Although there is undoubtedly an amazing streets renaissance going on in NYC, there still remain places in dire need of improvement. Every workday, heavily-used areas like the blocks surrounding Penn Station are overwhelmed with pedestrians making their way home via buses, subways, the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak. The sidewalks are so clogged by this "crush of humanity" that people are forced to walk in the streets. If you've never seen it, or if you're claustrophobic, get ready.

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton recently went out to sample the atmosphere on a typical weekday evening and posits that we can do much better in how we choose to allocate street space. His words sum it up nicely:

The reason it's so crowded here is not because there's not enough space. It's because we give all of our space to the least spatially-efficient form of transportation available. 

Of course he is referring to the automobile -- especially the single-occupant vehicle. Oddly enough, I did a PSA over three years ago which aired during our New York City Streets Renaissance campaign launch. I filmed most of it in the same location. It still looks much the same, perhaps worse.

When New York City opened up new pedestrian zones in the heart of Midtown this summer, naysayers predicted a traffic nightmare. Nearly two months later, we're still waiting for the much-feared Carmaggedon.

In this video, Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton takes us on a tour of Broadway's car-free squares and boulevard-style blocks, where conditions have improved dramatically for pedestrians, cyclists, and, yes, delivery truck drivers. As Mark says, the counterintuitive truth is that taking away space for cars can improve traffic while making the city safer and more enjoyable for everyone on foot. There are sound theories that help explain why this happens -- concepts like traffic shrinkage and Braess's paradox which are getting more and more attention thanks to projects like this one. While traffic statistics are still being collected by NYCDOT, there's already a convincing argument that Midtown streets are functioning better than before: To understand it, just take a walk down Broadway.

In this exclusive Streetfilms interview, The Open Planning Project's Executive Director Mark Gorton talks with Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan about how her agency is redefining public space in New York City.

As the two take a walking tour of recently revamped streetscapes designed to encourage car-free movement and foster social activity -- including Broadway Boulevard, Gansevoort Plaza, Meat Market Plaza and the Ninth Avenue cycle track -- Sadik-Khan explains how she sees the city grid evolving from "utilitarian corridors" into civic amenities.

Too much of the time I think pedestrians have been seen as guests in this space. Putting a prime role for designing for people -- designing for pedestrians, designing for cyclists, designing for buses, designing for better mobility, designing for a more sustainable city -- is all part of the package.

The Smart Para-Transit system I have described would be capable of replacing many of the automobile trips in the New York area. However, by itself, it would be insufficient to completely replace the need to own a car for many New Yorkers. If Smart Para-Transit were paired with a car sharing program, most all driving scenarios would be covered, and this system would eliminate the need for car ownership for all but the most driving-intense New Yorkers. Zipcar is an example of a private car sharing service.

The interface between the car sharing system and the customer would be the same as with the Smart Para-Transit system. The user would simply go to a website or a cell phone and enter what sort of vehicle they would like and the length of time they need the vehicle. The user would then be told the location of a nearby vehicle that meets their needs. A premium service that drops the car at the customer’s door could even be provided at an extra cost.

For example, if a family wanted to travel up to the Finger Lakes region for a week, Smart Para-Transit would be a very costly way to meet their travel needs. But by taking an available car from the car sharing pool, the family would have a vehicle that met their needs for as long as they need it. Freight hauling vehicles could also be made available for sharing for times when people need to move large objects.

Many New Yorkers own cars but only use them infrequently. Yet these cars need to be stored all the remaining time. As a result, New York has an enormous parking shortage. Parked cars are not in use, yet they take up precious public space. Chronic parking shortages leads to cruising for parking which results in extra congestion, pollution, noise, and increased danger for children and senior citizens. In addition, parked cars take up valuable space that can be used for non-transportation purposes such as kids playing, benches, flea markets, outdoor cafés, etc. Car sharing allows each car to be kept in service a much higher percentage of the time, and as a result, fewer cars are necessary to serve the same number of trips.

