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.

Levels of Service (LOS) is a performance metric which flourished during the interstate- and freeway-building era that went from the 1950s to the 1990s. Using a scale of A to F, LOS attempts to create an objective formula to answer a subjective question: How much congestion are we willing to tolerate? As in grade school, “F” is a failing grade and “A” is perfect.

Engineers decided that LOS “C” was a good balance between overinvestment in perfection and underinvestment leading to congestion. In urban areas, a concession was made to accept LOS D, representing slightly more restricted but still free-flowing traffic. LOS is commonly (actually, almost always) calculated using travel projections for 20 to 30 years into the future.

Using basic traffic models and LOS C/D to plan and design the interstate system was a no-brainer in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. When deciding how many lanes to build on a freeway connecting major cities, a sensitivity of plus or minus 10,000 trips a day could be tolerated, and the incremental difference in cost to plow through undeveloped land was relatively insignificant.

Good approach, wrong setting

I’m not going to look back and quibble with the general philosophy of how the interstates and the associated high-speed freeways were planned and designed. On many levels, the approach made sense.

But it became increasingly less persuasive when applied to the rest of our road network. Unlike interstates and freeways, most roads exist not just to move traffic through the area, but also to serve the homes, businesses, and people along them. Yet in search of high LOS rankings, transportation professionals have widened streets, added lanes, removed on-street parking, limited crosswalks, and deployed other inappropriate strategies. In ridding our communities of the weeds of congestion, we have also pulled out the very plants that made our “gardens” worthwhile in the first place.

It’s worth remembering, too, that not all congestion is bad. John Norquist, former Mayor of Milwaukee and current CEO and President of the Congress for New Urbanism, suggests that congestion is like cholesterol: there is a good kind and a bad kind.

What makes the prevailing situation even more troubling is that there are no comprehensive requirements dictating the use of either LOS or travel modeling in transportation planning and project design. The “Green Book” from the Association of American State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) (more formally known as “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets”) clearly states that these are guidelines to be applied with judgment — not mandates. So does the Federal Highway Administration’s “Highway Capacity Manual.”

The idea that we must rid our roads of any and all traffic congestion is, in fact, a self-imposed requirement. As Eric Jaffe wrote in an article for Atlantic Cities in December, 2011:

Although cities aren’t required to abide LOS measures by law, over the years the measure hardened into convention. By the time cities recognized the need for balanced transportation systems, LOS was entrenched in the street engineering canon.

Worse yet, many designers size a road or intersection to be free-flowing for the worst hour of the day. Sized to accommodate cars during the highest peak hour, such streets will be “overdesigned” for the other 23 hours of the day and will always function poorly for the surrounding community.

If that isn’t troubling enough, LOS is often calculated using traffic predicted 20 years into the future, even in urban settings. Until the forecasted growth materializes, the roadway will be overdesigned, even during the peak hour. Overdesigned roadways encourage motorists to drive at higher speeds, making them difficult to cross and unpleasant to walk along. This degrades public spaces between the edges of the road and the adjacent buildings, encourages people to drive short distances, and generally unravels a community’s social fabric.

Let me repeat: Contrary to what you may hear, there is no national requirement or mandate to apply LOS standards and targets 20 years into the future for urban streets. This thinking is a remnant from 1960s era policy for the interstate system, and has erroneously been passed down from generation to generation.

Image: Andy Singer

So what are the right approaches?

Asking the simple question, “Do you want congestion reduced at a particular location?” is a question out of context. It’s like asking you whether you want to never be stung by a bee again. Of course, the answer will be yes. But what if I told you that to in order to never suffer a sting again, every plant within a several mile radius would have to be destroyed — and that you could never leave the area of destruction?

You would have a completely different answer, I’m sure.

The question that needs to be asked in urban settings is not whether you ever want to sit in congestion again. Who does? The question is whether you want to eliminate congestion on your Main Street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — knowing that the consequence would be a community with decimated economic and social value, increased reliance on car use, increased crashes, and, ultimately, more congestion.

Recognizing the need for balance, a number of entities are beginning to promote approaches sensitive to the context.

