The New York City Department of Transportation is posting a job ad seeking a new Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Operations. That's because Michael Primeggia is retiring. After 30+ years in city government, New York City's chief traffic engineer, a man who referred to the city's streets as "my streets," will work his last day on Friday, February 13. DOT staff threw a party for him on Friday evening.

Primeggia leaves a mixed legacy. Many livable streets advocates will forever know him as "Dr. No," the classic, cars-first traffic engineer who repeatedly argued against car-free parks, delayed and killed bike, pedestrian and traffic-calming improvements and sought to convert slow-moving, neighborhood-friendly two-way streets into one-way thruways. Yet, in recent years, under the leadership of Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Primeggia has been instrumental in helping to implement progressive projects like Summer Streets, physically-protected bike lanes and new pedestrian plazas.

Regardless of what you think of him, Primeggia's retirement provides Sadik-Khan with an opportunity to hire a powerful and potentially long-lasting member of the city's transportation bureaucracy. What kind of employee should she be looking for?

Here's one thought: How about a planner instead of an engineer?

Janette Sadik-Khan: Four days.

Streetsblog: Left in the legislative session?

JSK: Yeah, well, maybe four days left, maybe more days. August in Albany. What can be better?

SB: (Laughing) So, let's start with something other than congestion pricing. How was your trip to Copenhagen to meet with Jan Gehl? Had you ever been before?

JSK: Never been.

SB: What did you think?

JSK: I thought it was spectacular. The experience of riding a bicycle in a city in which the car is not the priority was really inspiring. One piece that was a bit of a surprise was how well behaved people were in Copenhagen. I didn't see a single person break a single traffic law while I was there which is certainly a little different than the experience that we have here.

SB: I noticed the same thing when I was there last fall but every Copenhagener I asked insisted they were just as rude and unruly as New Yorkers.

JSK: Gehl went through the historic trajectory of how they've reclaimed public space bit by bit, one street at a time. Today, they've reached a tipping point where 36 percent of the people commuting to work are on bike and they're looking to get that mode share up to 40 percent.

The other thing that amazed me is that there are all of these bikes parked all over the place and it appears that none of them are locked. They all have these small black handcuffs on the rear wheel. You turn the key and this steel rod comes through and locks it up. How long do you think that would last on the streets of New York City? Ten minutes?

So, there are definite cultural elements that make Copenhagen Copenhagen and need to be adapted to work in New York. But the design of the streets and their approach to the streets are really interesting and I'm hoping to bring Gehl over at the end of next month to help us work on a pedestrian and public space strategy much like what he did for London.

SB: Would you have him work in a specific location or citywide?

JSK: We need to be able to show what can be done in all five boroughs with a variety of different techniques. But not everything needs to be a massive capital project. I'm looking to see what we can do on a shorter term basis to have some immediate impact in reclaiming streets and coming up with different designs for roadways and sidewalks.

SB: Are you looking at reclaiming on-street parking space for other uses?

JSK: That is something we're looking at. In fact, we're talking about removing a lane of parking on Broadway next to City Hall. Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia has been really great about looking for ways to reclaim street space. He's been helping me identify where these different places can be. The other question is once we reclaim it what do we do with it? You have to do it in a way that leaves a meaningful public space.

SB: So, let's talk about congestion pricing. There are a lot of negative signals coming out of Albany and Sheldon Silver. What's the status?

JSK: We're very hopeful. It's a heavy lift, certainly. The Mayor's working very hard and all of us are working very hard to see the legislation and authorization come through by Thursday, which is when the session ends. The Senate has been terrific. Bruno's been really good. The Assembly is open and we continue to do briefings. The governor has been very supportive, so that's a big help. We'll see what happens when the chips fall on Thursday.

SB: If congestion pricing doesn't pass do you have a Plan B? Are there traffic reduction measures that the city can implement if this plan falls through?

JSK: Everyone is shooting for Thursday but the promise of a special legislative session later this summer is still out there. So, Plan B is the special session. We are not giving up hope at all. We are fully committed. We need to get this legislation passed. It needs to pass now. It would be ridiculous to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. That's our plan and when the plan passes we're looking to institute a series of immediate short term improvements before the switch is flipped on congestion pricing, including increased express bus service, ferry service and a variety of other initiatives. So, our emphasis is on making sure this congestion pricing program passes. On the transportation side, we don't think there's anything more important for the future of New York than getting this plan through.

SB: Is it a given at this point that no new "SMART" authority will be created and the MTA will administer the congestion pricing program?