Fewer cars mean less demand for parking, and a smarter use of scarce public space. By creating a system that makes more optimal use of the vehicles in the system, New York would receive an enormous spatial dividend that would allow a whole host of public activities to flourish.

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The biggest constraints on the transportation capacity of New York City’s road networks are the bridges and tunnels. The river crossings are jammed with traffic for a good fraction of each day. The only way to get more throughput capacity out of New York’s existing bridges and tunnels is to use them more efficiently. A vehicle carrying multiple people is more spatially efficient than a single passenger car, so by having HOV lanes, our existing bridges and tunnels can move more people at no extra cost. The Lincoln Tunnel already employs dedicated bus lanes, and this concept can be expanded.

Smart Para-Transit all by itself could provide good transit options but would not have trip times superior to a private car. However, if the Para-Transit buses and vans had access to HOV lanes at the river crossings and other constraints in the road network, the Para-Transit system could provide trip times superior to the private car. The Para-Transit buses and vans could zip through the bridges and tunnels while the private cars sat stuck in traffic. With quality vehicles, faster trip times, and cost savings, many people in the New York region would happily switch from private automobiles to Smart Para-Transit.

Adoption of Smart Para-Transit could then have a positive feedback effect. As more people used paratransit, trip times would go down as greater concentrations of riders would result in more optimal routes. The greater number of Para-Transit vehicles would then require more HOV and transit only lanes which would further squeeze the road capacity available to private automobiles at peak periods. Private automobiles would then be even slower in comparison to the Para-Transit vehicles further encouraging more drivers to adopt Para-Transit.

The end state could result with New York having a nearly congestion free road network. The current traffic system in New York is badly engineered. It prioritizes the least spatially efficient forms of transportation, the private automobile. As a result, the system is frequently congested leading to enormous wastes of both time and money. In addition, the constant crush of traffic oppresses New York City making its neighborhoods hostile places for the people who live in them.

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Video: Sightline Institute. Photo: Transportation Alternatives. 

Advances in information and communications technology offer the possibility of optimizing the performance of our existing road network in ways that were not possible even ten years ago. The ubiquity of web-enabled cell phones has put a mobile data input device into the hands of the vast majority of citizens. By applying cell phone, internet, and computer technologies, New York now has the opportunity to create a system which can vastly speed travel times, increase the throughput of our road network, carry more people, while at the same time, radically reducing the number of vehicles on the road, gasoline usage, CO2 emissions, congestion, traffic, and the harm that traffic inflicts on our neighborhoods.

A new form of mass transit can be created that offers trip times highly competitive with the private automobile to nearly all points in the region. This new form of mass transit takes advantage of the existing road network and requires very little in the way of capital investment. This new form of transit is Smart Para-Transit.

Background

The past 100 years have seen New York City and the rest of the country spend huge amounts of money on road infrastructure improvements to serve automobiles. With the advantage of hindsight, neglecting investment in mass transit while promoting automobile usage may have been a poor policy decision; however, highways, bridges, tunnels, and roads have been built, and New York must now maximize the value it receives from the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on its surface transportation infrastructure.

Although cars have been a significant presence in our world for as long as anyone can remember, from a historical perspective, the automobile is still a relatively new invention. The first 100 years of our society’s infatuation with the automobile was spent without bothering to answer the key question: "Can we fit all the cars we need to move around?" Congestion and traffic jams are a way of life in New York. The previous answer to congestion was to build more roads, bridges, and tunnels; however, the added road capacity only encouraged more driving and led to even more congestion. Our society now knows that it is impossible to build its way out of its congestion problems.

In a city where space is very dear, the private car is the least spatially efficient form of transportation in use.  However, for all of its drawbacks, the car is still an amazing technology. When the roads are not congested and parking is available, it offers faster trip times than any other means of travel.

New York City is blessed with a fine mass transit system that provides good transit options to most of the people in the region. However, for outlying parts of the New York City region, the transit options are a poor substitute for the mobility provided by the private car.

