Comments on: San Fran Mayor Sets Ambitious Transportation Targets

By: steveo

steveo — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:01:44 +0000

Text of said intro is here:
http://webdocs.nyccouncil.info/textfiles/Int%200199-2006.htm

By: Gale A. Brewer

Gale A. Brewer — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:09:34 +0000

Thank you for highlighting Intro. 199, the Traffic Relief Bill, pending in the New York City Council. With Transportation Alternatives, we are pushing for a hearing. Also, on the West Side of Manhattan (my district), we are working with the Dept. of Transportation on a study of all traffic in the area and we will soon schedule a public hearing. The date will be in early December. I hope that all of your readers will participate. TA will know first! Gale A. Brewer, City Council, 6th District, NYC

By: Efficiency Nut

Efficiency Nut — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:36:57 +0000

Dan, like you said, it’s mystifying that a Mayor that has realized so much success as a maven of efficiency in business would allow (sometimes even laud, as in several speeches equating traffic to the city’s economic health) the kind of wasted time and space that could only survive under the management of a big city bureaucracy. Our streets are broken, and the only tools we have to manage them are tools that buffet the underlying problem.

But isn’t it simple, you ask, can’t you just tell City DOT to reduce traffic? NO.

The only metrics that Dr. Primeggia allows the agency to use measure success by how many vehicles you can push through space in a given time. Vehicular Level of Service measures only how much metal, glass, and rubber can move through a discreet channel at once, with no sense of how many people fill those vehicles. There is no measure of the quality of the vehicle–which are the most spacially efficient, which are the most ecologically efficient, which have the least negative quality-of-life impacts, etc. A stretch-Hummer is a motorcycle is a bus is a 55′ truck is a government sedan (probably abusing it’s parking permit!!).

Fortunately, legislation like The Traffic Relief Bill would go a long way toward improving this deplorable situation. While it looks like the bill doesn’t mandate the specific targets (leave it to the experts, as the DOT always argues!), at least it lays the foundation for the agency to be able to change the way it calculates success. It would also declare that NYC transportation policy promotes traffic reduction and efficiency, which would be a watershed for the agency and would jive very well with the long-term, sustainable health of our dear city.

Let’s hope that Liu schedules a hearing for the bill soon!!

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 19:01:10 +0000

I’m just astonished that Bloomberg doesn’t want to do more to make streets livable. Here’s a technocratic, progressive, goal oriented guy staring at a problem that if he were a shrewd business man would seem outrageous. How much productivity gets wasted by cars? What kind of space efficiency does mass transit and cycling provide? It seems like this is one of those things where there’s some kind of metal logjam that’s preventing the good ideas from getting through.

By: Clarence

Clarence — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:47:30 +0000

One thing: this summer Newsom vetoed car-free Saturdays in Golden Gate Park even though it was approved 7 -4 votes by a City Board.

Currently SF only has car-free Park hours are on Sundays.