Streetsblog New York City

Gary Toth is director of transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces. This post first appeared on PPS’s Placemaking Blog.

Would you use a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed? Of course not. You might solve your immediate goal of uprooting the weeds — but oh, my, the collateral damage that you would do.

Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Image: Andy Singer

Image: Andy Singer

First, an explanation of what I call the “deadly duo”: travel projection models and Levels of Service (LOS) performance metrics.Travel projection models are computer programs that use assumptions about future growth in population, employment, and recreation to estimate how many new cars will be on roads 20 or 30 years into the future.

Models range from quite simplistic to incredibly complex and expensive. Simple models deal primarily with coarse movements of vehicles between cities, while complex models deal with the intricacies of what happens on the fine grid of urban areas. To be truly accurate, growth projection modeling can be expensive. Therefore, absent compelling reason to do otherwise, most growth projections tend to be done using less expensive techniques, which usually lead to overestimates.

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“By building more and more roads, we have made it almost impossible to solve our transportation problems”

- Allen Biehler, Secretary, Pennsylvania DOT and Chair, AASHTO Standing Committee on Highways

Every state Department of Transportation (DOT) is led by a chief executive. In some states, they’re called the “secretary.” In others, the “director.” In New York, we call the state DOT chief “commissioner,” and last week, Governor Cuomo named Joan McDonald as the next Commissioner of New York State DOT.

NYSDOT staff have already demonstrated a strong inclination to support community-based transportation projects, like the redesign of State Route 376 in Poughkeepsie as a complete street. Commissioner McDonald needs to make projects like this the centerpiece of her administration. Photo: Project for Public Spaces

Although they have been reluctant to play an active role in land use planning, state DOTs have a huge impact on how their states grow and develop. Since the dawn of the post-WWII freeway era, the vast majority of state DOTs have declined to address concerns which we now group under the banners of sustainability and livability. The result has been unsustainable growth (sprawl) and precarious dependence on a single mode (driving).  This in turn has produced extreme vulnerability to rising fuel prices, mounting emissions that have us on a course for catastrophic climate change, and alarming declines in public health.

Ironically, single-minded spending on high-speed freeways has not even accomplished transportation goals. Congestion has grown exponentially worse; more than 1,000 people lose their lives on New York’s roads each year; and the physical condition of transportation infrastructure is declining.

It is time to accept that transportation investments in livability and sustainability are essential to New York’s future, and incoming Commissioner McDonald must lead the way. DOT chiefs have enormous capability to set agendas, shift billions of dollars in transportation investments, and change agency culture. Commissioner McDonald can help New York pick itself up and get back into the race with other states leading the way on 21st Century transportation policy. In so doing, she can build on the foundation for smart transportation and land use solutions that the previous administration began to create, before getting sidetracked by financial woes.

Will McDonald follow the innovative path set by New York City’s own Janette Sadik-Khan, or will she run a state DOT content with business-as-usual planning? In the hopes that the Cuomo Administration recognizes that in tough financial times, New York needs more progressive transportation planning and investment, not less, below are a series of recommendations based on my work with state DOTs around the country.

1. Take the nationally trend-setting GreenLITES program to the next level

The NYSDOT GreenLITES program is a brilliant effort to integrate principles of livability and sustainability into transportation projects from start to finish, which has already received national recognition. Early GreenLITES initiatives have retrofit roads to prevent pollution from stormwater runoff and, in partnership with the Nature Conversancy, targeted invasive species in the Adirondacks.

GreenLITES can be powerful because it begins at the beginning, with the selection of projects. We have to start feeding smart, sustainable transportation projects into the state DOT pipeline, otherwise we’re just dressing up 20^th Century solutions to make them appear like 21^st Century solutions. For instance, some have called the application of complete streets and sustainability principles to the widening of Route 347 in Long Island a case of transportation greenwashing.

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A DOT team received a mix of gratitude and derision at Tuesday's public forum about recent pedestrian improvements in the Meatpacking District, which attracted an audience of about 100 people to the Housing Works offices on West 13th Street. It was an interesting window onto the competing interests now vying to shape what has been, from the beginning, a genuinely community-based project seeking to put pedestrians on equal footing with vehicle traffic.

Those who came to praise described the new sense of safety they feel walking around the area near Gansevoort Plaza. Those who came to scorn suggested rolling back those improvements in the hopes that livery passengers might not have to wait another minute or two to be dropped off right at their luxe destinations. The former enjoyed a two-to-one advantage over the latter among those who spoke, with much of crowd opinion resting with a sizable, aesthetically-driven middle ground -- people who professed support for street reclamation in theory, but just don't like the look of nipple bollards.

The goal of the meeting, said DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, was to get "a sense of the overall feeling and a sense of what can be tweaked" about the project, which is slated to enter a permanent design phase this July, followed by construction the next year. There was no shortage of thoughtful ideas -- and clunkers -- for a neighborhood attempting to deal with the influx of cab and limo traffic on weekend nights. Taxi stands, anyone?

In his storied career at New Jersey DOT, Gary Toth played an indispensable role changing the culture of the agency, promoting a place-based ethic instead of the auto-centric transportation planning dogma. Today Toth heads transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, where he has written "A Citizen's Guide to Better Streets." The book, which will be published by AARP, serves as a how-to for working constructively with your local transportation and planning agencies. (It is not yet available for purchase.)

Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief Aaron Naparstek sat down with Toth last week for this interview. Anyone interested in how the American landscape has become so dominated by cars should watch. Toth's insights about the compound effects of transportation and land use policies are invaluable.

Broadway Boulevard takes center stage in a USA Today story on New York City's recent pedestrian improvements. Those who questioned whether people would sit in plazas near passing traffic have their answer:

Bianca Assim-Kon, 30, was initially skeptical about the plazas. "I saw them doing this, and my co-worker and I (said) all the tourists are going to sit there and we're going to laugh at them because they're going to get hit" by cars, says Assim-Kon, who works as a production assistant in a building across the street from one of the plazas. "And now here I am, sitting."

Reading a "chick-lit" novel on her lunch break, she says she can eke calm out of the surrounding cacophony. "I'm a New Yorker," Assim-Kon says. "You learn to focus."

Understandable as those initial doubts may have been, anyone familiar with the work of Project for Public Spaces and William H. Whyte could have predicted that, yes, New Yorkers will even venture across a bike lane for a decent place to sit.

Bonus photo and quote from Whyte after the jump.

Tuesday evening, Project for Public Spaces held a "placemaking" community workshop for Manhattan's Upper East Side, featuring PPS founder and president Fred Kent. Streetsblog regular BicyclesOnly was there and files this report.

Kent gave a presentation to about 50 citizen and community activists from the East Side regarding the efforts in New York City and elsewhere to redesign urban space for the needs of people and communities over the moving of traffic. The event was organized by State Senator Liz Krueger.

Kent began with an overview of the insights of his mentors, Holly White and Jane Jacobs, as to the challenges and opportunities of creating "great places" in New York City. Kent then explained what PPS has done in cities around the world to reclaim public space from motor vehicle traffic. Kent acknowledged the promising trends under the current DOT, but criticized the slow pace and timid scope of efforts to date. He advocated for a dramatic expansion of livable streets measures, such as market rate curbside parking and conversion of roadway space to non-traffic uses, and against the privatization of public space, such as the fashion week event at Bryant Park.

After the presentation, participants engaged in six different small group discussions. Each group was asked to come up with a particular spot on the Upper East Side that they believe could become, with some planning and resources, a "great place."

One group called for a transformation of Lexington Avenue and 86th Street, by (among other things) creating a traffic circle instead of a simple rectilinear intersection; installing a separated bike path on Lexington Ave and bicycle racks at the intersection, given the number of commuters who bike to this important mass transit access point; and additional plantings of trees.

According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square is one of the Top 10 greatest public spaces in the U.S. & Canada. I couldn't agree more. Affectionately referred to as the city's "living room" the charming and versatile block was once slated to be a parking garage in the 1960s. Thankfully the residents didn't let that happen.

Recently while grabbing lunch in Portland, I wandered into the "Festival of Flowers" - a beautiful urban meadow installation that was so pleasant and comforting, I just had to shoot some video. Ethan Kent from PPS has often said to me that the key to the success of Pioneer Courthouse Square (and many public spaces) is its amazingly diverse programming. He's right, I've been to Portland a dozen times and there always seems to be something wonderful going on there.

On Friday, Streetsblog looked at how northern Virginia can't get enough road widening. As a follow-up, Gary Toth of Project for Public Spaces directed us to another example of how smart growth faces hurdles in the places that need it most -- in this case, the Trenton suburb of Bordentown, New Jersey (right: the main drag).

Residents in the village of 4,000 recently voiced their opposition to a proposal that would encourage mixed-use and infill development, reports the Burlington County Times:

The ordinance would allow for the addition of up to 100 dwellings downtown. It would allow developers to put apartments or condominiums above storefronts and would increase the allowable height for buildings. Currently, developers have to obtain variances to do such things.

The rejection of the zoning changes was stoked by fears that the town's historic character would be threatened, among other things:

The view of Gansevoort Plaza looking west.

Less than a month ago, the Meatpacking District's Gansevoort Plaza was a chaotic free-for-all for vehicles. Today it sports a large pedestrian space lined with planters and bollards. The Open Planning Project's Lily Bernheimer snapped these photos showing the new seating and street furniture in action, two weeks after capturing the construction phase. In terms of getting a good bang for the livable streets buck, this project seems like a real winner -- a quick and inexpensive reallocation of space.

UPDATE: DOT says this phase of the project cost about $90,000, plus labor. Construction took three weeks (they're laying down crosswalks and removing the construction barrels tonight). Also, we should note, while the implementation went by in a flash, an extensive community process led up to this point, going back to meetings held in 2005 between Project for Public Spaces and local businesses and residents.

More pictures after the jump.

Ethan Kent of Project for Public Spaces recently returned from a trip to Havana with a trove of pictures, cut together in this Streetfilm by Nick Whitaker. Whatever changes are in store for the country in the wake of Fidel Castro's departure from power, these images make clear that the dense, flourishing street life of the capital city is one thing worth preserving. Here's how Ethan puts it:

If children playing in the streets is an indicator of the success of a city, then Havana’s streets may be some of the most successful in the world...

It's not anything to glorify. It's not an ideal city... But at the same time, I think Havana streets are a window into some of what we've lost in New York and around the world.