Streetsblog New York City

In response to our critique of the Texas Transportation Institute’s congestion rankings, which take traffic delays out of context and risk being used to justify road expansions, former New Jersey DOT leader Gary Toth raised this question: What if, instead of getting frustrated with the report, we reframe its interpretation?

He does it by pointing out that the frantic pace of road-building in this country over the past few decades has only made the problem worse:

Universally, during the 20th century, transportation was viewed as an end in and of itself and state DOTs furiously pursued congestion relief by adding more capacity. And universally, it has not only failed to solve the problem, it has made it worse.

The failure of auto-oriented transportation solutions has been documented by congestion data collected annually by the Texas Transportation Institute since 1982. Four hundred thirty-nine metropolitan areas have been studied; in spite of the massive investment in building high speed roadway capacity, congestion indicators are skyrocketing out of control. It is time to tell the emperor that he/she is not wearing any clothes.

The issue of how high-speed automobile capacity affected land use development and spread out destinations and activities was considered someone else’s business. The highly mobile transportation system (or “supply”) created spread-out access, which in turn affected how people chose to locate their homes and businesses (land use patterns). Conversely, spread-out land use patterns further increased the demand for transportation (travel distances, modes, etc.), and this has become the eternal cycle that we now find ourselves in. While originally accomplishing many positive outcomes, the single-minded focus on high-speed mobility has increasingly led to an ever-growing series of unintended consequences, such as the undermining of all other modes of travel. In cities around our country, streets have been tuned for high level of service for automobiles during the peak hour.

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Once in a while, a story comes along that perfectly encapsulates how dangerous traffic forces people to re-orient their lives. This example, relayed to us by a reader, comes from a recent lecture at the psychiatry department of a major Manhattan hospital about anxiety disorders in the elderly.

The lecturer brought up the case of an 80-year-old woman who uses a walker. The woman told her doctor that she was afraid to cross First Avenue to make her appointments because of the traffic. She wasn’t afraid of leaving her apartment or walking across smaller streets; it was First Avenue that scared her.

So the doctor prescribed Xanax to help her deal with her anxiety.

Xanax was not endorsed by this group of doctors due to its side effects, but our reader was taken aback when no one — neither the presenters nor the audience — raised concerns about applying the diagnosis of an anxiety disorder to an elderly person simply because she is concerned about crossing a dangerous street.

“Nobody said, ‘This is an inappropriate response to a dangerous situation,’” our tipster recalled. “Have we so given up on managing our streets in a rational way that we’re now just medicating people?”

They may be remembered as the driving-est generation. Baby Boomers, who came of age in the heyday of suburbia, have always driven more than any other generation. At the height of their driving years, boomers averaged 51 miles per day. They continue to drive 17 percent more than all other age groups, according to a recent report from AARP.

But in 2009, for the first time since the National Household Travel Survey began asking Americans about their transportation habits, in 1969, driving declined among all age groups. And it was the second time the survey showed less driving among boomers, who are reaching retirement age, a period of life that typically coincides with decreased driving.

Which has everyone watching and wondering: How will the huge number of Americans in this age bracket respond to retirement? If boomers continue to drive less, which seems likely, that will have huge ramifications for American transportation policy.

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Since 2005, Americans have been driving fewer miles each year. While the shift predated the onset of the Great Recession, the question of whether the decline in driving marked a sea change in the way we get around or simply reflected a drop in economic activity has been a matter of considerable debate.

Enter economist Joe Cortright, who took a closer look at American driving patterns following the last five recessions. The results, which Cortright discussed during a panel at last month’s National Association of City Transportation Officials conference, point to the emergence of fundamentally different American travel behavior.

Looking at the periods before and after the last five recessions, Cortright charted vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita in the United States on a monthly basis, indexing the last month of each recession to zero. In four of the five recessions, driving was either increasing or stagnant in the two years before the economic slowdown, and it quickly picked up steam during the recovery.

The only exception was the most recent recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009. Before the recession, driving per person was dropping. After the recession, driving continued to fall. In other words, Cortright says, the recession has little to do with what is actually a long-term trend.

“As the recession ended, driving continued to decline,” Cortright said. “And the reason is the increase in gas prices.” In the past decade, he noted, the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline has tripled.

But pocketbook concerns aren’t the only factors at work. There is a generational shift, as well. Cortright pointed out that the drop in driving is particularly pronounced for people in their teens and twenties. Today’s teenagers are getting their licenses later than previous generations, and young people are increasingly opting to live in cities.

