How fast do cars travel on Prospect Park West? Criminally fast. All the time. Members of Park Slope Neighbors clocked cars routinely exceeding the 30 mph speed limit -- including one sociopath racing at 65 mph -- during a ten-minute stretch earlier this month. Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue form a one-way pair funneling drivers to and from the free East River bridges and the Prospect Expressway, a configuration that makes for hazardous conditions. Last summer a school bus driver struck and killed cyclist Jonathan Millstein on Eighth Avenue. A few weeks ago a 57-year-old pedestrian was nearly killed a couple of blocks away from the Millstein incident. Parents are afraid to walk with their children across the corridor's dysfunctional intersections. NYPD enforcement is sorely lacking.

In addition to turning these beautiful and historic neighborhood streets into mini-highways, the current design of Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue helps to create a never-ending bottleneck on Union Street below Grand Army Plaza. Because the avenues are one-way, virtually every motorist heading from Park Slope to Grand Army Plaza gets funneled on to Union Street.

Recent adjustments to signal timing haven't solved the speeding problem, so the Neighbors are asking DOT to improve safety by restoring the avenues to two-way traffic flow. You can sign a petition to DOT that also calls for a two-way protected bike path on Prospect Park West and full traffic-calming on both avenues. Here's an intriguing piece of background on the campaign:

This would actually be a "restoration" project, as 8th Avenue was changed from two-way travel to its current one-way northbound configuration on June 10th, 1930 by order of the NYPD -- because they felt there was too much northbound traffic on 8th Avenue's one northbound lane. Rather than switching Prospect Park West to two-way travel (we believe it, too, was originally a two-way street, but have been unable to find conclusive evidence to that effect) to accommodate that traffic, they saddled Park Slope with nearly eight decades of bad road design, which is why we're asking DOT to "Reverse the Curse" and restore the original traffic pattern.

Not getting flattened by a 50,000 pound "big rig" is a good reason to stop at a red light if you're on a bicycle. But how about less skin-saving reasons? Are there in fact, good reasons to ignore traffic regulations when you can, because after all, they are really meant just for cars?

It's a question that comes readily to mind at times, particularly say when pedaling up a steep hill or going down one, and having to stop at a red light in the middle. Many of us often just cruise through with a careful glance in each direction, but we feel guilty about it. Should we?

Maybe not. If you look historically, you'll find that there were practically no traffic regulations as we know them before cars. No stop signs. No traffic lights. No left turn lanes. In the 19th century, the streets of New York were a seething mass of horse drawn wagons, walking adults, playing children and yes, in the late 19th century, bicyclists.

Cars changed this. In the 1930s, traffic congestion became a serious and unanticipated problem. How to handle it? Enter the new "science" of traffic engineering. With the addition of stop signs, street lights and all the other accoutrements that are common today, traffic congestion would soon be a thing of the past, the new professionals assured the public.

Of course, this wasn't true at all. What it did do was make that street much less convenient for someone on a bicycle or using any other form of non-motorized travel.

So here's my point. Given that most traffic controls were put into place solely for the benefit of drivers, why should the rest of us have to obey them? They're not helping us. In fact, they're impeding us.

What we may need to move toward is some sort of system where cyclists, non-motorized scooter riders, skaters or users of any other kind of self-propelled vehicle are exempted or partially exempted from traffic controls. It could be understood that a red light is there to control the car or truck, not everyone else.

There are a number of options. What Montreal does on some streets is to let cyclists proceed six seconds before the cars do at some red lights. This frees cyclists from being lost in a swirl of drivers going around them. In many Dutch cities, drivers are bound by one way streets, but not cyclists. Imagine such a thing here.

Most effectively, the state could rule, as most Scandinavians have, that in any collision between a pedestrian, a cyclists or a driver, the largest, heaviest vehicle is at fault. This means that pedestrians take precedence over cyclists, and cyclists take precedence over drivers. This would be a de-facto way of exempting cyclists and pedestrians from most automobile-oriented traffic regulation.

One particular regulatory device we could consider having cyclists relate differently to is one way thoroughfares, which are so ubiquitous in New York City.

One way streets are a fairly recent "innovation," many being put into place in the 1950s and 1960s, and again solely for the supposed benefit of drivers. There were many ill effects, and not just for cyclists. Jane Jacobs commented in her classic 1961 "Death and Life of Great American Cities" that every time New York City converted an avenue to being one way, bus traffic would take a significant drop, because people now often had to walk an avenue over to catch a bus traveling in the right direction.