How Smart Para-Transit Would Work

Smart Para-Transit uses information technology to group and optimize the existing trips that take place on the road network. Smart Para-Transit has a number of components. The physical transport component is a large fleet of dynamically routed vehicles: small vans, large vans, small buses, and large buses. As opposed to typical mass transit today, these vehicles would not run on predetermined routes. Instead, a central computer collects information about requested trips, figures out how best to group passengers, and dynamically dispatches vehicles to service the required trips.

In a city as dense as New York, lots of people make highly similar trips at the same time using private cars. Smart Para-Transit allows for grouping of these similar trips to reduce the wasteful overlap that occurs with many individual cars traveling the same routes. Take for example the group of people who want to travel from Tribeca to Montclair, NJ around 5:30 PM on a Tuesday. There might be a dozen people who plan to make this trip by car in a 15 minute period. These dozen people might require 8 separate cars for their trips. Instead of 8 separate cars, one large van could fit 12 people and consolidate these 8 vehicles into just one vehicle. The van could make 3 quick stops in Tribeca, pick up all 12 people and head directly to Montclair. Once in Montclair, the van could stop at a couple of central transit points, and then continue directly to some passengers houses.

The vans need not be beat up vehicles that we typically associate with van services today. They could be environmentally friendly hybrids with plush interiors with cup holders and ports to plug in computers.

Here is how Smart Para-Transit might look from a user point of view. Before beginning a trip, a user would enter their current location, their destination, and their desired departure time into the system. The Smart Para-Transit system could be accessed via website, mobile phone, or traditional phone. The centralized computer would take this trip information and direct the user to a pick a point within a few blocks of their current locations. The user would then walk to this pick up point. Within a few minutes a bus or van would stop at the pickup point and load the riders. The bus or van would then head directly to the destination area and disburse the passengers at a handful of points. The trip would be nearly as direct as a car trip and would involve no transfers and minimum waiting.

Examples of para-transit are in operation today. Super Shuttle runs a fleet of blue vans to airports. The Hampton Jitney bunches trips for people heading out the beach, and MTA operates Access-A-Ride for people whose disabilities prevent them from being about to use traditional buses and subways. All of these services are much more limited, and less technologically sophisticated than the Smart Para-Transit system that could be built, but they each show elements of the larger potential system.

Traffic is a crushing problem that oppresses our city, yet many people who drive into New York each day do not have a good alternative.

I'm an engineer by training and the traffic flow problems facing large cities today have many similarities to the engineering issues that I have encountered at LimeWire, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service that I founded. LimeWire involves many computers connected to each other passing messages around a network. Early in the development of LimeWire, the network was choking on its message traffic as each computer tried to send more messages than the network could collectively handle. The solution to this problem involved having each computer reduce its message traffic and organizing the network to take advantage of efficiencies that could be gained by designing a new computer network architecture.

From a network management point of view, the road networks of New York and many other large cities are horribly engineered. The traditional traffic engineering solution to congestion problems is to try to increase capacity. However, similar problems in computer engineering are solved by reducing the underlying need for traffic. Biological systems, which are the most sophisticated systems on the planet, are extremely judicious in how they move things around.

Our surface transportation system today is premised upon the primacy of the private automobile, yet the private automobile is the single most inefficient means of moving people in a city. By catering to the private automobile, we have inadvertently made an engineering choice that maximizes danger, noise, pollution, and congestion and creates a host of other problems that suck the life out of our public spaces.

In less than ten years, with minimal capital expenditures, we can create a new form of mass transit that transforms the way we run our surface transportation system and drastically reduces the need to have private cars in New York City. I call this new form of mass transit Smart Para-Transit. Smart Para-Transit takes advantage of innovations in information and communication technology to create breathtaking increases in efficiency of our road network. My very rough initial estimate is that widespread adoption of Smart Para-Transit would allow for an 80 percent reduction in automobile traffic in New York City.