I was the New Jersey Department of Transportation’ s project manager for the “Smart Transportation Guide” (STG), adopted jointly by the state DOTs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The STG directs DOT designers to consider the tradeoffs between vehicular LOS and “local service.” It goes on to say that if the street in question is not critical to regional movement, that LOS E or F could be acceptable — and that designers may actually need to design to slow down cars.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers, an “international association of transportation professionals responsible for meeting mobility and safety needs” also promoted this concept in its landmark “Context Sensitive Solutions Guidelines for Urban Thoroughfares.” Florida DOT has adopted multimodal LOS standards, and cities like Charlotte, N.C., have elevated pedestrian and bicycle LOS to the level of that for automobiles. We have a long way to go, but the door is opening.

Creating balanced standards for roadway design will benefit transportation as well. In the Netherlands, the “Livable Streets” policy led to a remarkable improvement in safety on their roadways. They started in the 1970s with a crash rate 15 percent higher than in the U.S., and now have a crash rate 60 percent lower.

Design with the community in mind

It’s time for communities and transportation professionals alike to accept that we have been using the wrong tools for the wrong job. LOS and travel modeling may be effective when sizing and locating high-speed freeways, but are totally inappropriate in every other setting. If travel modeling with high rates of growth is used to make street decisions, your community may be doomed to a series of roadway widenings or intersection expansions. If vehicular LOS C or D performance measures are adopted as non-negotiable targets, major road construction will be heading your way.

Village, suburban and city streets need to be designed with the community in mind using the PPS principle of Streets as Places to create a vision for a great community and then plan your streets to support that vision.

Lets not be fooled by the appearance of science behind Levels of Service and Traffic Modeling. As I pointed out in an interview with Wayne Senville that was published in the November 2010 “Planning Commissioner’s Journal,” LOS standards are easy to understand — and that’s exactly what makes them so dangerous.

- 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.

Expanding and refining the GreenLITES program would help ensure that sustainable design is part of a project's DNA, rather than being added on top of a road widening as on Long Island's Route 347. Image: Times Beacon Record.

As one of her first steps, Joan McDonald should reconsider the wisdom of continuing to pour precious capital dollars into hugely expensive road widening projects, like the conversion of Route 17 into I-86. Think of it this way: Would you use the money you need to stop your roof from leaking to buy glitzy new kitchen appliances instead? We can no longer hope that channeling hundreds of millions into projects like the I-86 “upgrade” or the extension of Route 219 in Erie County will magically revitalize economies in various parts of New York state, while critical infrastructure crumbles in areas where most of New York’s existing population and economic wealth already reside. Instead, Commissioner McDonald should expand the GreenLITES program into agency-wide policy, practice and guidelines.

2. Enact performance-based goals and policies

Building on the GreenLITES pilot and programs such as STARS in Portland, Oregon, NYSDOT needs to evaluate its performance based on a broader range of goals than moving traffic. Success should be judged according to the agency’s effect on the environment, energy conservation, housing affordability, land use, and social equity.

3. Implement the land use and transportation program that Astrid Glynn started

Former DOT Commissioner Astrid Glynn came into power with the Spitzer administration in 2007, tasked with building a transportation and land use planning program to foster smart, compact growth. A new initiative modeled on NJDOT’s innovative Future in Transportation program seemed primed to launch with 12 full-time transportation and land use planners to implement it.  It was aborted due to funding issues, which is unfortunate, because a well-run land use planning initiative, pursued in partnership with local communities, could save NYSDOT hundreds of millions of dollars that will otherwise be spent widening roads and chasing sprawl.

4. Foster the creation of NGOs around the state to oversee implementation of transportation and land use visions

The state DOT’s internal transportation and land use program should be complemented by parallel programs outside the agency. Why? Because even when state, regional and local government agencies successfully coordinate their planning efforts, they can still have trouble implementing them. Without a third party to hold individual agencies accountable to each other and to sticking to the joint vision, communities quickly succumb to the pressures that destroy livable places. A smart plan for sustainable growth can fall apart, for instance, if one municipality starts chasing after the tax receipts generated by big box development.