JSK: That is still in negotiation. On the governance side I think that they are looking at a model that includes both the city and the state much along the lines of the Capital Program Review Board which handles the MTA's money. There are four votes on the CPRB: the City, the State, the Assembly and the Senate. Four people in a room. It takes a unanimous vote of the CPRB to pass the MTA's capital program. So, I think people are moving towards that kind of a governance model. But the negotiations continue.

SB: The City's proposed Bus Rapid Transit system will be dependent on camera-based enforcement of the bus lanes. Is the legislature going to give us the cameras? Is that sort of issue even on the radar in Albany right now?

JSK: It's definitely on the radar. It's part of our plan. We're hoping it is also addressed in the next four days. Keep those phone calls going to your legislators.

SB: The Hudson Yards rezoning on the west side of Manhattan requires developers to include over 20,000 new parking spaces. We recently did a story about this on the blog that generated a lot of response. People don't understand how these parking requirements fit with the Mayor's long-term sustainability and traffic reduction goals of PlaNYC.

JSK: In Copenhagen I was joined by City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. We spent a lot of time talking about the success of cities like Portland and Chicago that have revised their zoning codes with lower parking ratios and how that has led, in a lot of instances, to a renaissance for pedestrian space and transit without any apparent downside.

SB: Towards the end of his private consulting career, your new Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller put forward a study suggesting that pedestrianizing Prince Street in SoHo, say, on weekends, might be doable and even desirable. Can we expect to see you move on this type of project?

JSK: We're looking at all sorts of treatments to improve the streets of New York. Bruce being here is going to help us. A lot of people have interesting ideas. It will be exciting to have Jan Gehl here because he will help us identify some of the places where we can do urban acupuncture and specific interventions, much as he's done in other cities.

As important as it is to do these interventions, it is also important to ensure that we have policies and programs in place that will set the direction for the agency for years to come.

As first reported by the Daily News' Elizabeth Benjamin, DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan just returned from a quick trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, the world city that is really setting the standard for urban bike infrastructure and public space design (36% of commuters travel by bike.) There she met with Jan Gehl, one of the world's foremost experts on progressive urban design. Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Michael Primeggia joined her as well as Planning commissioner and William Holly Whyte acolyte, Amanda Burden.

At last night's Community Board 6 meeting in Brooklyn DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia's "One Way? No Way!" proposal was shot down decisively, the Grand Army Plaza bike and ped improvements passed unanimously, and the 9th Street pedestrian safety, traffic-calming and bike lane project was, after a lengthy discussion, sign-waving and a split vote, "tabled" for further discussion with DOT. Members of CB6, apparently, prefer to maintain 9th Street's status as the neighborhood street with the most appalling number of car crashes, injuries and fatalities.

The quote of the evening came from Bob Levine, head of the Ninth Street Block Association when he said -- and to fully appreciate it read it using your best 1940s movie German accent -- "We need to find the best Solution to the Bicycle Problem." (E-mail Transportation Alternatives for your free copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Cycling).

The animosity on display last night against bicyclists was intense. One could have left the meeting thinking that New York City's crushing traffic congestion, parking angst, endless horn honking, pedestrian injuries and fatalities, asthma- and cancer-causing particulate matter, greenhouse gas emissions, high automobile insurance rates, the $3 gallon, and addict-like dependence on oil from countries that hate America must be the fault of Park Slope residents who would like a safe way to ride a bike to the 9th Street YMCA. Fortunately, we got most of the discussion on video tape so you'll be able to see the profound dysfunction of New York City governance on the local level for yourself.

In honor of last night's meeting we've created a new category here at Streetsblog called "Community Board Reform." This is the first post. Here is Gowanus Lounge's coverage of the meeting:  

During a nearly 3 1/2 hour meeting last night in Park Slope, Community Board Six disposed of the one-way proposal for Sixth and Seventh Avenues that had sparked an outpouring of neighborhood opposition. It also decided not to act on a surprisingly controversial plan to install bike lanes and other "traffic calming" measures on Ninth Street. (Contrary to an incorrect NY Sun headline proclaiming a victory for the plan.)

Council Member Bill DeBlasio arrived while the meeting was underway and spoke in support of the proposals, noting that he'd gotten a commitment from the Police Department not to ticket cars that are double-parked in the bike lanes and from DOT to continue the bike lane down Prospect Park West so that bicyclists would enter the park at 15th Street rather than 9th Street. (The double parking issue emerged as the crux of neighborhood opposition to the plan, with residents fearing that a bike lane would interfere with their ability to double park while picking up people or running into a store.) The board, meanwhile, said it had gotten about 140 emails and faxes in favor of the proposal and 80 opposed. The Board's Transportation Committee had voted in favor of the plan.