The basket of ideas involved in Smart Para-Transit are too long for one blog post. So I am serializing the explanation over the course of a week. For those of you who can’t wait, you can download and read the full description.

While press coverage of Summer Streets has been generally positive, tales of the miffed muffler shop owner and complaining cabinet maker are bound to continue, as reporters hunt for naysayers to "balance" out their stories. But what will be the economic reality of Summer Streets? Here, Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton gives his account of Saturday lunch with the family at an outdoor café on Park Avenue and 51st Street.

The host told us that he could seat us, but that they couldn't put our order in for at least a half hour because the kitchen was so backed up. He said on a normal Saturday they would have had three or four tables occupied, but there were about 30 tables filled. He pointed and said, "Look, even the manager is taking tables." We were happy to wait, so we sat and ate. As I looked around the café, only a couple tables looked to be filled by bikers. My guess is that lots of people who would never have bothered to walk along Park Ave. on a Saturday suddenly found it an interesting place to be.

Most of the stories we've seen reflect Mark's experience: In general, businesses which rely on foot traffic expected and/or received a boost from Summer Streets. Streetsblogger Larry Littlefield has suggested altering the route to exclude more car-dependent enterprises, like furniture stores. What else could, or should, the city do -- if anything -- to take such businesses into account? And how did (or will) Summer Streets affect your spending habits?

Photo: Ben Fried

L-R: DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Alternatives Director Paul Steely White and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe at this morning's Bike Month NYC event on 9th Avenue.

Benepe with White and Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton.

Photos: Will Sherman/Transportation Alternatives 

Still, we continue to spill all of this ink over congestion pricing because it is far and away the most important game in town. If you want better, safer bicycling; faster more reliable buses; more honorable treatment of pedestrians and public spaces and a healthier, more pleasant and sustainable New York City -- congestion pricing is the quickest, most effective way to make these changes happen.

That's because congestion pricing is the only policy that simultaneously reduces the number of motor vehicles on New York City's streets while raising money for transit and public space improvements. Typically, activists and change-makers deal in compromise and small incremental improvement. This moment is different. Congestion pricing creates an opportunity to make relatively revolutionary change happen relatively immediately. I don't expect this sort of opportunity to come along again any time soon. Now is the time to do everything we can to try to help push congestion pricing through the City Council and State Legislature.

Tonight's your chance to contribute. There will be six simultaneous public hearings held throughout the metropolitan region. Sign up ahead of time as a speaker and write up even just a paragraph or two of testimony. If you can go, go!

Here is a note from Transportation Alternatives executive director Paul Steely White with more details:

TONIGHT (Thursday, January 24), there will be public hearings on congestion pricing in Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. I'm sure you can think of better ways to spend an hour or two tomorrow night, but this set of hearings will determine whether congestion pricing will go to a vote this spring, or if it winds up in the dustbin.

Go represent your borough. Hearings start at 6pm. You must sign up in advance to speak, so go to this website for hearing locations and fax or email in your RSVP (you don't need to submit testimony online, you can just speak at the hearing).

All details are here:

Speak out for less traffic and better transit paid for by congestion pricing! Tell the commission about your transit, biking or walking commute and how you need safer streets and more reliable subways and buses.

Here are the details:

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
Medgar Evers College
1650 Bedford Ave.
Brooklyn

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
Hostos Community College
Savoy Multi-Purpose Room
Walton Ave. at 149th St.
The Bronx

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
York College Performing Arts Center
94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd.
Jamaica, Queens

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
College of Staten Island
Center for the Arts, Recital Hall 1P
2800 Victory Blvd.
Staten Island

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
Westchester County Center
198 Central Ave.
1st Floor Meeting Rooms A-B
White Plains

Thursday, January 24th
6 pm
Hofstra University
University Club
North of Main Gate
Hempstead

"It seemed to me that what was significantly undermining the ordinary daily happiness and health and economic life of both me and my fellow New Yorkers was the private car."    -- Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist"

Open Planning Project Executive Director Mark Gorton recently interviewed New York Times Magazine's "The Ethicist," Randy Cohen, on the ethics of urban automobility. The result has been condensed into a nine minute StreetFilm touching on a multitude of topics ranging from congestion pricing to parking policy.