These watchdog organizations would have to be entities outside of government, so that they can avoid being dominated by politics.

5. Fully engage the public in long range planning

Every state DOT formulates and adjusts a long-range plan in collaboration with the various regions throughout that state. Engaging the public so that real decision making is shared with citizens during the long range planning process will be essential to the success of transportation agencies in the 21^st Century.  Due to the abstract nature of the planning process, which involves lots of ideas but few details, it has been difficult to figure out how to accomplish this. In this author’s opinion, this is a major reason why transportation agencies can no longer muster public support for tax increases to build and maintain infrastructure.

There is one superb model for the incoming Commissioner to borrow from: the 2004-05 New Hampshire DOT Long Range Business Plan.  Instead of following the conventional top-down process, then-Commissioner Carol Murray turned it upside down, enlisting the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation to organize a public constituency. NHDOT provided participants with data on the state’s transportation needs and funding resources. These people then shaped the plan, relying on professional planners for direction and specific advice.  In other words, the state DOT used its expertise to support and nurture public goals, instead of dictate them.  The result: For the first time in decades, New Hampshire residents advocated for increased revenues for the DOT.

6. Trust and engage your career staff

New administrations often come into power with a mistrust of career staff, imposing change from the top down. The incoming administration should understand that there are many enlightened change agents in the state DOT bureaucracy, who if engaged, can dramatically accelerate reforms thanks to their competence and understanding of how to get things done. Having worked closely with or trained a number of NYSDOT staff over the years, I know for a fact that they already have a wealth of such committed talent.

For the new Tappan Zee Bridge to actually carry transit riders, the state DOT must do more than leave room on its bridge for buses and trains. Image: Tappan Zee Bridge Website.

7. Operate and oversee the entire system, not just the segments under the control of the state DOT

NYSDOT must evolve into a truly multi-modal agency that can influence the operations and performance of the entire transportation system, not just the portion of the state highway system that is under their jurisdiction.  For instance, it needs to make itself responsible for seeing that transit in corridors like the I-287 Tappan Zee Bridge project actually gets done, instead of simply leaving room on the bridge for someone else to build it. To meet the challenges of the 21^st Century, we need to knit together the operations of the multitude of transit services as well as the street and highway capacity of state, county, local and toll jurisdictions.  To the citizens of New York, the system needs to appear seamless and legible.  I recognize that this will pose all sorts of political problems, having lived through several attempts at accomplishing this in New Jersey. Nevertheless, we can no longer be daunted by the obstacles.

8. Transform NYSDOT’s mission from “building transportation through communities” to “building communities through transportation”

All of the above strategies should be employed according to the principle that transportation is not an end to itself, but a means to support the places we inhabit. Planning transportation through the prism of place is the key to busting the silos that all transportation agencies and jurisdictions now operate within.  It is also the key to integrating transportation with land use, creating location-efficient housing, helping health departments address obesity and diabetes, and improving the quality of our watersheds and solving other ecological problems.

Place-based – or “upside down” – planning involves shifting the focus of transportation and land use planning so that it no longer simply reacts to entrenched patterns and trends, treating traffic and sprawl like irresistible forces that must be accommodated. Instead, a place-based approach involves collaboratively setting a course based on the outcomes we want to see for our communities. Then transportation planning and projects can be used to shape and support the future that we want. Organizing around place will elevate transportation to be a positive force in the growth of New York State.

Gary Toth is currently director of transportation initiatives at Project for Public Spaces. Previously, during his 34-year career with the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), Gary become one of the architects of the transformation of NJDOT to a national leader in context-sensitive transportation planning. Gary’s work has brought him into contact with the operations of many state DOTs around the country. He is one of the leading experts on what “makes DOTs tick,” and how to engage the transportation planning, funding, project development and design processes to achieve sustainable and livable outcomes.

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?

One solution for the Meatpacking District's livery congestion: taxi stands. Image: NYCDOT

On the side of preserving safety gains, longtime resident Cynthia Penney encapsulated the sentiment of many locals. "I love the fact that I can cross the street without taking my life in my hands," she said. "Judging by the crowds outside Pastis, I don't think anyone is having trouble getting here."