Board Member Bob Levine, who also heads the Ninth Street Block Association, led opposition to the plan, saying that steps needed to be taken to address the "bicycle problem" and that the plan was "idiotic and asking for trouble." Several members, however, spoke strongly in favor of the proposal. One noted that "bike lanes will make cycling much safer" and that "If I were parking my car on Ninth Street, I'd rather step out into a bike lane than speeding traffic." Another said that bicyclists are a public safety threat and that "bicyclists should be licensed."

"I thought if there is going to be a good place for a bike route, this is it," said member Louise Finney, who is also a Trustee of the Park Slope Civic Council. "This would be a great traffic calming device."

Board Member Anthony Pugliese, who is an organizer with the District Council of Carpenters, got a laugh from crowd, speaking in favor of the proposal and saying, "What is this, Bensonhurst? These are bicycles.

In the end, the Community Board voted to send the proposal back to its Transportation Committee for further discussion with DOT and to ask DOT not to act until the discussions are completed.

The Board also voted unanimously to support significant traffic and pedestrian improvements to Grand Army Plaza.

Photo: Robert Guskind

A couple of weeks ago, following the epic, 650-person "One Way? No Way!" public meeting in Park Slope, Brooklyn Papers columnist Gersh Kuntzman accused his fellow Park Slopers of being "closed-minded, anti-intellectual whiners" for rejecting DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia's "logical presentation" claiming that Sixth and Seventh Avenues would be safer for pedestrians if converted to one-way operation.

But where was the logic? Primeggia held the floor for 45 minutes yet failed to provide data from a single case study to back up his unequivocal safety claim. He offered only one specific example, a 1.5 mile stretch of Glenmore Ave. in East New York where crashes declined after a 1998 one-way conversion. What Primeggia didn't mention is that Glenmore Ave. runs one-way westbound for a few blocks, then eastbound, then west, then east again. This switching back and forth is a classic traffic-calming technique designed to make a street unappealing to thru-traffic.

Later, during an interview, Primeggia referred Kuntzman to a federal report with a brief chapter on one-way streets. Putting aside the fact that federal traffic guidelines tend to be more relevant to sprawling, auto-friendly suburbs than dense, pedestrian-oriented Brooklyn neighborhoods, the section on one-way streets isn't exactly state-of-the-art. It cites two studies, one from 1978, the other, 1973.

Not only is the report out-dated, it actually does not endorse one-ways as the sure-fire pedestrian safety measure that Primeggia claims. "Converting two-way streets to one-way streets," it concludes, "may not be justified solely by pedestrian safety concerns." In fact, "vehicle speeds may increase after conversion from two-way to one-way." (Download the report and see page 96)

So where does New York City's chief traffic engineer get the idea that one-way streets are unquestionably safer for pedestrians? He declined to respond to my questions so I read all of the studies that Primeggia refers to.

The federal report, "A Review of Pedestrian Safety Research in the United States and Abroad," makes clear that vehicles making left turns off of two-way streets are one of the most serious and consistent dangers that pedestrians face. While keeping an eye open for a gap in oncoming traffic, left-turning drivers on two-way streets often fail to see pedestrians moving into the crosswalk on the other side of the street.

The section on one-way street conversions refers to a 1973 study by J.J. Fruin called "Pedestrian Accident Characteristics in a One-Way Grid," a traffic-engineering classic, cited by many other researchers over the years. Fruin observed, "One-way intersections have two conflict sides where the pedestrian must share the green with turning vehicles and two non-conflict sides where the pedestrian has an exclusive green crossing phase." After investigating 32 contiguous one-way intersections in Manhattan over a five-year period, Fruin found that nearly 70% of the pedestrian-vehicle crashes occurred on the two sides of the intersection where vehicles turn into pedestrians -- the "conflict sides."

These are the studies that have informed Primeggia's firmly held belief that one-way street grids are, without question, safer for pedestrians.

However, in the decades since Fruin's study (and Primeggia's coursework at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn), traffic engineers, urban planners and public health experts have developed a more nuanced and holistic understanding of pedestrian safety on one-way street grids. As a 2004 article in the Journal of the Institute of Engineers (PDF) points out, "Superficially, it would seem that crossing traffic on a one-way street is preferable to crossing a two-way street. As is often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong."

Hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. are converting their 1950s-era one-ways back into two-ways to reduce speeding, help local business and keep pedestrians -- especially children -- safer. They are doing so because a growing body of research shows that one-way street grids create a number of signficant problems for pedestrians and the city as a whole:

• One-way street grids force motorists to drive more to get to their destination.
  Rather than simply making one turn and driving half a block, on a one-way street grid drivers often must circle an entire block to get to where they want to go. Not only does this additional driving waste time and gasoline and produce more traffic congestion and carbon emissions, "the increase in the number of turning movements and total miles of travel" makes the street more dangerous for pedestrians too. "There are simply more (typically 30-40 percent) vehicle/pedestrian conflicts within a one-way street network than in a comparable two-way system," according to a 1999 study presented to the Federal Transportation Research Board and the 2004 Institute of Engineers study cited above.
  
• One-way streets tend to encourage faster speeds.
  The federal report that Primeggia himself cites says, "vehicle speeds may increase after conversion from two-way to one-way." But Park Slope residents don't need a study to tell them that. The vehicles careening down one-way Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West at 40+ mph are the most "logical presentation" anyone needs.
  
• One-way streets are more dangerous for pedestrians, especially for children.
  A 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health notes, "Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries." And who gets hurt most on these higher-speed streets? "Children ages 5 to 9 have the highest population-based injury rate in pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents."According to this 2000 study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, "Children's injury rate was 2.5 times higher on one-way streets than on two-way streets"

Where columnist Gersh Kuntzman saw a neighborhood's "gut emotional reaction" against the "logical presentation" of a blameless DOT "technocrat," I saw more than 650 well-informed people who care about their neighborhood show up in person to reject an ill-conceived plan created by a traffic-engineer who is out-of-touch with his own field's research and the real needs of New York City's neighborhoods. 

References:

1. "A Review of Pedestrian Safety Research in the United States and Abroad," US Dept. of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. B.J. Campbell, Charles Zegeer, Herman Huang, Michael Cynecki. January 2004

2. "A Review of Evidence-Based Traffic Engineering Measures Designed to Reduce Pedestrian-Motor Vehicle Crashes," Richard Retting MS, Susan Ferguson, PhD, and Anne T. McCartt, PhD, American Journal of Public Health, September 2003, Vol. 93, No. 9

3. "A Microscopic Simulation Study of Two-Way Street Network Versus One-Way Street Network," Lum Kit Meng and Soe Thu, Journal of The Institute of Engineers, Singapore, Vol. 44 Issue 2 2004

4. "Downtown Streets: Are We Strangling Ourselves on One-Way Networks?" G. Wade Walker, Walter M. Kulash, and Brian T. McHugh, Transportation Research E-Circular, Number E-C019, December 2000, Urban Street Symposium Conference Proceedings, Dallas, Texas, June 28-30, 1999

5. "Are Child Pedestrians at Increased Risk of Injury on One-Way Compared to Two-Way Streets?" A. Wazana, VL Rynard, P Raina, P Krueger, and LW Chambers, McGill University, Canadian Journal of Public Health, May-June 2000

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.

Last Thursday, DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia presented a plan to turn a pair of two-way avenues running through Park Slope, Brooklyn into one-way arterials. The aim of the plan, according to DOT, was to improve pedestrian safety. 

Yet, in his presentation to the community the only specific evidence Primeggia gave to back up his safety claim was a reference to an avenue in Brooklyn where crashes had declined 15% and total injuries 22% after DOT turned it into a one-way. Primeggia didn't provide the name of the avenue. "I know that two-way streets are less safe," he said.

While more than 650 community members came out to say "no way" to DOT's one-way plan, one 28-year Park Slope resident arrived with a stack of academic studies directly refuting Primeggia's safety argument.

This Park Sloper, who wishes to remain anonymous because he often works with city government, is employed by one of New York State's transportation authorities. He is a member of the federal Transportation Research Board and a professional transportation planner and traffic engineer, with an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and a masters in transportation planning from MIT.

Unfortunately, the evening's testimony was cut short and his powerful testimony was left undelivered. Here is what he would have said if he had gotten a chance:

The proposal under consideration here this evening may have merit in terms of moving traffic through Brooklyn as a whole. However, in terms of serving Park Slope, this project is ill-conceived and you would be ill-advised to endorse such a plan.

I'll focus on just one aspect of the plan -- the significant negative impact it can have on some of Park Slope's most precious but vulnerable citizens, that is, our small children. With PS 321, the magnet school that was PS 10, PS 39, PS 282 and various middle schools, private and parochial schools, more than 3,000 children use Sixth and Seventh Avenues daily to walk to and from school.

