its abundance of underdeveloped sites -- was looking like the Far West Side of the United States in the 1840s: a vast chunk of "empty" land, some 40 blocks, just waiting to be civilized with gleaming new glass towers. (Back in 1996 RPA's Third Regional Plan had identified the Far West Side as a prospective third central business district, and a focal point for the city's future economic growth.)

The leaders of this Manifest Destiny movement were then first-termer Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Daniel Doctoroff. In the Far West Side, they saw the possibility of real change for the city: a brand-new office district, a new stadium for the 2012 Olympics and the Jets thereafter, all made possible by a new subway line to connect this new part of town with Midtown.

If you've been to the Far West Side around the Hudson Rail Yards recently, you might notice that not much has changed, physically speaking. The stadium proposal, which RPA strongly opposed, was defeated. In its place, the Related Company is planning a major new mixed-use district over the Yards, but a construction start is still years in the future. Forty blocks have been rezoned to allow much more density, but very little has been built, in part due to the economic downturn. The extension of the Number 7, however, has proceeded -- albeit with a few bumps in the road, so to speak.

The Number 7 line is being extended from Times Square 1.5 miles to Eleventh Avenue and 34th Street. Originally it was to have two new stops, one at Tenth Avenue and 41st Street, and one at its 34th Street terminus. The price tag was high, originally coming in at just over $2.1 billion, and the MTA wouldn't be able to complete the project by 2012. So the City proceeded to pick up the tab itself, by setting up a special tax district in the area to finance the construction of the 7 extension.

Well, sure enough, construction costs soon escalated -- though the City has never released a revised cost estimate -- and in 2007, the City decided to avoid committing any more money to the project by instead canceling the construction of the intermediary stop at Tenth Avenue. The rationale? That the purpose of the subway extension had been to promote development, and development was already happening along 42nd Street, despite the lack of subway access.

This was short-sighted. Of course the goal of new transit service includes encouraging new development, yes, but then also to serve the people who move and work in the new buildings so that they can go about their daily lives and conduct business in the most efficient way possible -- efficient economically, environmentally, and in terms of quality of life. And besides, there is plenty of room for more development along 42nd Street west of Ninth Avenue, something a subway stop would definitely spur.

Building the second station would add enormously to the value of the entire investment. After all, a subway line is only as good as the number of points people can access the trains. Simple arithmetic tells the story. One station costs $2.1 billion. Two stations costs $2.6 billion, or $1.3 billion per station in effect. You are getting almost twice as much subway at far less than twice the cost.

Despite the fact that the construction contract has been signed for the project without the shell for the intermediary station, the City's and MTA's recent finding that even without this shell, a basic station with two platforms and four exits but no underground connection between the platforms could still be added, if funding for it were found. Although this basic station configuration is far from ideal, it would be a major improvement over no station at all.

The price tag even for this basic station is still $500 million, and no source of funding has been identified, but as the best sales people argue, in this case legitimately, "You can't afford NOT to buy the second station!"

Where is the money to come from? As always, that is a key question. In these tough economic times, the city, the MTA, and state and federal governments are all cash-strapped. But if we miss this opportunity, tens of thousands of New Yorkers will pay for this omission for decades to come. Ideally, the Tenth Avenue station should be constructed at the same time as the rest of the extension, so we the people of this city can get the best value out of this project, which is after all, ours.

Bill Bishop in his book The Big Sort (Houghton 2008), postulates that Americans have begun sorting themselves out into neighborhoods, regions and cities by politics and lifestyle.

Perhaps this explains why I, a child of the suburbs but an urban dweller now for almost all my adult life, know almost no one who lives in the classic cul-de-sac suburb, even though obviously huge numbers of Americans do so.

Which is why it's good to have in-laws. You don't choose them, and so they introduce you to alternate lifestyles. Such as living in the suburbs.

As I write this, I'm visiting my spouse's sister and her family. About the same age as my wife and me and with young children like us, they live in a 15-year-old Maryland subdivision built about halfway between Washington DC and Baltimore. Although only about 10 miles from the state capital of Annapolis, their subdivision sits in a grove of woods and has large homes on large lots placed amid maple trees. One could be in the country. Sort of.

So distant am I from such places that being here is like visiting a foreign country. I am getting an upfront look at the pleasures and pains of suburbia, both from a personal and a public policy perspective. The issue here is Sprawl of course. Although the Tri-state region has some of the densest cities in the country, it also wrestles with unplanned and low-density growth, so perhaps the example of my in-laws can be instructive.

First with the pleasures.

My in-laws' two-story home with full basement has 3000 square feet. Our entire Brooklyn apartment would fit inside their kitchen and accompanying den. Entering this abode, my body let out a huge sigh of relief in the presence of so much space. Goodbye for a while to cramped apartment life.

Then there is the backyard. Yesterday our five-year-old son and his five-year-old cousin occupied themselves for hours there, exploring the woods and making little rivers with a backyard hose.