On the side of maximizing vehicular throughput, Andrew Winter, a representative of luxury resto/lounge tandem Vento and Level V (a favored haunt of "good-looking, well-heeled New Yorkers in their late twenties, happy about how, well, good-looking they are" says New York Mag), put it to DOT thusly: "Instead of spending money on moving these cement block things into new areas, can we focus our funds on how to get the traffic in and out much easier?"

Not that all testimony hewed to the residents-vs.-businesses pattern. Paolo Secondo, owner of the restaurant Revel on Little West 12th Street, was firmly in favor of the pedestrian improvements. "I believe that a privilege we can no longer afford in New York is to be able to arrive at a restaurant in a cab or a limo," he said, assigning blame for traffic congestion in the area to the willy-nilly pattern of livery pick-ups and drop-offs. "I would much prefer to have stands or drop-off zones." His call was bolstered by comments from a CB4 member who recounted how taxi stands had eased traffic tie-ups and quieted late-night honking in Chelsea's nightclub district.

One of the most intriguing storylines to develop was -- brace yourself -- the question of management. As Project for Public Spaces can tell you, the success of any public space depends on programming and maintenance. Someone has to care for it. The Meatpacking District, unlike Madison Square and other areas where DOT plazas have bloomed, does not have a BID to assume this role. It does have a merchants' association -- the Meatpacking District Initiative -- and here's the Catch 22: The MPDI is funded through voluntary contributions, not mandatory assessments, so if the businesses don't like the new public spaces, they don't have to pay for things like putting on events or keeping planters looking good, and perceptions of the pedestrian zones will suffer.

"People want us to fund something that our members are not pleased with," said MPDI founder David Rabin, who called for some of the pedestrian areas on Ninth Avenue to be narrowed or removed. "It is unacceptable for me to hear people say they think it's okay that it's hard to get to the Meatpacking District."

Rabin was followed immediately by Florent Morellet, one of the first restaurateurs to set up in the area and a driving force behind the public space plan. "Cabs can come to the outskirts of the neighborhood but not to the middle," he said in a plea to fellow business owners. "The concept that people can drive wherever and whenever they want is over. You're going to kill business with the old way of thinking. Don't think the old way."

Judging by much of the testimony, many of Rabin's design-conscious members would be satisfied with changes to surface appearances -- nipple bollards, apparently, offend their haute sensibilities. As one boutique owner put it, the street furniture doesn't match the "Paris-like setting" that first attracted her to the neighborhood. Finding a substitute may prove tougher than you'd think. Any device to demarcate pedestrian space will have to meet DOT traffic engineers' exacting safety standards, which the reflective tops of nipple bollards manage to achieve.

With the final design phase slated to commence this July, the Gansevoort project is one to keep an eye on. Some changes may already be in the works. We checked in with DOT the day after the meeting, and the agency said they hope to install taxi stands in the next month or two.

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.

"I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look."

Photos: Brad Aaron

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.

Another group stressed the many amenities found along Riverside and Hudson River parks -- such as the restaurant at the 79th St. Boat Basin and the cantina at W. 66th Street -- and suggested that the East River Esplanade incorporate similar concessions and destinations, as well as innovative playgrounds to attract and anchor people and supplement existing amenities (monotonous benches and doggie runs). This group also discussed other interesting ideas, such as utilizing the cul-de-sacs at which many Upper East Side streets terminate at the East river as public spaces; increasing the number of pedestrianized blocks (such as the block on 91st Street between Second and Third Avenues); using existing ferry infrastructure to open up Mill Rock Island for community use; and curtailing or eliminating cars from Second Avenue.

Kent stressed that making great places requires long term campaigns waged by advocates who are "zealous nuts."  While no concrete plans came directly from the workshop, the level of receptivity and support for the ideas presented by Kent and the breakout groups was surprising and inspiring, and may augur big changes for the staid East Side in the future.

Photo: slurv/Flickr

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.

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:

Some argued that the ordinance would create more traffic, noise and parking problems. If the town's population increased as a result of the ordinance, demands on municipal services and schools would also increase, possibly resulting in higher taxes for property owners, they said.