One-way street networks can result in more pedestrian accidents, particularly among children. This effect has been noted in a number of transportation studies published in respected academic journals. I'll cite and quote certain relevant reports and articles for your consideration:

First, from a 2003 study published in the American Journal of Public Health:

"Children 5-9 have the highest population-based injury rate in pedestrian-motor vehicle accidents." Why? As the report goes on, "because in many pedestrian crashes the driver reportedly does not see the pedestrian before the accident. Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries.... In residential settings with large numbers of children, speed management appears to offer the greatest potential for injury prevention."

By way of explaining this effect, I'll refer to two other reports. First from a 2004 report published in the Journal of the Institute of Engineers regarding one-way streets:

"Superficially, it would seem that crossing traffic on a one-way street is preferable to crossing a two-way street. As is often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, crossing a one-way street presents greater difficulties to the pedestrian than crossing two-way streets.... One of the inherent disadvantages with one-way streets is that they force additional turning movements at the intersections...[and] increase the occurrences of vehicle-pedestrian conflicts at any given intersection."

Second, from a paper presented at the federal Transportation Research Board's 1999 Urban Streets Symposium:

"In traffic engineering circles, the operational disadvantages associated with one-way streets are becoming increasingly recognized. The system...[causes] an increase in the number of turning movements and total miles of travel. One-way streets present challenges to the pedestrian due to speed and pedestrian expectations at intersections... there are simply more (typically 30-40 percent) more vehicle/pedestrian conflicts within a one-way street network than in a comparable two-way system."

Conversion to one-way avenues may well result in more traffic volume, higher speeds, more turning movements on Sixth and Seventh avenues. Where does this all lead?

Well, from the Canadian Journal of Public Health, a 2000 study conducted in Hamilton, Ontario, found that:

"Children's injury rate was 2.5 times higher on one-way streets than on two-way streets" in Hamilton. Conclusion: "One-way streets have higher rates of child pedestrian injuries than two-way streets in this community."

References:

1. "A Review of Evidence-Based Traffic Engineering Measures Designed to Reduce Pedestrian-Motor Vehicle Crashes," Richard Retting MS, Susan Ferguson, PhD, and Anne T. McCartt, PhD, American Journal of Public Health, September 2003, Vol. 93, No. 9

2. "A Microscopic Simulation Study of Two-Way Street Network Versus One-Way Street Network," Lum Kit Meng and Soe Thu, Journal of The Institute of Engineers, Singapore, Vol. 44 Issue 2 2004

3. "Downtown Streets: Are We Strangling Ourselves on One-Way Networks?" G. Wade Walker, Walter M. Kulash, and Brian T. McHugh, Transportation Research E-Circular, Number E-C019, December 2000, Urban Street Symposium Conference Proceedings, Dallas, Texas, June 28-30, 1999

4. "Are Child Pedestrians at Increased Risk of Injury on One-Way Compared to Two-Way Streets?" A. Wazana, VL Rynard, P Raina, P Krueger, and LW Chambers, McGill University, Canadian Journal of Public Health, May-June 2000

"Similarly, in Downtown Brooklyn, DOT has acted on many of the recommendations of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Report. These measures include reducing the number of travel lanes, adding medians and left turn bays, adjusting signal timings, converting one-ways to two-ways, adding bicycle lanes and adding parking, all to slow vehicles down and discourage through traffic."

New York City's Department of Transportation is getting set to propose a major change in the way cars and trucks flow through the avenues and streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn.Sources say that the plan will include the following:

• Fourth Avenue, a major six-lane artery with left-turn bays and parking lanes, will be narrowed. The center medians will be widened. Sources say that the City's Fourth Avenue plan may pull some elements from Alexander Garvin's 2006 Master Plan.
  
• Seventh Avenue, a neighborhood commercial strip, will be transformed from a two-way to a one-way.
  
• Sixth Avenue, a residential street, will also be transformed from a two-way to a one-way.

The new traffic plan was unveiled by Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Michael Primeggia at Brooklyn Borough Hall recently. Though details of the plan have not yet been released, at first glance, DOT's proposal runs completely counter to community-friendly transportation planning being done outside of New York City.

As USA Today recently reported, hundreds of U.S. cities and towns are "switching one-way streets to two-way to improve commerce downtown, according to the American Planning Association in Chicago. The trend got rolling in the early 1990s and has expanded this year to bigger cities such as Miami, Dallas and Minneapolis."