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While the number of employed New Yorkers has recovered from the lows of the recession, motor vehicle traffic in the city remained flat last year, with increased demand for travel being met by the city’s increasingly stretched subways, according to NYC DOT’s annual Sustainable Streets Index update.

The report, released Monday, collects data from a wide variety of sources to assess the state of the city’s transportation network. The update is part of the city’s PlaNYC 2030 sustainability initiative and builds on previous releases from 2008, 2009 and 2010.

DOT’s preliminary data shows that citywide motor vehicle traffic, measured by counting “daily weekday traffic volumes at Borough and City boundaries,” flattened out in 2011 after rising 1.1 percent in 2010. Even with 2010’s increase, in 2011 traffic remained 0.8 percent below pre-recession 2007 levels. Meanwhile, weekday subway ridership is up 2.5 percent in 2011 over 2010.

Traffic remains flat even as job numbers are picking up steam. After a weak 2010, the number of employed New Yorkers increased 2.0 percent in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, regaining the pre-recession level. Along with record subway ridership, bike traffic crossing the boundaries of the Manhattan CBD rose 7 percent in 2011 over 2010, bringing the total increase since 2000 to 250 percent.

Buses, meanwhile, continue to hemorrhage riders following the service cuts that took effect in the middle of 2010. Weekday bus ridership declined 4.3 percent in 2011 from the previous year. Bus ridership has declined each year since 2008, a total drop of 9.4 percent. This stands in contrast to the gains in ridership on Select Bus Service routes. On the M15 Select Bus Service along First and Second Avenues, for example, travel times improved 15-18 percent while ridership rose 12 percent.

A day-by-day analysis of taxi GPS data provides a glimpse into vehicular traffic patterns as well. The fall and winter have more heavily congested days than the rest of the year, with the traffic crunch peaking on November and December weekdays, as well as during the United Nations General Assembly in September. The days with the lightest traffic are major holidays or Sundays in January or July.

After gains from 2008-2010, average daytime taxi speeds (8 a.m. – 6 p.m.) below 60th Street in Manhattan decreased slightly, with the average non-airport taxi trip taking seven minutes. Unsurprisingly, traveling on Manhattan avenues is faster than on crosstown streets, while nighttime trips (7 p.m. – 7 a.m.) are faster and cover more distance than daytime trips.

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You’ve got to already be a little bit crazy to choose to drive into Midtown for work each day (as the record-breaking ridership numbers on the PATH train attest). Sitting in traffic, dodging the even crazier driver next to you — perhaps the only thing worse than driving near the Lincoln Tunnel is trying to walk safely along those traffic-clogged streets.

Last Thursday, evening rush hour congestion caused one tunnel-bound commuter to finally snap. This driver, captured on video by Animal New York, decided she’d waited long enough to get out of Manhattan and took actions into her own hands. She got out of her car, walked into the middle of Eleventh Avenue and W. 43rd Street, and did her best impression of a traffic cop. One key difference: She waved cars through in just one direction — hers.

It’s impressive as a work of urban anthropology — look at that deference other drivers show to the trappings of authority — but even more so as a case study in psychology. This is your brain on traffic.

The city has the power to make this neighborhood, which is becoming an increasingly residential community, a little less exhaust-addled. The Lincoln Tunnel is already tolled (and last year’s sizable toll hike helped drive people toward transit), but there’s another way to do it, through parking policy. Every time the city lets a little piece of Midtown and the West Side get  gobbled up by automobile storage, it becomes that much more appealing and affordable for drivers to try and squeeze through the Lincoln Tunnel (and during the evening, when there is no Lincoln Tunnel bus lane, that much slower for transit riders thrown into mixed traffic).

In just the first five months of 2008, before the real estate market fell apart, the city approved special permits for 500 new parking spaces in Hell’s Kitchen alone. Now, the city wants to allow more parking to be built in the Theater District. If nothing else, it’s a good way of encouraging more vigilante traffic cops.

Cross-posted from Strongtowns.

We spend billions every year in this country on our transportation network, large percentages of it based on traffic projections. This despite the fact that we have a long record of not being able to accurately project traffic. The answer isn’t better projections but a better transportation system, one that is robust to modeling error.

Does walkable development really lead to worse traffic congestion? Opponents of urbanism often say so, citing impending traffic disaster to rally people against, say, a new mixed-use project proposed in their backyards. But new research provides some excellent evidence to counter those claims.

A recent study by the Arizona Department of Transportation [PDF] found that neighborhoods where houses are closer together actually have freer-flowing traffic.

Researchers compared some of greater Phoenix’s denser neighborhoods – South Scottsdale, Tempe, and East Phoenix — with a few of its more sprawling ones – Glendale, Gilbert, and North Scottsdale. Some interesting patterns emerged.

In the more compact neighborhoods, the average household owned 1.55 cars, compared to 1.92 in more suburban areas. Residents of higher-density neighborhoods also traveled shorter distances both to get to work and to run errands, the study found.

The average work trip was a little longer than seven miles for higher-density neighborhoods; in the more suburban neighborhoods, it was almost 11 miles. Residents of the three compact neighborhoods traveled just less than three miles to shop, while residents of sprawling locations traveled an average of more than four miles. All of this led the more urban dwellers to travel an average of nearly five fewer miles per day than their suburban counterparts.

The density divide also played an important role in transit use. Rates varied from as high as eight percent transit ridership in high-density neighborhoods to as low as one percent in the more sprawling areas.

All of this translated into a reduced strain on roadways in the places that had more people — running counter to one of the strongest objections to mixed-use development. Comparing one suburban corridor to two of the streets in the more dense neighborhoods, the study found that on the more urban streets, traffic congestion was “much lower,” or about half as high (measured by the ratio of the capacity of the roadway to the actual volume of cars on it).

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The Department of Transportation has completed a multi-year transportation study of the Upper West Side, and Wednesday night the agency walked local residents through the many proposed changes [PDF]. The suggestions for the area between 55th and 86th Streets, west of Central Park, include a number of valuable intersection-level improvements to pedestrian safety, but left some feeling that the recommendations don’t go far enough.

Locals hoping to expand the protected bike lane network on the Upper West Side beyond the current mile of cycle track on Columbus Avenue were initially disappointed; the West Side study doesn’t so much as mention new bike lanes. When pressed on the issue during the Q&A, however, DOT reps gave residents looking to expand the bike lane’s safety benefits cause for optimism. “We are interested in increasing the bike network in this community,” said DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione.

Forgione said DOT is finishing up a final evaluation of the existing Columbus Avenue bike lane and plans to show the new data to the local community board. Then, she said, DOT wants “to have the board help define where we go next.” The two options she mentioned Wednesday were extending the Columbus Avenue lane and creating a northbound match on Amsterdam.

Included in last night’s presentation were a host of smaller safety improvements. “This is not the sexiest,” warned Council Member Gale Brewer, who provided the original impetus for the study.

Two striped islands on West End Avenue at 58th and 59th Streets would be converted into concrete refuge islands, for example, to provide real physical protection to crossing pedestrians.

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It might not be as bold or attention-grabbing as the overhaul of Times Square and Herald Square, but a set of changes made to New York City’s third-busiest pedestrian intersection is having its own quiet success. In Downtown Flushing, a 2010 project that expanded sidewalks, daylighted dangerous intersections, and introduced numerous turn restrictions is boosting safety even while traffic flows more smoothly, according to a new evaluation from NYC DOT [PDF].

Downtown Flushing’s streets needed an upgrade perhaps more than anywhere else in Queens. The Main Street subway station, fed by 21 bus routes, is the busiest outside Manhattan. In one 12-hour period, DOT counted 97,000 pedestrians on a single block of Main Street. And in 2009, more pedestrians were hit by cars at the corner of Union Street and Northern Boulevard than any other location in the borough.

Few of the changes installed by DOT in July of 2010 reshaped the street, but together, they have noticeably improved how the area’s transportation system functions. In four locations, DOT used paint and bollards to expand the sidewalk, creating 700 square feet of new pedestrian space. At seven locations, parking spaces were removed to daylight intersections and improve visibility. New turn restrictions at five intersections reduced conflicts between automobiles and pedestrians crossing the street, but buses are allowed through at certain locations.

The overall safety effect has been substantial, according to DOT’s recently released evaluation. Crashes with injuries declined by 20 percent in the study area (Prince Street to Bowne Street, 35th Avenue to Sanford Avenue). Total injuries fell by 29 percent. Drivers and their passengers benefited the most from the safety gains, with injuries falling by more than a half. The improvement to pedestrian safety was more modest, with only an eight percent reduction.

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