Did people have a chance to listen to Brian Lehrer's interview with DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick yesterday morning? If so, what did you think?
Listen to the show right here.
Noah was awesome! Actually, they both were. I think Iris had a conversion on her recent trip to Europe!
Dear Commissioner Weinshall:
I enjoyed hearing you speak on WNYC yesterday. Reflecting upon your interview, I have a question about car crashes:
In cases where the driver or passenger of a motor vehicle dies in a crash, what percentage involves head injuries? Also, what in what percentage of the cases were the victims wearing helmets? I think we could be onto an important public safety initiative here.
Sincerely,
Podsednik
Weinshall spoke as if the ferment, progress and struggle around streets and transport in NYC and elsewhere since she took over NYC DOT occurred in another universe.
We (www.rightofway.org) produced "Killed By Automobile" and "The Only Good Cyclist," documenting the central role of driver "entitlement" in killing peds and cyclists, yet her focus remains on cyclist behavior, helmets, etc.
London has solved -- not mitigated but actually solved -- its central
core's traffic woes, through congestion pricing, while Weinshall drones on about how NYC is fatally different.
Visionary leaders/thinkers(e.g., Enrique Penelosa of Bogota) have developed and proven holistic approaches for balancing and reconciling streets' functions of mobility and community, and IW is stuck in piecemeal, mode-specific measures.
Downright discouraging.
It all boils down to what Bloomberg wants. If he wants a progressive transportation policy (as he may be starting to want vis-a-vis bikes), then he will get it from Weinshall or whoever else he hires for the job. Without orders from the top, Weinshall will carry on with DOT's stuck-in-the-mud-ways.
I agree.
When she wasn't giving numbers and statistics and talking in Politico speak, she seemed rather annoyed.
Also, I think those share the road signs are a waste of money. We need less signs.
Regarding the 8th Avenue bike lane, it really is a dangerous joke, mostly filled with trucks, cabs, cop cars, postal trucks, push carts etc.. I think it needs a major re think.
Weinshall comes across very poorly. It seems obvious that the pathetic bone the city is throwing pedestrians and cyclists with this plan is nothing more than a way to get people to calm down and shut up, and prevent a radical change which would revolutionize the way we live and move about the city (pay parking, congestion pricing, two-way avenues and streets, etc). "Not every city is alike" is a statement that says it all! She seems more interested in maintaining the status quo as much as possible.
Noah WAS awesome.
Though I'm always grateful for ANY discussion of walking and cycling within the city, I found this segment depressing. Hiding behind fatality statistics that, as always, tell only part of the story, Weinshall clearly has little understanding of scary the streets have become, not only for cyclists but for people like me, whose primary mode of transport is their own two feet. Weinshall's repeated use of the word 'efficiency' in terms of (auto) traffic management shows where her true sympathies lie.
Just as adding more bike lanes strike some as a painless way for DOT to avoid more robust solutionsa to the growing traffic menace, so Weinshall's dismissive responses on two-way vesus one-way streets indicate to me that she has no intention of dislodging motorists' sense of ownership of the streets we "share" (ha!). DOT can keep their signs; I want congestion pricing, more tolls, less free parking and substantial investment in public, not private, transport.
Here on the North Shore of Staten Island--the most urban sector of the borough--a grassroots traffic-calming movement has begun to develop in response to growing numbers of accidents, injuries and one fatality. I believe this movement will spread to other Island communities as the population (both of people and of cars) continues to expand and Staten Island's country roads become less and less able to handle the substantially increased traffic, for which our elected officials have made no preparations.
7 Comments
Last comment by Dan Icolari