Here is The Ethicist on congestion pricing:

It would be misleading to say that wise policy decisions never restrict individual freedom. They do. What civilization is is the restriction of individual freedom. We have for instance fire codes. You can't build your apartment out of kerosene-soaked cardboard because it endangers other people. We have a thousand laws that restrict what an individual can do because it is singularly destructive to the larger community.

This one [congestion pricing] is an interesting policy in that so many members of the community so overwhelmingly gain. And the unfortunate consequences are the restrictions in freedoms that are so tiny.

It could have been just another gathering of urban idealists, agreeing with each other about how great it would be to have more public space for people, and less for cars.

Except last night's NYC Streets Renaissance event, "A New Vision for the Upper West Side," featured renowned Danish planner Jan Gehl -- who, as has been mentioned a time or two on Streetsblog, has been hired by the city to help bring to life the long-held wishes of New Yorkers who want their streets to be welcoming communal destinations, or, at least, something more than loud, dirty, traffic-choked motoring facilities.

After introductions by Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White, The Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Gehl joked that he was not yet at liberty to discuss his analysis of New York City streets, specific recommendations or much of anything else. Despite the warning, he teased the capacity crowd at the Jewish Community Center with vignettes of what the city could look like in the near and not-too-distant future. Ten years from now, Gehl said, New York could compete with Copenhagen, where nearly 40 percent of commuters travel by bike, for the crown of world's bike-friendliest city.

Whereas pedestrians now spend up to 25 percent of their walking time waiting on signal changes, Gehl sees a city where a presently accepted nod to auto supremacy like the button-activated walk light ("an application to cross the street," as he calls it) becomes an outmoded relic. Gehl's New York is one of flourishing street trees, attractive and functional street furniture, dedicated bus lanes, local outdoor art, complementary lighting, relaxed pedestrians and so many cyclists that the city will need to widen bike lanes to make room.

Specifically, Gehl looks to have big plans in the works for Broadway between Columbus Circle and the Battery. He also spent a bit of time discussing Fordham Road in the Bronx and Main Street in Flushing, noting that pedestrian volumes on these beleaguered outer borough thoroughfares are comparable to Times Square and some of the world's busiest urban promenades.

Gehl said his team was excited by New York City's wide streets and avenues, as they provide the space to easily accommodate wider sidewalks and new kinds of bus and bike lanes. The key, he said, is supply and demand; while cars will fill whatever space you give them, on-street or off, reducing auto capacity by even a small percentage would make a big difference to other users.

According to Gehl, the top priority for any city looking to humanize its infrastructure is to change the way citizens view the purpose and function of the city itself.

"New York has become very much a 'How to get from A to B' city," Gehl said. "It is not a law of nature that you have this much traffic."

Photos: Jonathan Barkey 

A standing room-only crowd turned out for last night's Upper West Side Streets Renaissance event with Danish urban designer Jan Gehl and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. All in all, it was an inspiring night and we'll have a more detailed write-up later today. Though Gehl wasn't allowed to get too specific about the work he is doing for the city, reading between the lines of his presentation, it was apparent that he is set to present some pretty groundbreaking ideas to Mayor Bloomberg. Word has it, Gehl is having lunch with the Mayor today. Hopefully the Mayor will be inspired too. 

Clarence Eckerson has already produced a three-minute StreetFilms wrap up which, frankly, is also inspiring being as how I know for a fact that he didn't get home last night until around midnight and he had quite a few beers in him.

Additionally, the staff at Transportation Alternatives and Open Planning Project deserve a lot of praise. They did a great job preparing materials and organizing the event.

Speaking of which, have you had a chance to play with the new NYC Streets web site? It's still in beta and there are lots of cool features yet to be installed. But pretty soon you'll be able to use this web site to launch your own Livable Streets project. You'll find a variety of tools, resources and other people to help you make changes in your own community and neighborhood.

