Streetsblog New York City

The Staten Island Advance ran an article last Thursday about a "perfect storm" of crushing Staten Island-bound traffic on the Gowanus Expressway and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To give you a sense of the frustrated tone of the article, it was entitled "21-Month Nightmare: Agency Offers Zero Solutions for Verrazano Lane Mess." Here's how it began:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A best man missed his nephew's wedding rehearsal.

A truck driver was forced to pull over and cool his heels.

Countless commuters rued that extra cup of Joe before leaving work.

And then there was the pizza delivery to a group of exasperated bus riders left stewing in the parking lot that was the Gowanus Expressway last Friday afternoon.

Experts say there's no way to fully manage the crush of rush-hour traffic expected to continue for the next 21 months while lanes are closed on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Island commuters don't care what the experts have to say.

Their bottom line: Fix this mess.

Otherwise, it will be a long, hot summer.

"I could have gone to Florida in as long as it took me to get home," fumed Grasmere's Marlee Tanenbaum, who was stuck for two and a half hours aboard an X2 express bus Friday evening. "It is so insane that it's unbelievable. I am outraged!"

If this isn't the perfect argument for why we need congestion pricing, I don't know what is. The fact that so many people are crushing onto the bridge shows that it is too cheap to travel over it. The toll is $9 (charged toward Staten Island, the direction of this jam), but that obviously is not enough to prevent this kind of traffic. Motorists want travel to be cheap and fast, but one who demands cheap travel can't turn around and complain about how slow it is.

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The BQE, as seen from Lorimer Street.

All this talk about Robert Moses lately leads one to think about the Freeway Revolt.

Walking to school is a healthy way for many kids to get their daily dose of exercise. Unfortunately many parents are rightfully concerned about their children's safety on the city's streets because of aggressive driver and lack of good pedestrian safety infrastructure. Everyday in front of many city schools you see parents dropping kids off in front of schools even though most live well within walking distance.

In 2004 the DOT began what turned into a 2 year study of Well, the study is now complete and they are planning to implement the changes in late 2007. The study has confirmed that many additional safety improvements are needs near schools to make them safer for kids to walk to school.

From a press release issued by the Mayor's Office:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today joined Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein to announce the completion and release of  "Traffic Safety Maps" for each of the city's 1,471 elementary and middle schools following an examination of accident histories around each school, as well as upgraded school crosswalk signs at each school, and comprehensive traffic safety reports for 135 priority schools located around the city.   The maps, which identify traffic signals, all-way stop signs, speed bumps, and crosswalks maps, are designed to help students and parents find the safest routes to and from school.  DOT will soon begin distributing these maps to schools, and they will also be online at DOT's web site starting next month.  Mayor Bloomberg also announced that DOT has already begun to implement the safety enhancements recommended in the traffic safety reports for the 135 priority schools, and that the City plans detailed studies for 135 additional public, private and parochial elementary and middle schools. DOT will also begin a similar program for 40 high schools in late 2007. Mayor Bloomberg made today's announcement at P.S. 21 in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx .

We'll have more on the specifics later in the day.

One of those subtle aspects of life that serves to normalize auto transport as the only thing going is the way most maps are designed to barely include railroad tracks and stations, presumably so as to avoid interfering with roads and Interstates and their giant identification shields. But when we plug some fun data into Google mashup mapping, it is clear that the rail system serving the metropolitan area is extensive, probably more extensive than most people realize. This screenshot shows the location of stations served by New York City's four passenger railroads: Metro-North in blue, NJ Transit in green, the LIRR in red and Amtrak in purple.

Below those pushpins are the roads, where it is hard to imagine that in 30 or 40 years electric cars will not have advanced into everyday use. Electrification of the automobile fleet is rightly seen as a way to continue to enjoy the benefits of mobility while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring, to borrow a phrase from Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, that none of the money we send oversees to buy oil comes back to us in the form of terrorism. Electrification of the auto fleet is an important project that will take enormous investment if it is to succeed. Electrification of rail transport, on the other hand, was perfected more than a century ago. It has not yet been fully implemented in our area, though it ought to be. Below the fold is a map showing the portions of the New York City regional rail system that remain to be electrified.

Ryan Russo is the New York City Department of Transportation's Director for Street Management and Safety, a newly-created job that he started in July. Previously, Russo worked as DOT's Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Coordinator where he was instrumental in designing and developing a number of improvements for pedestrians, cyclists and more livable streets (PDF file) over the last three years. Streetsblog caught up with Russo on Tuesday, a few hours after the City's big bike safety announcement:

Streetsblog: The City just released a major bicycle safety study and announced a plan for "unprecedented" bike infrastructure improvements. What does today's announcement mean for cyclists?

Ryan Russo: In the past, we were doing about twenty-five miles of bicycle facilities a year. Right now we are on pace to build forty miles in the current fiscal year (Editor: New York City's fiscal year starts July 1). Next year we're going to pick up the pace and build seventy miles. In 2009 we're going to build ninety miles. So, we are, essentially, quadrupling the output of our bike facilities. That is unprecedented and will create a dramatic change in the city's bicycle network.

SB: Do you see bike lanes as a critical safety feature on New York City streets? Do they really help make cyclists safer?

RR: I think bike lanes are very helpful. I'm a cyclist myself. I bike to work. I bike for my errands, I don't own a car and am very bike dependent. In fact, sometimes I bike too often. I don't want to take the subway and I'll get stuck in the rain a lot. Bike lanes help with safety in a lot of subtle ways and not-so-subtle ways. For motorists they help create the expectation that they are going to find cyclists on the roadway. And they help to make the movements on the roadway more predictable in terms of where the cyclist is expected to be and where the motorist is expected to be. Bike lanes are also useful for laying out the core network. They help aggregate cyclists onto particular routes so that they all end up on the same street rather than dispersing throughout the network. This helps motorists on those corridors get used to the cyclists. There is a lot more to bike lanes but the bottom line is, yes, I think they are very useful.

SB: So, now I've got to ask: What kind of bike do you ride?

RR: Laughing. I ride a model of a Giant bicycle. It's called the Bowery. It's a messenger-style bike although I replaced the drop bar with a straight bar because I prefer a more upright position on my bicycle even though it's less hip.

SB: Does your bike commuting inform your job? Are you riding around the city looking at design issues and thinking, "I'm going to take care of that when I get back to the office?"

Montreal: Youth, extraordinary bravery and helmets are unnecessary.

Montreal: A two-way, buffered bike lane on a residential street.

Montreal: A two-way, physically-separated bike lane on a busy avenue.

Berlin: Bike lanes along this busy avenue are clearly differentiated from the street and sidewalk using color and physical separation.

Berlin: Bike lanes often share sidewalk space but are clearly separated from pedestrians.