But then there are the downsides, both from a personal and public perspective. The homes here lack city water and sewage. Although I'm told sometimes wells and septic tanks last forever, I'm also aware of many cases where cities have had to step in and supply services to stop the pollution of groundwater. Then there's teeth worries. My sister-in-law gives her kids fluoride treatments because well water has no fluoride in it. She wonders whether their teeth will really end up strong and cavity resistant.

Isolation of all types is a real concern. Our first night here I offered to go for a drive and buy a six-pack of beer or a bottle of wine for dinner, which they were a bit low on. They both shook their heads and said essentially there was nowhere remotely close enough to get to quickly, even by car. Sparked by this interchange, I put their address into "Walk Score," a nifty Internet application that measures the walkability of places. Their neighborhood measured a big fat 2 out of 100 for the proximity of stores, restaurants, parks, libraries, movie theaters, drug stores etc. By comparison, my street in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn scored a 97, a "walker's paradise."

Whatever its drawbacks, my in-laws love their new home, and clearly their choice does not have to be everyone's. Overall, would it be better if more Americans lived in compact places rather than those like my in-laws? I think so, but there is also room in this world for many lifestyles. I did wonder how this suburb fit in with the noted Smart Growth policies of former Gov. Parris Glendening, who was governor from 1995 to 2003. But that's a conversation for another day. I've got to run now and go play with the kids in the backyard.

In the last issue of Spotlight, we wrote about an exciting proposal, developed by a University of Pennsylvania graduate planning studio, for dedicated high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington DC that would reduce travel time by 45%. Part of the motivation for this study was the frustration with official planning efforts over the past four decades. Driven more by the realities of funding and less by bold visions, plans for speeding up rail service in the corridor have not promised much, and yet still managed to underdeliver.

But lack of funding and vision are not the only problems that have plagued rail service in the Northeast corridor. Governance is also one of the key difficulties. Although Amtrak owns most of the corridor on which it and eight commuter rail service providers operate, it has not always been clear with whom the responsibility for planning lies: Amtrak? The FRA? The states?

These challenges have made progress more difficult even as heavy use of these systems has lead to infrastructure that is in a state of disrepair and lacks needed capacity. This in turn has forced all the actors into a zero sum game. For example, one additional intercity train on the corridor means one less commuter train, and with ridership on both growing, someone has to lose.

So given these stresses, it's not surprising that the northeastern states have "not always played nice together," as the Penn studio points out. And this status quo may have continued on into the future if not for eight billion reasons. With a single stroke of a pen, President Obama in 2009 fundamentally altered the scale at which we view rail investments in this country.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spread eight billion dollars across the country on intercity and high-speed rail projects, much of this funding going to corridors in Florida, California, and the Midwest. The Northeast Corridor mainline, despite its unquestioned potential for high speed rail, received only about two percent of that money. Why? Lack of cooperation? Lack of vision? Lack of a plan? Yes.

But with the promise of additional money down the line and a more receptive political climate, the many actors in the Northeast have more motivation to work out the tangled lines of authority. Indeed, they've already begun.

Two years ago, the stakeholders in the Northeast took one significant step forward to address at least one of these issues in coming together for a two-year planning process to produce the Northeast Corridor Master Plan, published earlier this year. The Master Plan is an excellent document, and provides a road map to bring the corridor to a state of good repair and incremental capacity expansion over the next twenty years. If this plan moves toward addressing the issue of cooperation, it does little in the way of a providing a grand, bold vision for high-speed rail in the Northeast. And in this new world of heightened federal interest in high-speed rail, a grand bold vision is precisely what we need.

The states of the Northeast are now poised to take that next step. Last month, eleven northeastern states and Amtrak submitted a multi-state planning proposal to the Federal Railroad Administration. The proposal seeks $18.8 million dollars for a three-year, four-phased planning study. The proposal, which was prepared after Obama's high speed rail investment act had passed, can be seen as a more ambitious document that seeks to take advantage a better political climate for better rail service. The document outlines four phases, which to some extent can run concurrently.

The first phase will identify projects on the corridor that can progress in the short and medium term. These projects will posses "independent utility," will result in no significant environmental impact, and are necessary regardless of the ultimate vision for the corridor. This phase is important because it will detail a set of federally fundable projects that will allow the Northeast to compete in the next round of federal grants. The lack of this type of list was one reason the Northeast missed out on major funding in the first round.

This phase is necessary, yes, but exciting -- not really.

The bold vision comes in phases two and three. In these phases, the study will look at travel demand forecasts beyond those assumed in the Master Plan -- including unconstrained travel demand for all modes, not just rail, out to 2050. Given the severe capacity constraints on the region's highways and airports, the likely conclusion of this process will be that the megaregion needs the kind of increased capacity in our rail network that only dedicated high-speed rail can deliver, something akin to what the Penn Studio came up with. Then, multiple options will be explored to meet this anticipated demand.