Engineers and planners specializing in the practice of traffic calming and the development of pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods generally advocate the opposite of DOT's plan. That is why many cities and towns are converting their 1950's-era multi-lane, one-way, through-traffic streets back to slower, more locally-oriented, two-way streets. There are three reasons why traffic calmers believe two-way streets are better for neighborhood life:

• One-way streets generally have higher motor vehicle capacity than two-way streets. Increasing a street's capacity induces more driving. 
• One-way streets generally serve through-traffic first, local traffic second. One-way streets are oriented towards serving people driving through the neighborhood rather than people who live, work, shop, walk and bike in the neighborhood.
• While one-way streets can simplify crossing for pedestrians who only need to look in one direction, and some studies have shown that one-way streets tend to have fewer pedestrian crashes, one-way streets generally have faster vehicular speeds than two-way streets, making crashes deadlier and more destructive. 
  

The higher speeds on one-way streets "creates new problems," according to the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center. That is why many cities are "returning one-way streets back to two-way to allow better local access to businesses and homes and to slow traffic. Two-way streets tend to be slower due to "friction," especially on residential streets without a marked center line, and they may also eliminate the potential for multiple-threat crashes that exists on multi-lane, one-way streets."

The USA Today article provides some interesting historical background on the one-way / two-way phenomenon:

The boom in one-way streets began with the Cold War in the 1950s, when cities planned quick routes out of town for evacuation in case of nuclear attack, says John Norquist, one of the first vocal advocates of two-way-street conversion. Norquist was mayor of Milwaukee from 1988 to 2003 and now runs the Congress for the New Urbanism, which promotes the revitalization of cities.

The growth of the suburbs contributed, too, as cities smoothed the route home from work, says Neal Hawkins, associate director for traffic operations at the Iowa State University Center for Transportation Research and Education. Now, though, there are more jobs in the suburbs, more entertainment downtown, and drivers go in all directions.

Photo: Studiotamar/Flickr

DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald: "It's a very complicated agency, a huge bureaucracy with lots of moving parts and serious work to be done. If they took someone who has been here before, already had knowledge of the agency and who has a flexible approach and is sympathetic to pedestrian, traffic-calming and livable streets issues, that'd be ideal. That's Joan."

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan: "She'd be great and if it were offered and if she were really given a mandate, I bet she'd take the job, though, you've got to think it would be a serious pay cut." 

DOT Commissioner Emily Lloyd: Sources aren't saying anything! 

DOT Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Michael Primeggia (above): "He still makes all of the decisions. You might disagree with some of them but he takes things seriously and works hard. He's not a bureaucrat."

The Staten Island Advance reports on Monday's press conference outlining the qualities that leading City Council members would like to see in the next DOT Commissioner. The Bloomberg Administration responded to the Council with the following statement:

The Mayor will appoint a commissioner who will carry out policies to meet the sustainability challenges he outlined in his '2030' speech and will continue [outgoing DOT] Commissioner Weinshall's work reducing pedestrian fatalities and increasing safety for all New Yorkers through the implementation of innovative programs like Thru Streets.

The Advance also notes: 

Bloomberg, who with Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden pushed through the unprecedented bans on smoking and trans fats, should take that same intrepid approach with the next transportation commissioner, said Gene Russianoff, attorney with the Straphangers Campaign.

Meanwhile, a source inside DOT Commissioner Weinshall's office says that Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Michael Primeggia, who is often credited by Weinshall as the architect of DOT's Thru Streets program, is "being considered" for the commissioner's job.

Insiders believe that Mayor Mike Bloomberg will look inside his administration for Iris Weinshall's replacement as transportation commissioner. But because Bloomberg will be out in 2009, top transportation people may favor state jobs: state transportation commissioner, Long Island Rail Road president or New York City Transit president. NJ Transit is seeking an executive director.. Two private-sector candidates could be Janette Sadik-Kahn of Parsons Brinckerhoff, who lost out to Weinshall for the job, and former MTA chair Bob Kiley, who implemented congestion pricing in London. Weinshall is leaving for CUNY in mid-April.

Sadik-Kahn was Mayor David Dinkins' Transportation Advisor. In addition to setting up London's congestion charging system, Kiley was chairman of the MTA in the 1980's.

Here are some other names that are flying around:

• Emily Lloyd
• Sam Schwartz
• Gary Toth
• Jack Lettiere
• David Woloch
• Michael Primeggia
• And then there's this one. It's not quite a "name" per se. More a question: Isn't there some deputy commissioner from London we could call?

Left to right: New York City Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner/Senior Policy Advisor David Woloch, Commissioner Iris Weinshall, a procurement and technical servicea aide and City Councilmembers John Liu and Gale Brewer.