But as Toth points out, pushing development outside the town center will create more traffic, not less. "Ironically, people oppose [the re-zoning] based on the incorrect assumption that it will add traffic," he said. "Yet what will take the place of the infill will be sprawl development which will choke off their quaint little town and make things far worse." 

"NJ Transit invested billions to build the Trenton-to-Camden light rail line to help shape New Jersey's future towards a more walkable, less car-dependent region" he added. But even though Bordentown is located on a transit corridor, it won't see "transit-oriented development" until residents buy into the notion that clustering growth downtown is in their best interest. As the Trenton Times reports, the uproar over the ordinance has led commissioners to scuttle the promotion of development near the center of Bordentown and its rail station:

They deleted provisions for apartments, 100 additional housing units in a proposed town center zone, residential flats above commercial structures downtown, four-story buildings in the town center and bed and breakfasts.

And they removed all mention of the term "transit village" from the document.

Disinformation about smart growth-style development -- like the assumption that it will lead to densities resembling Manhattan's -- is rampant even along transit corridors, Toth said. Countering those perceptions, he believes, requires a targeted PR effort promoting more compact development as an avenue toward relieving traffic congestion.

Photo: steve367 / Flickr

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.

Today, StreetFilms debuts Street Stars, the first of many planned vignettes for 2008 which will focus on the amazing organizers in our communities who are fighting constructively for livable streets. Hopefully, these Stars will provide a road map for change and inspire others to work to transform their neighborhoods.

Their first choice is Christine Berthet, co-founder of Chekpeds, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition. Together with Transportation Alternatives and the Project for Public Spaces, she was also instrumental in organizing the Ninth Avenue Renaissance, a movement to re-imagine neighborhood streets as a healthier place for people. She is an indefatigable advocate working hard for the community, organizing rallies, and is omnipresent at community hearings and testifying at City Hall.

According to surveys conducted in Hell's Kitchen: 75 percent said that they were afraid for their safety because of motor vehicle traffic, 5 percent because of crime.

In the shortest, sweetest Streetfilm ever, a 24-second stop-motion animation, Elizabeth Press perfectly illustrates a chicane which is a sequence of bump-outs that force drivers to slow down and drive a more circuitous route along a straight, wide street. An added side benefit, chicanes also create more sidewalk space to be used for benches, tables, plantings and street furniture.

The word chicane comes from the German word schikane, meaning harassment.

Project for Public Spaces has more on chicanes and various other traffic calming techniques.

In an attempt to turn Myrtle Avenue into a thriving "Main Street" for Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership is now working with Project for Public Spaces "to survey, analyze, and produce conceptual recommendations for four underutilized public and quasi-public spaces on the avenue." You can see the 4 locations they are looking at here.

At the intersection of Myrtle and Vanderbilt, tree plantings will be used to deter motorists from using the sidewalk while filling up at the Exxon station. Last week, Brownstoner reported:

Over a year ago, the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project began brainstorming with the Project for Public Spaces to come up with some ideas for improving the four public and quasi-public spaces along Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. One of those is the service road we discussed last month. Another is the Exxon station on the northwest corner of Myrtle and Vanderbilt Avenues. A study was undertaken to determine which of the numerous curb cuts were expendable and recommendations for the placement of four plantings was made. The property owner was game and, as you can see from the photos, the project has moved to the implementation stage.

This new buffered bike lane begins at Petrosino Square at Lafayette Street and Spring Street and heads southbound all the way down to Duane Street on the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Along the way you'll find quite a few bike boxes and sharrows, new bike safety tools in the Department of Transportation street design tool box. (As Project for Public Spaces has pointed out, Petrosino Square could easily be enlarged and transformed into one of Lower Manhattan's finest little public squares).

Heading towards City Hall.

In case you are wondering why there are no cars on the road, these photos were snapped early Sunday morning while all the motorists where still sleeping. 

Instead of ending abruptly, the bike lane morphs into sharrows at Reade Street.

The new sharrows lead cyclists right down the center of the busy intersection at Chambers Street and on to the bridge to Brooklyn.

