Of course this won’t happen in any of our lifetimes, but it’s nice to dream. The single easiest way to slow traffic down is to turn a one-way street into a two-way street. People won’t drive at excessive speeds if there is a lane of traffic coming towards them just a few feet to the left, just as they won’t drive at excessive speeds just a few feet from parked cars. The problem in Manhattan is all these wide Avenues where you can have a moving lane of cars moving in your same direction on either side. This means there is NOTHING in the road design to discourage you from speeding. These situations must be done away with.

TAXI’S as well as other people try to avoid the UNBELIEVABLY STUPID pedestrians that stand in the street when cares are not there.

HELLO PEOPLE….. My 3 Year old Nephew knows not to stand in the street even though their is not a car there.

A car may need the street it HAS THE RIGHT TO USE and not travel on the sidewalk. Why cant wait for the light to change or use the intersection like THE LAWS TELLS US TOO.

No, you pedestrians have to use the laws to your advantage to hurt other people. People have a right o use the street for their cars just like you have the right to use the sidewalk.

PEDESTRIANS THAT GET STAND IN THE STREET DESERVE TO GET HIT……..TILL DEATH!

Bingo.

“Perhaps we can find ways to make speeding less lucrative. Would it be possible, for example, to design taxi-meters that turn over more slowly, proportionate to the taxi’s speed, when it was going over the speed limit?”

Hypothetically, yes. Practically, it would be very difficult, and prohibitively expensive. [without giving away too much of my secret identity, I've done a lot of work on database design for traffic control devices and how mobile and GPS technologies can be brought into the mix. I have looked at this exact problem from a systems perspective.]

All this talk of redesigning the infrastructure to stop the speeding is utopian. Look at NYPD’s budget. Look at DOT’s budget. Look at the City’s dwindling capital budget. NYC invests in cops, not infrastructure. Cops can change the public’s behavior (according to Bloomberg, anyway) so let’s work on that. It’s where the money is. Apart from that, we also need to look at the economics of the taxi business. Some sort of regulatory shift that got us back to either a predominantly operator-as-owner or operator-as-emoployee model might make more difference than anything else to improve driver behavior.

Yeah I find the name refuge islands to be ironic as well. I once made a presentation in which I called them refugee islands without realizing it. We might as well call them that.

http://tinyurl.com/l3bgwx

I hate to sound like a Townhaller, but my feeling is that it’s one of those things that simply makes too much sense for the government to adopt.

The prospect of killing pedestrians or hitting subway entrances is not much of a deterrent because these consequences are (relatively) rare. But if a driver lost money of his fare EVERY TIME he drove too fast, he might have an incentive to obey the speed limit.

Yup. And it won’t take much, either. Even the flimsiest bollards will help take away momentum from a curb-jumping car (that fence probably saved the pedestrian’s life and reduced the damage to the subway station), and better yet, even the flimsiest bollard will cause heavy enough damage to an errant car to “encourage” people to slow down.

Thanks for sharing. It’s encouraging to hear this attitude from a member of a profession that is too often blamed for pushing more traffic at the expense of everything else.

Cheers,

–Ian

Perhaps there should be some sort of enhanced driving test before you can drive a car of any kind. The color of the paint on the vehicle has little connection to its ability to kill and maim.

The driver licensing system in the United States is designed to pass people. With the exception of those with severe physical or developmental disabilities, nobody is unable to get a license because they can’t pass the test. Some people fail the first time, but almost no one gives up and settles for a state ID.

“Maybe” it’s time to change that.

Cheers,

–Ian

Yep, this is true. But design doesn’t happen on its own. We (the roadway engineers, which I am) know quite well how to make safer streets. Neck-downs. Pedestrian “refuge islands” – the worst name ever – it’s too bad that peds have to take refuge. Speed bumps/humps. Narrower lanes. Fewer lanes. Street landscaping. Striped bike lanes. Separated bike lanes. Transit-only lanes. Parking lanes. Etc. I could go on and on. The problem is not lack of imagination. The problem is that the city (the DOT, DDC, etc.) has to ask for it. The City of New York has to want safer streets. The local politicians have to demand safer streets. AND the NYPD also needs to get off their asses, those of them who are on them, and enforce the damn laws. Enough people have died on these streets. I’m sick of trying to cross the street and almost be hit by speeding turning cars. I’m tired of drivers not being punished for their dangerous and unlawful behaviors.