As I saw it, the three big bullet points to come out of yesterday's City Council Transportation Committee hearing on Intro. 199, the Traffic Information & Relief Bill were as follows:

• DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall expressed unequivocal opposition to Intro. 199. See below for her reasons. She also told a Newsday reporter that New York City's traffic congestion is more an issue of public perception than a transportation policy and management problem. New York City traffic congestion, the Commissioner says, only seems worse than it ever has been. 
• Councilmember Daniel Garodnick announced mid-hearing that he would sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill. Garodnick's support tips the balance of the Transportation Committee in favor of Intro. 199 and ensures that the bill can move to a full Council vote. With 24 co-sponsors, the bill is two votes shy of passage and 11 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Still, it is hard to imagine that Mayor Bloomberg will allow City Council to pass this kind of legislation. Expect some sort of pre-emptive action from the other side of City Hall. 
• DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia provided the day's highlight when he used the traffic engineering term "pedestrian interference" in describing how a street's "Level of Service" is calculated. What a priceless glimpse in to the profession of traffic engineering and the mind of the man who, essentially, owns and operates New York City's streets. The next time you're almost hit by an aggressive SUV driver while crossing the street, think of yourself not as a victim but as "pedestrian interference" impeding that motorist's Level of Service. As for all of the activities that Danish urban designer Jan Gehl refers to as "public life?" Turns out it's actually "pedestrian interference." 

Yesterday's hearing kicked off with Committee Chair John Liu's assertion that New York City is experiencing "unprecedented traffic congestion of epic proportions." Intro. 199, he said, is aimed at helping the city manage its traffic congestion by collecting data in a new way. "We need to pro-actively manage traffic. In order to manage it we have to be able to measure it."

Intro. 199, in short, compels the City to "develop and monitor performance targets with the aim of assessing and reducing the amount of traffic citywide and within each borough." Rather than focusing on "output measures" like the number of traffic lights repaired and potholes filled as DOT currently does in the annual Mayor's Management Report, the new legislation would mandate that DOT evaluate itself based on "targets" built around specific transportation policy objectives such as reducing congestion and pollution and increasing the percentage of trips taken on buses, bike and by foot. This is similar to the kind of data collection now being done in London (see the bottom of this Transport for London press release to access TfL's massive, detailed, annual traffic congestion monitoring report).

Flanked by two aides, Commissioner Weinshall was first to testify. "Under the Bloomberg Administration, DOT has made reducing vehicular congestion and bolstering alternative modes one of our primary goals," she said. She cited the ongoing Bus Rapid Transit study, the Thru Streets program, Muni Meters and the recent bike lane expansion as examples.

Weinshall then cited five reasons for her opposition to Intro. 199 (her full testimony can be found here). First, the City Charter already requires that DOT submit data to the annual Mayor's Management Report so "any legislation to require additional reporting seems redundant." Second, DOT "is already, in fact, collecting and making available much of the data the bill contemplates." Third, DOT is about two years away from having "new advancing technology as a means to collect data" so it would be premature to make the agency set policy targets now. Fourth, collecting all of this data would be burdensome and expensive. Finally, transportation issues are regional. "Intro. 199 seems to ignore the multi agency nature of our transportation systems," she said. Weinshall also reported that DOT is planning to increase its data collection contract from $600,000 over two years to $3 million.

After her testimony, Liu asked the Commissioner if she thought New York City has a traffic congestion problem. "We would not characterize it as a crisis. We'd characterize it as a challenge," she said. Deputy Commissioner Primeggia added that Central Business District traffic counts were one to two percent higher than their pre-9/11 all-time highs. Weinshall said the increase in traffic is "an indication of the vitality and the growth of the city of New York." This particular rationale for not doing anything to change the dysfunctional status quo of New York City's streets is also used by Weinshall's boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the MTA.

Weinshall frequently pointed to the reams of data that the agency already collects and repeated her willingness to share that data with Councilmembers. During his testimony, Chad Marlow, president of the Public Advocacy Group, said that that particular point "warrants further examination." 

"I find it peculiar that, so often, when an individual Councilmember needs something done involving traffic or transportation, say, the installation of a new traffic signal or traffic calming measure, DOT's response is, 'We don't have data to back that up,'" Marlow said.

"Yet in their testimony, all the DOT could talk about was how much data they already have and how happy they are to share it. I'm more persuaded by DOT's day-to-day responses to Councilmember's real world problems than by the claims they made at this hearing."

Here is yet another sign that change is afoot at New York City's Department of Transportation:

Insiders are reporting that Ryan Russo has been promoted from the Brooklyn Borough Commissioner's office to take over as the new Director of Alternative Modes. That might not be the correct title and we do not yet know the exact job description but it looks like Russo will be running many of DOT's pedestrian and bike projects and taking over the languishing Safe Routes to Schools program.

