Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The debate is over, and as of today the Ninth St. bike lanes are swiftly becoming a reality.

Photo: Courtesy Zoe Ryder White

Over on the New York Times's City Room blog, Sewell Chan reports on opposition to the July 8 closing of the West 72nd St. exit ramp from the West Side Highway, a move that has been fought in court for years by neighborhood activists. The off-ramp is being demolished at the request of the Extell Development Company, which is constructing the massive Riverside South residential complex, to enable the extension of Riverside Boulevard, the complex's main street. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has tried to make the case that poses a security risk, issuing a statement that said, in part:

A large-scale emergency situation on the Upper West Side, such as a significant fire, building collapse or terrorist attack, would require emergency personnel from throughout the city to access the area to provide medical and other relief services. With no point of entry at West 72nd Street, emergency response vehicles would need to exit the highway at West 56th Street and travel north on congested city streets, or exit at West 79th Street and travel south on equally congested routes to access any location in between.

An Upper West Side resident and commenter on the City Room site had similarly dire predictions for the outcome of the 72nd St. closing:

West End Avenue will now become a seven-lane superhighway, imposing increased noise, pollution, and danger to pedestrians. This was put through irregularly, without proper engineering and environmental studies, disregarding the will of the local community, and against the public interest. It shows municipal government being manipulated to serve private interests -- NY City as a classic banana republic!

But another commenter cites this study on the reallocation of road space to paint a much rosier scenario:

I'd be curious to see the traffic model or data set that Stringer is using to make his prediction of increased congestion. I doubt he'd be able to produce any data to back up his claim of increased congestion.

That's because the closing this off-ramp will, almost certainly, create a significant reduction in traffic on W. 72nd Street. After all, many of the vehicles currently using the street are driving to or from the off-ramp. Close the ramp and that traffic goes away. The traffic reduction would likely be felt on streets and avenues around the closed ramp as well.

Anyone know more about this project and care to speculate on how things will play out once the exit is permanently closed on Sunday?

Photo: Hiroko Masuike for the New York Times

Congestion in Jackson Heights: The DOT needs some new ideas

The Queens Times-Ledger reports on the "cool reception" given last week by Queens Community Board 3 and City Council Member Hiram Monserrate to the DOT's proposal for a one-way pair of streets on 35th and 37th avenues. What's most disappointing about the debate so far is the DOT's insistence it can't come up with any other solutions to the chronic traffic congestion that plagues the heavily residential neighborhood.

Will Sweeney, a founding member of the Western Jackson Heights Alliance civic association, said one-way streets east and west would increase vehicle speeds and danger to pedestrians. He said the congestion was created not by east-west problems, but by backups on north-south streets. That is where the DOT should focus its efforts, he said.

"We do need a traffic engineering solution to the congestion and pedestrian safety problems in Jackson Heights. We don't need a dangerous raceway for through traffic," he said.

DOT Queens Borough Commissioner Maura McCarthy, who noted that no one spoke in favor of the plan, said there were not many options for the city to consider.

"We are not here to force anything down anybody's throat," she said, but then added "there are not a lot of other ideas."

You can find a PDF of the DOT's complete presentation here.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear 

A third-grader was hit on her way to school here two weeks ago.

You have to move fast to beat the turning traffic on Fourth Avenue.

DOT Deputy Commissioner for Brooklyn Dalila Hall faced some tough questioning from members of the public at a meeting on pedestrian safety on Third and Fourth avenues in Brooklyn on Saturday.

"Why should we have to run across the street?" demanded Melissa Torres, whose daughter attends PS 24 in Sunset Park, near the busy intersection of 38th St. and 4th Ave.

Sometimes running isn't enough. A third-grader was hit by a car two weeks ago as she crossed at the spot, where vehicles roar down a ramp off the Gowanus Expressway and make a left turn right into a crosswalk on Fourth Avenue.

That girl survived the crash, but Third and Fourth avenues have been fatally dangerous streets for many children -- like six-year-old Andry Vega, who was run over at the corner of Third Ave. and 46th St. last December, and four-year-old James Rice, who was struck and killed at the corner of Third Ave. and Baltic St. in February.

They were just two of the fatalities that showed up as blue crosses on the map of the Third and Fourth avenue corridor at the back of the auditorium -- interspersed with many, many red circles indicating crashes that resulted in pedestrian injuries.

The meeting, organized by the Community Education Council for District 15, was designed to give the public a chance to voice their concerns directly to DOT officials and to police. And the parents, teachers and students who attended made the most of it, requesting traffic-calming measures and better enforcement for specific intersections, like the one at 38th and Fourth.

According to Transportation Alternatives' Brooke DuBose, who made a presentation at the meeting, several residents marked trouble spots on the map, and representatives from Community Board 7 and the offices of various elected officials expressed interest in following up the meeting with further workshop and planning opportunities.

Representatives of the 72nd and 78th precincts, which cover the area, said that truck enforcement is a priority. In the 72nd, according to Sgt. Alfredo Rosario, summonses for trucks are up 50 percent over this time last year. He welcomed the input from the community on specific dangerous intersections. "It's actually very helpful to us," he said after the meeting.

Several of those present wanted more immediate action from the DOT to make crosswalks safer. "When a kid gets killed here, god forbid, then they'll do something," said Raymond Mercado, who lives around the corner from PS 24 and has two children in the school. He said he constantly sees near-misses as kids travel on the traffic-filled streets.

He and others wondered if the DOT needed to study the situation.

Read more...

According to a more-than-a-little-snarky post on Curbed, the first of Lower Broadway's hotly anticipated bus bulbs has been constructed on Broadway south of Spring Street.

As Streetsblog wrote when the DOT announced the plan to construct the bulbs back in March, this is a noteworthy development for several reasons:

The benefits of bus bulbs include preventing buses from being delayed, reducing sidewalk congestion, providing space for bus shelters and other amenities, and reducing pedestrian crossing times.

In a small but very tangible way, bus bulbs may single-handedly change the pecking order on Lower Broadway by forcing other vehicles to wait behind or detour around loading and unloading buses rather than the buses having to defer to them.

Most promising, DOT appears to be taking a far more experimental approach in this particular project. Rather than allowing itself to become bogged down in complicated, expensive street engineering, it sounds like the agency will be creating the bus bulbs by putting down temporary curbs, filling them in with concrete, and just gerrymandering the drainage. The results might not look particularly pretty but advocates have, for years, been calling on DOT to show more willingness to conduct quick-and-dirty street design experiments.

And now that it's done, this one doesn't look half bad after all.

Photo via Curbed

Prospect Park West at 8th Street, September 16, 2006, 9:45 am. "Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries." American Journal of Public Health

Last Thursday, DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia presented a plan to turn a pair of two-way avenues running through Park Slope, Brooklyn into one-way arterials. The aim of the plan, according to DOT, was to improve pedestrian safety. 

Yet, in his presentation to the community the only specific evidence Primeggia gave to back up his safety claim was a reference to an avenue in Brooklyn where crashes had declined 15% and total injuries 22% after DOT turned it into a one-way. Primeggia didn't provide the name of the avenue. "I know that two-way streets are less safe," he said.

While more than 650 community members came out to say "no way" to DOT's one-way plan, one 28-year Park Slope resident arrived with a stack of academic studies directly refuting Primeggia's safety argument.

This Park Sloper, who wishes to remain anonymous because he often works with city government, is employed by one of New York State's transportation authorities. He is a member of the federal Transportation Research Board and a professional transportation planner and traffic engineer, with an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and a masters in transportation planning from MIT.

Unfortunately, the evening's testimony was cut short and his powerful testimony was left undelivered. Here is what he would have said if he had gotten a chance:

The proposal under consideration here this evening may have merit in terms of moving traffic through Brooklyn as a whole. However, in terms of serving Park Slope, this project is ill-conceived and you would be ill-advised to endorse such a plan.

I'll focus on just one aspect of the plan -- the significant negative impact it can have on some of Park Slope's most precious but vulnerable citizens, that is, our small children. With PS 321, the magnet school that was PS 10, PS 39, PS 282 and various middle schools, private and parochial schools, more than 3,000 children use Sixth and Seventh Avenues daily to walk to and from school.

One-way street networks can result in more pedestrian accidents, particularly among children. This effect has been noted in a number of transportation studies published in respected academic journals. I'll cite and quote certain relevant reports and articles for your consideration:

Read more...

The New York Times came out advocating for progressive transportation policies in its Sunday City section editorial, saying that the departure of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall presents "a great opportunity to take bold action on a vexing quality of life and health issue: traffic congestion."

After giving Weinshall props for her actions on the Queens Boulevard front (and taking her to task on the Staten Island Ferry crash), the Times goes on to say how much more needs to be done, voicing some arguments that probably sound mighty familiar to Streetsblog readers:

Whoever gets the job should waste no time in helping to secure federal money to study ways of relieving traffic, including the possibility of congestion pricing. Washington has recognized that the nation's cities need traffic controls, and millions of dollars are being offered to municipalities seeking solutions. New York should claim its share.

There has been a lot of pushback on the idea of congestion pricing, in which drivers would be charged a fee in the most heavily trafficked part of the city, Manhattan south of Central Park. Opponents portray the fee as a regressive tax that would be hard on small businesses, but versions of such a charge in London, Stockholm and elsewhere show promising results, reducing traffic apparently without impeding commerce.

As a quick second act, the next commissioner could take a bite out of congestion and set an example for the rest of city government by revoking its workers' parking permits, an idea promoted by Transportation Alternatives, a nonpartisan advocate for reduced car traffic. City workers from all departments, the police in particular, regularly abuse the privilege -- the permits amount to a free pass to park, even double-park, anywhere -- especially in Lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.

In the larger picture, the new commissioner should treat city transportation as the regional issue it is. Much of the traffic on the most heavily used streets originates in outlying areas. Workers are commuting from ever greater distances. Sometimes that is a matter of necessity, sometimes it's a matter of perceived convenience.

The city would benefit greatly from a transportation leader who promotes use of public transit, walking and cycling as not just a way to a destination, but as a way of life.

The death of four-year-old James Jacaricce Rice at the intersection of Third Avenue and Baltic Street in Brooklyn yesterday didn't make a huge splash in the news. But it should have.

What were James and his 18-year-old aunt, Ta-Nayin St. John, doing when they were mowed down by a three-ton yellow Hummer making a turn? They were just trying to cross the street. In the crosswalk. With the light.

According to the Daily News, the driver, Ken Williams, said that the height of his vehicle prevented him from seeing the two walking in front of him. Because he stopped at the scene, and because he hadn't been drinking, it seems his only penalty will be a ticket for failure to yield. That, and having to live with the consequences of his actions.

Of course, the driver who hit and killed three-year-old Eddy Heredia last week on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn wasn't charged with any crime either, even though he did leave the scene. He told the cops he hadn't seen the boy, and they believed him. Newsday's account of a witness who said the driver had stopped after he hit the boy, gotten out of the truck and then gotten back in to drive off apparently was not followed up.

Walking to school is a healthy way for many kids to get their daily dose of exercise. Unfortunately many parents are rightfully concerned about their children's safety on the city's streets because of aggressive driver and lack of good pedestrian safety infrastructure. Everyday in front of many city schools you see parents dropping kids off in front of schools even though most live well within walking distance.

In 2004 the DOT began what turned into a 2 year study of Well, the study is now complete and they are planning to implement the changes in late 2007. The study has confirmed that many additional safety improvements are needs near schools to make them safer for kids to walk to school.

From a press release issued by the Mayor's Office:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today joined Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein to announce the completion and release of  "Traffic Safety Maps" for each of the city's 1,471 elementary and middle schools following an examination of accident histories around each school, as well as upgraded school crosswalk signs at each school, and comprehensive traffic safety reports for 135 priority schools located around the city.   The maps, which identify traffic signals, all-way stop signs, speed bumps, and crosswalks maps, are designed to help students and parents find the safest routes to and from school.  DOT will soon begin distributing these maps to schools, and they will also be online at DOT's web site starting next month.  Mayor Bloomberg also announced that DOT has already begun to implement the safety enhancements recommended in the traffic safety reports for the 135 priority schools, and that the City plans detailed studies for 135 additional public, private and parochial elementary and middle schools. DOT will also begin a similar program for 40 high schools in late 2007. Mayor Bloomberg made today's announcement at P.S. 21 in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx .

We'll have more on the specifics later in the day.