If all goes well, phase four will take care of more mundane but necessary stuff. The process will conclude with the completion of a programmatic environmental impact statement for the corridor, the first in thirty years, and will clear the way for implementation of dedicated world-class high-speed rail in the Northeast.

This proposal strikes a needed balance between short-term necessity and ambitious long-term planning, and is worthy of support by anyone who cares about rail service in the Northeast. A decision by the FRA about whether to fund this three-year planning process is expected by the middle of July.

While the states are now working together better, still at issue though is whether the states, Amtrak, the freight and commuter railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration, and all the other actors can work out who is in charge and who gets the credit or the blame. What's at stake is the long-term future of rail in the Northeast. The carrot of more funding and the stick of executive authority will almost certainly come into play.

Stay tuned.

I've been obsessed with the design of crosswalks recently. I cross 18 of them a day -- nine each way to-and-from work, and watch how people deal with all the variables coming at them: cars, emergency vehicles, bikes, other pedestrians, and weather. I frequently wonder if there is a more natural and informed way to interact with the street as a pedestrian. Walking into an intersection, there is a ritual of interaction with the infrastructure itself. One walks up, looks left at the cars coming towards the intersection, then at the walk sign, then at the stoplight to watch it turn yellow, then back at the walk sign for permission to cross, at which time half of the pedestrians are already nearly across the street. It's all rather clumsy for such a high-stakes task as not getting killed by a car. It seems to me we are due for a high-tech redesign of the intersection, with a focus on safety, engagement, and interaction. One could even receive information from a crosswalk, emerging on the other side with more than he or she entered with.

On a recent trip, I headed outside into the night with an iPad and two friends, fired up an astronomy program and held it in the air over a section of the star-filled sky. Overlaid onto the real sky were the name and details about every star we could see. As I moved around in an arc, the information followed. We found Venus, Orion, and the Big Dipper. My friends couldn't have been more amazed at what they were seeing. It was a nearly direct, very natural interaction with an alien environment. Something that seemed so far away and hidden was suddenly revealed as intricate and accessible. This type of interactivity with our environment can, should and is happening with our public streets and spaces. It's not just for stars.

A few months ago a Federal Highway Administration project caught my eye. Solar Roadways is a very early prototype of a solar-collecting highway project, designed to test the feasibility of overlaying solar power onto the existing road network. Super-durable glass surfaces embedded with sun-harvesting cells would replace asphalt. These cells could store and distribute power and emit heat to defrost themselves. As if that wasn't enough, each panel has an LED surface that displays the road markings, powers itself, and senses pressure on the glass for wildlife and pedestrian safety and illumination. You can program the road to display anything: road lines, warnings, pictures of kittens. Whatever you'd like.

Just as I was able to hold an iPad to the night sky and receive information, surfaces in our cities could respond to touch and sight and also inform. Ambient information -- expressing data aesthetically through light so it can be comprehended at-a-glance -- could change the way we understand our cities and is very possible with the current LED technology. Above-ground subway stations could intensify in color as a train gets closer to allow more time above ground with friends or for efficiency's sake. All those glowing globes at station entrances? Let's make something of them with real-time data. Imagine our crosswalks glowing green -- illuminating the pedestrian -- when it is okay to cross. Or sidewalks that show a heat map of traffic on the street and sidewalk in a given hour. Or roads that reveal how many cars pass an intersection, turning the city into an actual-scale traffic map. Sidewalks, roads, and crosswalks then have an opportunity to become interactive play experiences, with the pressure from your sneakers releasing digital footprints that linger and inform, perhaps leading to 'paths' that show trends -- well-worn hot spots that guide residents and train tourists through the city. (Then we could finally do away with pranks like this, as funny as they are.)

Of course, this might lead walkers to follow the footprints of jaywalkers en masse directly off the curb, but that's an expression of user preference and should be acknowledged. If it's the better, more efficient route, let it be and maybe start looking at other design solutions, like mid-block crosswalks or fewer vehicle lanes. In her 1992 book "The Hidden life of Dogs," author Elizabeth Marshall Thomas reveals that dogs cross the street in the middle between intersections because it is easier to navigate the oncoming traffic when it is coming one direction at a time, rather than four. Human jaywalkers might just have the right and safer idea. And this propensity of humans to ignore simple traffic signals is what a crosswalk, even an interactive one, must reckon with. If you really want to see this in action, stand at a crosswalk and watch how many people step off the curb and into the street before the light changes. While this is dangerous, it's also an honest look into what in other fields would be called user experience. Intersection engineering has an opportunity to go beyond safety and traffic flow and tap into human nature to ensure folks work with the system instead of against it.

The crosswalk, largely unchanged since cars began moving faster than people, is due for an upgrade. (See this film for what crossing the street used to be like.) We've started to see some nice shifts in transparency, like the recently-installed countdown clocks. But we have millions of folks traversing thousands of intersections each day in New York and beyond. Collecting those journeys and feeding them back as ambient information could make the city experience a richer, safer, and more engaging one. Call it Street 2.0.