Photos: Jason Varone

Indianapolis, Indiana is making what could be the boldest step of any North American city towards supporting bicyclists and pedestrians. Known as an extremely auto-oriented city, most closely associated with the Indianapolis 500, this is one of the last cities we would have expected to see systematically removing vehicle lanes and replacing them with bicycle and pedestrian space.

The Indianapolis Cultural Trail is a bold vision for about 8 miles of separated greenway that is currently being built through the downtown core of Indianapolis. Led by the Central Indiana Community Foundation in partnership with the city, the project is a visionary response to skyrocketing obesity and the opportunity to leverage and better serve downtown infrastructure investments.

Downtown Indianapolis before the Cultural Trail.


Downtown Indianapolis after the Cultural Trail.

More than just a separated bike path, the Cultural Trail is an economic development tool that will help support and connect the city's many cultural and civic destinations. It will help revitalize streets by bringing more people downtown and increasing the circulation and length of time that people spend in the central city. As it becomes part of the city, it will also enhance the public presence of existing destinations and help create many new destinations throughout the downtown.

The Trail will help connect and define several districts within the downtown core.

A combination of private and federal funds are being used to pay for the project. Public spaces have generally not attracted this kind of private investment, particularly in car-dominated Midwestern cities, but a bold vision and strong leadership at the community foundation has raised the bar for other cities.

The design of the path will variably integrate and separate pedestrians and bicylists.

Project for Public Spaces was in Indianapolis last week doing Placemaking training for the grantees and partners of the community foundation's Inspiring Places Initiative. We are part of the design team for the Cultural Trail project, doing the international best practices research of separated bike paths that informed the final design. Andy Wiley-Schwartz, who now works as an Assistant Commissioner at the New York City Department of Transportation, worked on the project while at PPS.

Sidewalk extensions make pedestrians and bicyclists more prominent on car-dominated streets.

One of the challenges in the design was to figure how to deal with intersections. While we found many different approaches from around the world and discussed additional options, we decided that reducing the crossing distance for bikes and pedestrians by extending the curbs and creating large integrated pedestrian areas would work best.

The Cultural Trail is creating a powerful impetus for Indianapolis neighborhood groups to begin redefining their streets as public spaces that satisfy a broad range of community needs. Indianapolis -- a quintessential Midwestern car town -- has decided that a street can and should be more than just a place to drive and store motor vehicles.

Crain's New York reports that the earth is shaking below Dept. of Transportation headquarters at 40 Worth Street:

Janette Sadik-Khan, the city's new transportation commissioner, politely says she's building on the foundation left by her predecessors. In fact, she is shaking it. A month into her job, she's advancing ideas that the department has long rejected, from residential permit parking to banning cars from Central Park to the mayor's revolutionary congestion pricing plan.

Ms. Sadik-Khan knows she can't merely reform the Department of Transportation's policies. She has to change its very mind-set, because staffers have long seen their mission as moving as much traffic as they can, as fast as they can.

Overcoming such entrenched thinking is an immense task, as Ms. Sadik-Khan, 47, knows from experience. As a DOT staffer in 1991, she answered Mayor David Dinkins' call to reduce congestion by writing a plan for East River bridge tolls. The idea was predictably unpopular and died quickly. Ms. Sadik-Khan's abandoned report sits on a shelf in her unglamorous 10th-floor office at 40 Worth St., a reminder of what happens when policy meets politics.

After leaving city government, she worked as a senior vice president at engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff and before that as a transportation official in the Clinton administration.

This time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has vowed to fight for congestion pricing regardless of the political cost, which is why Ms. Sadik-Khan is in the hot seat. "When I talked with the mayor about the possibility of joining the agency, I did talk to him about wanting to do congestion pricing, moving forward with bus rapid transit, taking a greener approach, looking at complete streets, a revitalized bike network," she says. "I very much see working toward a greater, greener New York as the new mission."

She speaks of redesigning the city's streets for pedestrians, bicyclists and buses. That's what Jon Orcutt from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Andy Wiley-Schwartz from the Project for Public Spaces and traffic consultant Bruce Schaller have advocated for years. The department had never listened, but Ms. Sadik-Khan not only heard them, she hired them.