Russo is in his early 30's, lives in Brooklyn, often shows up to community meetings on a customized orange bike, and has a background in urban planning. In his two-and-a-half years as the Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Coordinator Russo has racked up a quantity of impressive accomplishments (PDF file) for pedestrians, cyclists and more livable streets. 

Among these accomplishments, Russo oversaw significant expansions and improvements of Downtown Brooklyn's bike network (PDF file). This includes the design and development of unprecedented, new, two-way, physically-separated bike lanes on Tillary and Sands Streets to help make the dangerous approaches to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges safer. He faciliated the creation of the Willoughby Street pedestrian plaza. He moved a major, traffic-calming redesign of Vanderbilt Avenue from a back-of-the-envelope sketch to paint-on-asphalt in a matter of months. And, god bless him, he stopped the honking on Clinton Street by "feathering" the traffic signals.

Russo leaves his current post open to one significant criticism. He was hired at the end of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project specifically to develop a Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Blueprint. As the DOT's web site says, the Blueprint was supposed to be "a year-long study." It has been 20 months since the first public meeting and Downtown Brooklyn still has no Blueprint.

That being said, if we had to choose between a "Blueprint" and the numerous tangible improvements that Russo has helped create over the last few years, we'll take facts-on-the-ground ahead of a document any day.

In his new job, Russo's immediate superior is Gerard Soffian. Soffian reports directly to Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia.

We are hoping that as his first official act in the new office, Ryan will declare that walking is no longer to be called an "alternative" mode of transportation.

Outgoing Bike Program Director Rips Agency Bosses

The long-time Director of the New York City Department of Transportation's Bicycle Program says that Commissioner Iris Weinshall and her top deputy for traffic operations, Michael Primeggia have burdened the city with unnecessary law suits and stymied the progress of the city's bicycle programs.

"I waited for a long time for the direction from the commissioner's office to change, or for the commissioner to be changed," Andrew Vesselenovitch e-mailed to about twenty agency colleagues and a handful outsiders on Friday, his last day at the agency. "I hope that you won't have to wait much longer."

In his resignation letter, Vesselenovitch cites two specific examples of agency failures. First, he claims that DOT could have saved the city millions of dollars in lawsuits "resulting from the puzzling addition of unusually high expansion joint covers on the Williamsburg Bridge." Vesselenovitch says he brought the issue to the attention of Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia in 2003 and was told to "butt out."

The infamous "bone-breaking bridge bumps" caused serious injuries to numerous New York City cyclists and generated $10 million in law suits, one-fifth the total cost of building the the bridge's bicycle and pedestrian paths.

Vesselenovitch also says the agency "could have produced plans for forty to fifty miles of workable bicycle lanes each year" but inexplicably only managed to install a little more than fifteen miles of bike lanes in the last two years.

At 6:05 pm on Friday, Vesselenovitch ended his five-year tenure at DOT, writing, "The motivation for my seeking to leave is not so happy for me or for the city. There is much more that the bicycle program could have done than it was allowed to do."

Vesselenovitch's resignation and criticism arrives at the end of a month in which three cyclists were killed on the streets of New York City. In its brief, two sentence, official statement following the fatalities, DOT implied that there is little it can do to make the city's "crowded streets" safer for cyclists.

Based on the e-mail below, the agency's Bicycle Program Director believes otherwise:

From: Vesselinovitch, Andrew
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 6:05 PM
To: XXXXXX
Subject: Leaving DOT

Dear All:

As many of you know, today is my last day at DOT. As many of you also know, I am leaving to pursue a wonderful opportunity to study architecture, a lifelong interest. I want to thank all of you for having made my five years at DOT and seven years in city government productive and exciting.

I would also like to add that the motivation for my seeking to leave is not so happy for me or for the city. There is much more that the bicycle program could have done than it was allowed to do. The bicycle program, for example, could have produced plans for 40-50 miles of workable bicycle lanes each year. Instead, DOT installed little more than 15 miles, total, in the last two years. We could have saved the city settlements for lawsuits (and residents injuries) resulting from the puzzling addition of unusually high expansion joint covers on the Williamsburg Bridge. I brought this to bridge's attention in 2003 and was told by Michael Primeggia butt out.

I waited for a long time for the direction from the commissioner's office to change, or for the commissioner to be changed. I hope that you won't have to wait much longer.

Thank you and good luck,

Andrew Vesselinovitch
Bicycle Program Director
40 Worth Street, Room 1035
New York, New York 10013