Needless to say, please don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of service in this good cause.

Best,

Ted

tedninetwo@yahoo.com

Anyway, good job and I hope you carry on with the charette and are able to find workable solutions. Here at the District of Saanich in Victoria, BC, Canada we are thoroughly committed to emphasizing alternative means of transportation.

Though this piece focuses on bollards but they are certainly not the only good pedestrian safety measure out there. You don't need an "army" of them to make pedestrians safer.

I've often heard that same cyncial retort that you gave -- Move to the suburbs if you don't like the way NYC is. The assumption buried in this response is that the motor vehicle’s destructive dominance of public space and motorists' sociopathic behavior is the natural order of things.

A century ago, New Yorkers assumed cholera epidemics, tenement fires, and child labor were inevitable and unavoidable products of big city life. It took years of work by highly organized, politically powerful, morally-driven progressive reformers to cure the city of those ills. Likewise, it will take years of work to repair the damage caused by our near-religious devotion to automobility.

But my question to you is this: If someone wants to try to live a somewhat car-free life, where in America do you suggest they move? Los Angeles? Long Island? Detroit? Amish Country? NYC is the only major municipality in the US where a majority of citizens do not own a car and one can reasonably hope to live a full and complete life without ever owning a car.

I'm quite jaded to bollards, jersey barriers, temporary fencing, etc. We can't rid the world of terror, nor can we render it absolutely idiot-proof. I suspect you live in the city for what it is: a city. There are plenty of suburbs that would be less "scary" for you to walk around in. That traffic is going nowhere and if you channel it, it may just move quicker.

i'd be interested in getting together and talking about this issue more with you so I'm sending you an email.

CZH

Where do you do yr transpo planning work?

I would guess that there are enough residents of park slope/prospect heights with an interest in this issue to have a successful charrette. Ideally, it would bring together people from different backgrounds, design and otherwise, who could together come up with some interesting ideas.

I'm a transportation planner myself (though not an engineer or designer) but do not work for or in the City, so I don't have any vested interests other than improving my neighborhood. I haven't been much involved in neighborhood politics, so I'm not sure what the best forum for such a charrette would be (Community Board?) but would love to hear others' thoughts on this.

CZH

I love your idea of altogether rethinking Grand Army Plaza. Sure, it is probably pretty functional as-is for the motorists that drive through it but for pedestrians, cyclists, park users, visitors to Brooklyn's big cultural institutions, I really think the Plaza is genuinely shameful. I'm not sure if your specific ideas of turning the wide, one-way speedways into two-way streets is necessarily the right way to go. But I do think that this is exactly the kind of creative re-thinking that the Plaza needs and that a lot of people would be interested in participating in. There is so much land in Grand Army Plaza -- so much space -- both road space and semi-dead, unused park space (I assume all that stuff in the middle that you can't walk to safely is considered part of the Park), that it should really be possible to do some new designs for the Plaza.

When we were negotiating with DOT for improvements in that Flatbush traffic island I got the sense that DOT was very satisfied, even proud of the way they had set up the complex signal timings around the Plaza. They told us that it would be completely, utterly, impossible to change any of the pedestrian signals there without messing up vehicular flow. So, this is a problem.

I would love to do some sort of open source planning effort in which a bunch of smart, skilled, concerned people sit down and draw up some new designs. It seems that Brooklyn could be getting so much more out of this space that it currently does.

1) i don't know if this has been studied, but I'm wondering if bollards might also have the effect of slowing auto speeds (i.e., traffic calming) by narrowing the driver's field of vision and creating the illusion of a narrower roadway. Anyone who drives down a street lined with trees will notice that the street seems narrower and may notice that they are subconciously driving a bit slower.

2) I am very familiar with the crossing between the library and the entrance to the park at Grand Army Plaza and I aggree 100% that the main problem is not addressed by the improvement of the traffic island and installation of bollards. Though this may protect pedestrians within the island, the problem as was pointed out is that the signal phasing is designed to optimize traffic flow around the GAP and therefore a pedestrian can only cross half the way before being stranded. As a result, many people, including myself sometimes, try to cross one of the two halves during small gaps in the traffic instead of waiting for what seems like a long time for the pedestrian signal to change. This is especially dangerous during the Green Market on saturday, when trucks often park very close to the crossing and block the view of waiting pedestrians, who often try to dash across anyway.

I know the DOT is making small scale changes to the Grand Army Plaza mess, under pressure from TA and local groups, but the whole area really needs to be reconceptualized and major changes to the traffic patterns probably need to be made. For instance, do both east and west sides of the large central part of GAP (where the arch and fountain are) need to be one way speedways with about 4 to 6 lanes of traffic? If both sides were made 2-way, the the east side could serve as the main arterial and the west side could be transformed into a landscaped, traffic-calmed local road with bake lanes and safe access from Flatbush for all the bikes and people trying to access to the park. Access from all directions is completely inadequate and insufficient now.

Speaking of bike/ped access to the park, the one-way bike lane on Plaza Street is a slight improvement, but I've noticed alot of bicyclists traveling the wrong way (against traffic) to avoid traveling the long way around to get to the park or library. This might be addressed by making the bike lane two way, eliminating the parking on the inside of Plaza St (A tough sell I'm sure). Of course that won't address the problem of actually crossing the southern part of Grand Army Plaza to get into the park.

Bubbe Baroo

1. Contrary to your assertion, it is known why pedestrian deaths and injuries are way down in NYC and it's not trauma care. Trauma care is why deaths have decreased more than injuries, but cannot account for the big decrease in injuries. There are two big reasons for safer street conditions:
- Societal expectations are influencing the DOT and police. NYC is a much less chaotic and dangerous place than it was 20 years ago. Add to this the work of advocates, especially Transportation Alternatives, which has educated the press, politicians and community leaders across the city. A manifestation of the change in expectations is that the press takes far more note than it used to of traffic deaths.

-The creation of the NYPDs TrafficStat circa 1997, put in place a management and accountability system that holds police commanders, and to a lesser degree the DOT, responsible for traffic deaths and injuries. It has had a profound effect on how serious the police take traffic safety. It has also forced the DOT to take swifter action to fix basic safety problems like missing signs and broken traffic signals.

2. It looks like the bollards installed on the island in GAP are a breakaway type bolted to the pavement. I hope I'm wrong, but sure looks that way. The steel pipes filled with concrete or concrete obelisks you picture protecting the phone booths and fire hydrant are far superior.

Keep up the good work.

JK

As my own ancedote - they had bollards that protected the pedestrian walkway in the middle of Cambridge, England. The cool part was that they could be electronically activated to lower themselves for essential traffic like police, ambulance, etc. At night trucks made deliveries inside the protected zone. It's a real model of how to create livable space in the downtown area...using bollards.

-Avidor