At 40 Worth St., you can almost feel the foundation rumbling.

Following in the footsteps of Bruce Schaller and Jon Orcutt, Project for Public Spaces vice president and transportation program director Andy Wiley-Schwartz is heading over to 40 Worth Street where he will be reporting to Deputy Commissioner Schaller at DOT's new Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. There they will be working to implement the transportation and public space objectives set out in Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC.

Wiley-Schwartz starts at DOT on Monday. While there has been no official announcement of his hiring or his title, word has it Wiley-Schwartz will be working on new public space initiatives, which seems like a natural fit, given his experience at PPS. With DOT's recent focus on reclaiming under-utilized bits and pieces of street space as public plazas and with tremendous grassroots energy in places like Hell's Kitchen, SoHo, Gansevoort, Grand Army Plaza, Williamsburg and even the occasional, random on-street parking spot -- it seems like "public space initiatives" could be a pretty exciting job description at DOT right now.

Wiley-Schwartz has been a contributor here at Streetsblog. At PPS he specialized in working with Departments of Transportation and community groups all across the U.S. on downtown street enhancement, traffic calming and bicycle and pedestrian projects. He is a national lead in the Context Sensitive Solutions movement, an articulate advocate and just a really pleasant guy to work with. Here is an excerpt from his PPS bio:

He specializes in helping communities rebuild their neighborhoods and cities by leveraging transportation funding into the development of public spaces, including streets and other transportation facilities, in part by focusing on strategic partnerships and programming.

Andy's current projects include PPS's New Jersey Smart Choices program: an outreach, education and training program to help municipalities plan and make sustainable land use decisions in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Transportation. He is also working with the Times Square Alliance in New York City, the City of Elmira, NY to revitalize the area under and around a railroad viaduct downtown, and advising the City of Indianapolis on their plan to build a "Cultural Trail" through their central business district.

And, no, this is not an April Fool's prank. It's June, people.

In order to foster ideas on how to reclaim 9th Avenue from Lincoln Tunnel traffic, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) sponsored a six month community input process designed by Project for Public Spaces. The process began with a design workshop in January, and has evolved into an impressive final report (PDF). Some highlights from the report:

When asked to describe the issues facing Clinton/Hell's Kitchen, local residents and business owners identified safety, traffic congestion, and lawlessness as their top challenges. These problems hamper the access of many user groups and diminish the identity of 9th Avenue. Unchecked traffic and congestion are the root of each problem identified.

Resident survey questions asked users to indicate their primary means of mobility. Despite the fact that 25% of Community District 4 residents own a car, survey responses show that very few residents use private automobiles as their primary mode of transportation. 

Short-term improvements can be accomplished with little cost and within one year or less. Immediate action needs to be taken to improve public safety and reduce traffic congestion. Each short-term action should be treated as an learning opportunity that will inform future streetscape designs, public policies and the allocation of the public right of way.

Community Board 4 will hold a vote tonight on adopting report findings as "the official community vision." If that happens, the report will be incorporated as community input in the federally funded engineering study of entrances to the Lincoln Tunnel. The meeting is at Roosevelt Hospital, 10th Ave. and 58th St., at 6:30 p.m.

All across the city neighborhood groups are coming together to re-envision and plan their own communities. In the last few months we've seen valuable community-planning processes taking place in Hell's Kitchen, the Meatpacking District and, to a certain extent, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People aren't waiting around for real estate developers or city agencies to tell them how their neighborhoods should be. They are going out and doing the thinking and planning themselves.

Add the neighborhoods around Grand Army Plaza to the list of communities taking pro-active steps to create a streets renaissance in New York City. Grand Army Plaza Coalition organizer Rob Witherwax describes the GAPco community workshop event in more detail:

Recently, we've witnessed a great example of community planning and traffic engineering from the top down (DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia's one-way plan for 6th and 7th Avenues) and seen how well it was received by its intended beneficiaries. However, on a much quieter note, we have also participated in a great example of grassroots community planning: the GAPCo Community Workshop, held on Saturday, March 10 at the Brooklyn Public Library.

