Which brings to mind drivers who ride low in the seat of their cars- what’s their visibility of the road like?

I think it’d be too extreme to send out a press release saying “The Blood of James Jacaricce is On Mike Primeggia’s Hands,” but is it possible to make enough of a connection that his name is completely withdrawn from consideration for DOT Commissioner, or even get him fired? Maybe even make it a litmus test for the next Commissioner that they’re not getting the job if they’d oppose basic traffic calming measures like this?

MOT forced the DOT to come to the table at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Bloomberg dissolved the office and with it went much of the internal momentum for implementing the recommendations in the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming plan.

The firm Arup was selected jointly by community groups and DOT, and was well known for leading London’s traffic calming. Not so long ago, Brooklyn was poised to have traffic calming as good as any big city in the world.

Quinn didn’t even mention transportation AT ALL in here state of the city address today. What a pity. Housing and health care and all the other issues are important too, but not one mention of transportation from the Speaker? It shows that transportation advocates really need to turn up the volume.

http://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics/archives/2007/02/state_of_the_ci.php

http://www.nypress.com/17/9/feature/feature.cfm

In 1997, the neighborhoods surrounding downtown Brooklyn got fed up enough to take to the streets. No wild-eyed anarchists, these: In a series of early morning protests, doctors, lawyers and stroller-pushing mothers put their bodies in front of rush hour traffic to demand that the city do something about the vehicular chaos. In the midst of a reelection campaign, Mayor Giuliani was compelled to respond. The protests began what would become known as the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project (DBTC).

Traffic calming is said to have started in the Dutch city of Delft in the late 1960s when a band of residents, sick of vehicles cutting through their neighborhood, grabbed shovels and pick-axes and reconfigured their street into a serpentine pattern that forced motorists to drive more slowly. Today, it’s an engineering specialty.

But the DOT’s drive to maximize capacity conflicts with the concept of traffic calming. Over the course of the DBTC’s five-year study, DOT engineers steadily dragged their feet and undermined the community’s wishes and Arup’s recommendations. For example, on Hicks St., known to locals as the “fifth lane of the BQE,” when Arup said raised crosswalks had to be four inches tall to be effective, DOT insisted they only be two inches. When, as expected, the shorter raised crosswalks proved worse than useless, DOT deemed them a failure and eliminated them from further consideration.

In June 2003, the stakeholders involved in the DBTC gathered at Brooklyn Borough Hall for the presentation of Arup’s final recommendations. After the consultant’s lengthy presentation, DOT Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Mike Primeggia announced that the agency would not implement any of the recommendations from the Arup’s 130-page report until 2009–at the earliest.

Sandy Balboza, president of the Atlantic Avenue Betterment Association recalls: “Primeggia told us that before they’d do anything, DOT needed to re-study every one of the plan’s suggestions. Well, we just spent five years and $1.2 million studying it.” To throw a bone to the community, DOT promised to fast-track a set of 30 traffic-signal timing, bike-lane and parking improvements.

DOT was too “timid and conservative” says Community Board 6’s Hammerman. “The whole point of hiring a consultant was to have them think outside the box. But DOT grabbed the Traffic Calming Plan and put it right back in.”

Kaehny believes that “DOT never wanted to be at the table. They were forced to do this by city hall. Once Giuliani was gone, it was revenge of the traffic engineers.”

For its part, DOT says: “DBTC is ongoing. We’re evaluating the suggestions of the consultants. We don’t know when the final report will be issued.” If, as DOT claims, pedestrian safety is its “primary focus,” the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project was a perfect opportunity to prove it.

“They could have hit it out of the park,” Kaehny says. “They didn’t even swing at it. That’s the power of DOT.”

All traffic deaths are awful but some are more iconic than others. This one — 4-yr-old boy, chaperoned by his teenage aunt, crossing legally in the crosswalk, mowed down by a Hummer, where an ignored DOT study had sketched improvements, etc. — is as iconic as they come.

I don’t presume to know precisely how to galvanize a community and city response that can hold officials (and GM) accountable. I do offer to show up at any rallies etc. and otherwise follow the leadership we can muster.

BTW- the spam protection is giving me some much needed practice on my addition today. Perhaps future additions could include traffic trivia questions- that’ll foil the bots!

“That’s just not what we do here. If there’s a speeding problem you can ask NYPD to step up enforcement, but our job is to keep traffic moving efficiently, not to do studies on pedestrian safety.”

Pedestrians are “interference” in DOT analysis of street functioning. This comes right from the top, Dr. No, Mike Primeggia. Until he and his like-minded cronies have retired (come on 2009, get here faster!) or they’re ousted by the next commissioner, this won’t change.

Bloomberg is one of the most proactive public health mayors in NYC’s history, willing to take political risks to ban smoking in bars and transfats in restaurants. What about the streets? Traffic safety is about as basic a public health service government is charged with. Even libertarians agree that there should be traffic signals…

Why are you letting so many of us be killed, while communities cry for change?

Love,
New York