I may be digressing here, but people give those poor delivery guys hunched over their bicycles so much grief for going the wrong way down one-way streets. But rather than penalize their employers, something currently proposed by the New York City Council, how about getting rid of a lot of the one way streets? Or even exempting cyclists from having to obey one way regulations?

This may sound insane, but the fact is it's often irresistible to a biker to go the wrong way down a one way street. If I'm at 15th and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, for example, to get to 14th and Eighth Avenue would require a very long journey if done legally. I would have to cycle down 15th to Ninth Avenue, and then up 14th Street back to Eighth Avenue. That's almost a half mile, given how long Manhattan blocks are. Or, I could travel illegally a 100 feet or so down Eighth Avenue. You can understand why a delivery person, or I, for example, would be so tempted.

There's a school of cycling called "vehicular" or "integrated" cycling that advocates that cyclists in essence act like motorists. That is, they should take up a whole lane of traffic, and obey all traffic regulations. While this may make sense tactically at times, for example to avoid getting squeezed out by city bus, it's a stupid philosophy. A bicycle is not a car, much less a truck. It's a very different device, and it needs a different set of regulations, one that can be looser and more permissive, given its less substantive nature.

Photo: hen power/Flickr

The Queens Times-Ledger reports on the "cool reception" given last week by Queens Community Board 3 and City Council Member Hiram Monserrate to the DOT's proposal for a one-way pair of streets on 35th and 37th avenues. What's most disappointing about the debate so far is the DOT's insistence it can't come up with any other solutions to the chronic traffic congestion that plagues the heavily residential neighborhood.

Will Sweeney, a founding member of the Western Jackson Heights Alliance civic association, said one-way streets east and west would increase vehicle speeds and danger to pedestrians. He said the congestion was created not by east-west problems, but by backups on north-south streets. That is where the DOT should focus its efforts, he said.

"We do need a traffic engineering solution to the congestion and pedestrian safety problems in Jackson Heights. We don't need a dangerous raceway for through traffic," he said.

DOT Queens Borough Commissioner Maura McCarthy, who noted that no one spoke in favor of the plan, said there were not many options for the city to consider.

"We are not here to force anything down anybody's throat," she said, but then added "there are not a lot of other ideas."

You can find a PDF of the DOT's complete presentation here.

Photo: Sarah Goodyear 

Every week, KCRW radio's Marc Porter Zasada sets out to fathom Los Angeles on his show The Urban Man. This week he talks about neighborhoods, how fragile they are and how easily they can be lost to bad traffic engineering:

On Monday you walked around the block for coffee and croissants, down where narrow streets filled pleasantly with a confusion of people and cars. There you idled in front of a flower shop and popped into a tiny market for apples, where you joked with the beautiful cashier.

Then lo, Tuesday morning you step out your door and find that someone has widened the street and added an on-ramp. At the end of the block, an Office Depot looms. Just like that, romance flees. Soon you're driving to Costco for apples and croissants. Soon, you forget the beautiful cashier.

What happened? Someone saw the confusion of people and cars, and decided to improve your life with better traffic circulation. Your little local fling was sacrificed to that greatest of all affairs--the automobile. Your city squeeze was embraced by the great, gray sprawl of parking lots and Taco Bells.

Urbanists have known for decades that the increased traffic speed of one-way streets makes walking less appealing. And they know that whenever circulation improves, people shop further, work further, and slowly abandon the love of neighborhood. These roads would cease being "neighborhood main streets." Most importantly, as the city spreads and thins, traffic ultimately gets...worse.

Back in 1961, the great urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which explained all this very clearly. And yes, across America, a few enlightened cities have stopped building expressways and have turned back to two-way traffic. They've learned to let congestion do its joyful work.

Maybe if every politician were forced to read Jacobs' book, their eyes would be opened. Maybe they'd see that a neighborhood with poor circulation is a neighborhood with hope--not to mention a place that might someday vote for subway bonds.

This morning the Urban Man strolls Pico near Robertson. This is my own little hood, where despite the immense wealth surrounding the boulevard, flower shops and cafes struggle. Like the politicians, I'm not sure they realize that improving circulation would make their situation worse, not better.

Personally, I'm thrilled to see drivers waiting in growing frustration for left hand turns. In fact, I'd like to propose making this area much more difficult to navigate in an automobile. Today, the Urban Man would like to formally propose narrowing Pico to one lane in each direction, then running a trolley right down the middle, from Downtown to the sea. Just imagine the complications. In fact, such a move might improve not just my neighborhood, but encourage many happy affairs in what could someday be a great city for people instead of cars.