GAPCo, as you may recall, is the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. It was formed just over a year ago to study Grand Army Plaza and propose ways to improve access to, and through, Grand Army Plaza for all user groups. GAPCo has grown organically to comprise many community stakeholders: private residents, civic and business associations, cultural organizations like Prospect Park and the other Heart of Brooklyn members, activists, and the city government (community boards, elected officials, and bureaucrats alike). Everyone got on the bandwagon early, and participated: in a site walk-through, the formulation of 14 short term fixes, and taking ownership of the Plaza through clean up efforts.

The culmination of GAPCo's year of organization and study was the March 10 community workshop. Fifty individuals, representing almost as many different stakeholder groups assembled on an overcast Saturday morning to play Project for Public Spaces' "Place Game." Seven teams dispersed to various sites around GAP to examine and evaluate how (and whether) those sites worked to their full potential. Returning to the library, those teams brainstormed on improvements to their site, and presented their findings to the other teams.

Literally, dozens of great ideas emerged: some were simple, small scale, easily achievable; others dramatic and more far-reaching. PPS and GAPCo are currently refining and categorizing these ideas, and will shortly issue formal findings. These findings will contain suggestions for improving way-finding and access, addressing the lack of public amenities, leveraging opportunities for historical and cultural exposure, restoring a better balance between 'car space' and 'people space', and instituting regular programming for the space. 

The important point to emphasize is that each of these suggestions was reached in a consensus-building manner by a broadbased coalition of stakeholders. Rather than having a few guys in a room crunch numbers and redraw maps, many people immersed themselves in Grand Army Plaza, and devised solutions based on their own common observations. Together we came up with a set of ideas that no one indivdual ever could have developed. It doesn't take an expert to see Grand Army Plaza has issues, and it need not take an expert to solve those issues.

DOT has proposed changing 6th and 7th Avenues to one-way streets which we believe will have many benefits including simplifying the turning movements at intersections to make it safer for pedestrians crossing the street and narrowing the travel lanes on 7th Avenue to encourage vehicles to travel within the existing speed limit. DOT also proposes making these changes in conjunction with a plan that would remove a travel lane in each direction on 4th Avenue (between 17th and Dean Streets) using this space to improve the existing left turn bays.

Andy Wiley-Schwartz, a Boerum Hill resident who also happens to be the Vice President and Director of the Transportation Program at Project for Public Spaces, writing in Streetsblog's comments section yesterday, posed a great follow-up question for the agency: What problem is DOT trying to solve with this particular set of solutions? Or, to put it another way: What triggered this initiative? As Andy puts it:

This type of measure (DOT's call them "improvements" whether they are or not) is always triggered by something. The trigger could be a request or complaint from a community board or politician, an accident or accident trend, some type of automatic system-related alert, etc.

My question is, what is the perceived "problem" in this case, and how is DOT's proposal being justified as a fix for it? I suspect the problem and solution are defined narrowly as a traffic flow issue, and at the expense of the neighborhoods.

Many, many DOTs around the country are going through an entire re-thinking of the project development process, through something called "Context Sensitive Solutions".

This means that they are stepping back to look at problems in a broader light (say, as a demand issue, not a capacity issue). It might mean that congestion (Level of Service D or even F) is considered a GOOD THING in some cases, say on a commercial street like 7th Ave.

It also means that they are then applying a much broader set of potential solutions to solve those problems, usually through partnerships and community-based planning. A DOT practicing CSS would never come up with a solution and present it to a community board. Instead, they would vett the potential problem as defined by whomever or whatever is triggering it with the community, and then talk about:

a) whether it really was a problem and
b) how they can work together to do something about it--through controls, or behavior, or both.

The engineers in this case would be a resource to the community, explaining to them the various trade-offs for doing one thing or another, and working through the issues.

This is they type of community process that we sorely need in NYC. Exposing the "problems" on these streets as DOT defines them is the first step in understanding how to counsel both the community and the city to begin to change.

This is not fantasy. DOTs around the country, from New Jersey to California are doing this.

Comment by Andy February 28, 2007 @ 3:00 pm | Link | Edit This