Who knew? It turns out that one of New York City's most captivating and articulate voices for Livable Streets is a guy who spends most of his day analyzing right and wrong as the New York Times Magazine's acclaimed "Ethicist."

Open Planning Project Director Mark Gorton recently interviewed Randy Cohen on the ethics of urban automobility. The result may very well be the best StreetFilm we've ever produced. Clarence Eckerson has put together a short teaser to whet your appetite and, perhaps, provide some moral underpinning for this evening's Livable Streets workshop on the Upper West Side. The full interview will be published later this month.

As we lead up to next Tuesday's big Upper West Side Streets Renaissance workshop with Jan Gehl (have you submitted your RSVP yet?) here is another StreetFilm delving in to the kinds of issues we hope to be talking about.

In this segment, Upper West Siders Mark Gorton and Lisa Sladkus briefly examine just how much of our city's valuable and limited public space has been dedicated to the storage and movement of motor vehicles and how diminished pedestrian spaces impact our sense of community.

Summing it up in terms that even the simplest hedge fund manager would understand, Gorton says, "We have a perverse allocation of public space on the Upper West Side and it needs to be changed."

It doesn't have to be this way, folks. Come out on Tuesday and work with your neighbors to envision and shape a new direction for New York City's streets and public spaces:

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
The Jewish Community Center
334 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street
5:30–7:00 Opening Reception
7:00–8:30 Presentation and Workshop

In the first of many shorts we will present over consecutive days, The Open Planning Project's Executive Director Mark Gorton tours the streets of the Upper West Side with neighbor Lisa Sladkus pointing out problems in advance of the November 6 Streets Renaissance Workshop with Jan Gehl. Today's topic is: Double Parking.

Parking policy is one of the biggest challenges that faces New York City and the rest of the U.S. In this related StreetFilm, Donald Shoup explains how responsible pricing can solve the woes of double parking and pollution, while raising revenues that can be re-invested in communities.

It is the largest known individual effort to help support the plan. The organization began its fund-raising initiative last week and has already raised $150,000, including Gorton's match. The money will be used to boost support for congestion pricing in key neighborhoods with online and grassroots organizing and advertising in local papers. Gorton founded the Lime Group, which operates businesses in finance and software,notably Lime Wire, the world's most popular file-sharing service.

Meanwhile, when he's not busy re-engineering New York City's streets, Gorton does battle with the recording industry.

Yesterday we put forth the argument that fastest, cheapest, easiest and most symbolically rich way for Mayor Bloomberg to initiate his new green agenda for New York City would be to make Central Park car-free during the summer of 2007.

Last fall, in a wide-ranging interview with Open Planning Project executive director Mark Gorton, New York City transportation expert "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz explained how eliminating cars from the Central Park Loop Drive will not result in long-term traffic nightmares for the surrounding neighborhoods or NYC in general.

Schwartz served as NYC's Commissioner of Traffic from 1982-86 and is a former Chief Engineer/First Deputy Commissioner at the NYC DOT. He also writes a daily transportation column for the Daily News.

"I don't see why people have to pay market rents to live in a neighborhood but the cars should live rent-free. In New York you have expensive housing for people and free parking for cars. You've got your priorities exactly the wrong way around."

Renowned as one of the world's top authorities on parking policy, UCLA Urban Planning Professor Dr. Donald Shoup is the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, a publication so popular among scholars and devotees that he attracts groupies known as Shoup-istas at book signings.

According to Shoup, free parking is the root problem of many of the ills that face our biggest cities. He posits that reforming parking policy will lead to a better pedestrian environment, cleaner streets and air, safer downtown shopping districts, and -- yes -- even fewer headaches for drivers trying to find that ever elusive curb space.

In March 2007, Shoup paid a visit to NYC to enlighten city leaders with his research. Here's part of a taped chat with the Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton.