At the Transportation Alternatives City Council candidate debate last night, the three Democrats competing in District 25 sat down to tackle concerns about traffic, public space, and street safety. An overflow crowd of about 50 people packed the second floor office of the Queens Diversity Center to see them.

The starkest differences between the candidates centered around how to allocate street space and improve safety. Challenger Daniel Dromm, a school teacher, was the only one to speak unreservedly in favor of design and engineering improvements. "We need to have more bike lanes installed," he said. "We may need to have lighting systems that give pedestrians more time to cross the street."

Incumbent Helen Sears took a different view of cyclist safety. While Dromm had called for better education of both drivers and cyclists, Sears got more specific. "I think every company that makes bikes should have to produce a video that will absolutely show the cyclist exactly what the rules of the road are," she suggested.

Businessman Stanley Kalathara at first insisted that "providing a special route in the street" for bike lanes is "impossible," but later modified the claim, saying that 34th Avenue and 35th Avenue might have the necessary space. (Note: 34th Avenue already has a bike lane.)

Dromm was also the only candidate to express much support for congestion pricing. "I do support some form of road pricing that would help to alleviate the burden on the MTA," he said, adding that he would also support higher gas taxes or bridge tolls to fund transit. "The majority of people in this neighborhood probably do not have cars, and that’s why I make that such a high priority."

According to the most recent census numbers [PDF], Dromm's intuition is correct: 52 percent of District 25 residents don't own cars. Still, Kalathara pledged to oppose pricing in no uncertain terms, and Sears made her support conditional on the construction of additional municipal garages. Apparently the council member subscribes to the belief that car commuters will use her district as a park-and-ride if they can't drive across the 59th Street Bridge for free. Logic dictates otherwise, but if there's any way to fulfill that prophecy, thousands of additional parking spots would do it.

Off-street parking policy was something of an Achilles heel for all three candidates. Their prevailing view: More garages and more parking would reduce the terrible congestion problem in Jackson Heights, one of the most transit-rich neighborhoods in Queens. Someone should send around a copy of Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking to these folks:

• Kalathara: "People are going to buy cars anyway, it has nothing to do with the garage."
• Dromm: "I agree that any development that comes into the community should have parking attached to it. Some people here come from Jersey and don’t use transit. So they need space."
• Sears: "We have very viable commercial areas. It’s a tri-state shopping center; people don’t take public transportation to get here."

After they're done with Shoup, the candidates might want to peruse TA's 2008 report, Guaranteed Parking, Guaranteed Driving, which spelled out that many car trips originate in Jackson Heights precisely because city zoning laws require parking attached to new development.

Each candidate also had one or two ideas that stood out as especially unique or insightful. I'll end on a bright note with some of these: 

• Dromm: "Reducing the speed limit is something we have to look at. These cars come barreling down the streets, especially the side streets, not the avenues. It rattles my windows." 
• Kalathara proposed car-free summer weekends on the major shopping streets in Jackson Heights: "37th Avenue, 73rd Street, and 74th Street -- make it like a shopping mall, car-free so people can shop and have a lot of fun."
• Sears used the disjointedness of Queens Boulevard to justify her stance that it can't accommodate a bike lane: "When [DOT] did studies for traffic, they did not do Queens Boulevard in its entirety, they did sections of it. As a result, they went by Community Boards; none of it connected." Okay, that's a terrible excuse for inaction. But it's also a pretty trenchant observation about DOT, when you consider that nearly all of the Class 1, on-street bike lane miles installed in the past two years have been confined to two community board districts in Manhattan, with two more in Brooklyn slated to receive some soon.
  

Both Queens Boulevard, still one of the city's most dangerous streets, and Northern Boulevard, another heavily trafficked feeder to the free 59th Street Bridge, run through the 25th. Only five percent of workers in the district commute by car to the Manhattan CBD, while 39 percent rely on transit [PDF]. Livable streets activism is strong here: Residents helped launch the 78th Street Play Street last year as a temporary corrective to the district's cramped sidewalks and lack of public spaces. Calls for a protected bike lane and traffic calming on Queens Boulevard have been continuous since the death of Asif Rahman last February.

Two-term incumbent Helen Sears sided against congestion pricing in last year's City Council vote, declined to join Eric Gioia and John Liu in urging safety improvements for Queens Boulevard, and responded to the district's sidewalk crunch by proposing a ban on food vendors in 2006. Democratic primary challenger Daniel Dromm, a teacher at PS199, also answered TA's candidate questionnaire, while a third Democratic candidate, Stanley Kalathara, has confirmed he will attend the debate. Republican Mujib Rahman has yet to confirm.

For a preview of tomorrow night's action, here's what Dromm and Sears told TA when asked their opinion of road pricing as a traffic reduction tool:

• Daniel Dromm
  Daniel Dromm does believe that road pricing will alter New Yorkers' travel choices. Dromm is a strong advocate for reducing motor vehicle congestion and expanding mass transit access and funding. Road pricing may be an effective way to reduce traffic but its implementation and design must not alienate or appear to unfairly burden different sections of the City. The major concern is that road pricing, as twice recently proposed, is not politically viable at the moment. Dromm advocates for vastly increasing street parking fees, improving parking management, and initiating a residential parking program. Dromm is a firm believer that neighborhoods surrounding high-traffic roadways will benefit from reduced vehicular congestion.
• Helen Sears
  Helen Sears: I believe that congestion is a serious problem in NYC for many reasons, including health (emissions contribute to high asthma rates and other issues) and the environment (it is critical that we reduce our carbon footprint). I look forward to working on this issue in the future, and will advocate for a plan that equitably distributes any burdens equally among the five boroughs.

The forum gets underway tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Diversity Center of Queens, 76-11 37th Avenue (between 76th Street and 77th Street).

Enjoying a game of four-square out on the street in Jackson Heights. Photo: Transportation Alternatives.

Using surveys and other data collected before and after last year's car-free events, Transportation Alternatives sheds some light on the upward trend in their new report, "I Walk in My Street" [PDF]. Here are some of the notable findings reported by TA:

• Before Summer Space, only 42% of respondents said they would visit Montague Street more often if it were closed to auto traffic; during the closure this number jumped to 72%.
• The percentage of respondents who rated the pedestrian experience of Montague Street as “Good” or “Very Good” increased from 79% before the closure to 97% during the events.
• 100% of those surveyed at the 78th Street Play Street felt that the event “enhanced the park and farmers’ market.”
• Pedestrian streets encourage walking: during the Williamsburg Walks event, 47% of those surveyed said that they had walked to the event, a 14% improvement over normal levels.
• Montague Street retailers experienced 26% higher sales during Summer Space than on comparable days in 2007, on average.

It takes a lot of preparation to put on a pedestrian street, and TA's report also includes detailed explanations of how each neighborhood pulled it off. You can learn how the organizers went about community outreach, city permitting, volunteer coordination, the whole shebang. While it's too late to apply for a pedestrian street this summer, if you're interested in bringing one to your neighborhood in 2010, it's never too early to get cracking on a game plan.

Streetfilms newcomer Robin Urban Smith brings us this romp through a new play street in Jackson Heights. Located in a neighborhood with little access to park space, the 78th Street Play Street effectively extends Travers Park out past the curb every Sunday for 20 weeks.

Neighborhood groups Jackson Heights Green and Friends of Travers Park put a lot of time and effort into getting the play street off the ground. "This is the only play street I know of that's organized by grassroots groups," said Elena Madison, one of the volunteers behind it (the events are usually organized through the Police Athletic League).

This Sunday will be the third time 78th Street turns into a play street, with Williamsburg Walks and Montague Summer Space rounding out the weekend's car-free action.

A few weeks ago, the bus stop for the Q47 and Q19b at 37th Ave. disappeared, replaced by three metered parking spots. According to the DOT spokesman, the change was made to speed bus traffic and thereby "reduce congestion and eliminate honking." The spokesman said that three more metered spots didn't represent a significant increase in metered parking and shouldn't be perceived as "giving back" parking to space formerly dedicated to mass transit. In making the move, the department worked with the MTA, which determined that nearby stops--at 35th Ave. and 37th Rd.--were close enough together that the 37th Ave. stop was superfluous.

Sweeney begs to differ, noting that the two remaining stops (represented by the top and bottom yellow dots on the map above; the middle dot is the eliminated stop) are now approximately 1,350 feet apart (the MTA says it tries to provide stops every 750 feet on average). Sweeney also has a problem with the way the change was made, saying the community was not consulted, and if they had been, metered parking spaces would not have been on the list of requests.

"The Western Jackson Heights Alliance has repeatedly asked for muni-meters and loading zones to be installed in the area," said Sweeney in an e-mail to Streetsblog. "If the Dept of Transportation is looking for quick and easy fixes, these two changes are it. Adding more parking spaces will not improve the situation--it will make it worse. Double parking, by trucks and cars that are loading and unloading, is the primary cause of congestion, and by extension, horn honking. Unfortunately, metered parking spaces are easily abused by motorists feeding the meter throughout the day. In 2003, Transportation Alternatives did a study of the area and noted that 39 percent of the metered parking spaces were abused by merchants feeding the meter through-out the day."

After hearing the DOT's rationale for the move, Sweeney still questions how it fits into the mayor's plan for a greener New York. "Jackson Heights must be the only place in New York City right now that is losing mass transit options and adding parking for private automobiles," he writes. "Does Mayor Bloomberg really care about congestion, air pollution and pedestrian safety outside of Manhattan? His actions are not in sync with his words."

Photo: Will Sweeney

Fed up with the dysfunction of New York City's streets, people all around the city are picking up video cameras and making their own StreetFilms. The one above is pretty amazing. Unless you like the sound of car horns honking, make sure your volume is turned down before you press "play."

This StreetFilm was produced by Will Sweeney and Kozo Okumura around the palindrome intersection of 37th Ave. and 73rd St. in Jackson Heights, Queens on a Saturday evening at about 6 pm. Will writes:

We put together the video because we wanted to show how visceral the problem is on a daily basis. The problem of traffic congestion has so many side effects that are difficult to communicate in words or still images. Also, most residents would cite noise as the main complaint, particularly horn honking.

Will and Kozo are part of a growing group of neighborhood documentarians who are submitting work to StreetFilms. Last month Brooklynite Doug Gordon shot this video of car traffic illegally entering Prospect Park. Likewise, Ian Dutton of Community Board 2 in Manhattan has been video-taping bike facilities to show the reality of what it takes to get around New York City on a bicycle, at times.

So how about you? It doesn't take much these days. You don't need a great camera, just some patience, steady hand and an idea that you want to communicate. Check out some of our StreetFilm-making tips then send it in to us to post.

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 

Two weekends ago, I decided to take an informal and unscientific survey of license plates in these three neighborhoods. I found that after New York, the most common plates are North Carolina or Pennsylvania. I considered that PA was relatively close and that possibly motorists were just visiting for a few days. But North Carolina is a long haul from NYC. Last Friday, I did the experiment again. This time I counted. 192 NC plates, 97 PA plates, 43 NJ plates, 21 Ohio plates, 12 CT plates and a few other random states in the single digits.

A little more research confirmed Sweeney's suspicion that all those cars didn't belong to tourists from Greensboro and Fayetteville. Turns out that so many drivers from our area are going down south to fraudulently obtain North Carolina plates that legislators in that state have introduced legislation to make the practice a felony. Reports Raleigh TV station WRAL:

State Insurance Commissioner Jim Long said motorists flock to North Carolina from expensive insurance states, such as New Jersey and New York. They give fake local addresses and get cheaper insurance and tags.

"They're coming down here literally by the bus load," Long said....

Investigators want the state Division of Motor Vehicles and insurance agents to improve how they verify where people live.

"The goal in all this is to protect the rates being charged to North Carolina drivers by keeping those from other states from buying insurance down here, then going back up north and having wrecks and costing all of us," Long said.

Sweeney notes that better enforcement in North Carolina would have a beneficial effect on New Yorkers as well. "A very effective way to re-claim our streets from cars is to make sure that all illegal cars are off the streets," he writes. "I think that if the city and state enforced the insurance and registration laws of the city, we could tremendously decrease the number of vehicles on the streets. And the revenues from fines and traffic tickets would actually be paid!"