Side Streets and Residential Areas — The Need for Traffic Calming

Read the latest news on this subject.

Placing bicycle lanes on main thoroughfares will require explicitly reassigning space from automotive to bicycle use. More subtle, but no less far-reaching, measures should be taken on lower-volume crosstown and other residential streets. “Traffic calming,” a variety of physical and legal traffic-control techniques developed in Europe, is applicable to a wide range of New York street and neighborhood conditions. [34]

Traffic calming starts with the belief that a street is valuable public space and should be shared by all users. Conditions should be made optimal for walking and playing — motorists are regarded as visitors or guests. [35] The principle is not that of a pedestrian mall; cars need not be banned, but “should be admitted on residents' terms, slowly and without superior rights.” [36]

To discourage congestion and speeding and make streets safer and accessible to people, a number of traffic calming techniques should be tried in NYC neighborhoods. Driving speeds and behavior can be calmed not only with traffic signals or signs but with design features — benches, trees, landscaping, curving roadways, special paving material and varying road widths. Speeding can be inhibited by increasing turns and reducing motorists' sight lines. Motor vehicle through-traffic is discouraged, so that drivers entering an area are predominantly residents and visitors with a stake in the safety and ambience of the neighborhood.

New York City is in urgent need of traffic calming. Although less than half of the residents of an average city block own and operate motor vehicles, [37] parked and moving cars take up most neighborhood open space. During the day and on some evenings, Manhattan and some outer-borough side streets can be as gridlocked as avenues. Car-clogged side streets can be particularly difficult for cycling, as double parking and competition by cars for the one moving-traffic lane crowd out safe passage. When side streets aren't jammed, cars race down their lengths at avenue or even highway speeds, attempting to cut through and avoid the traffic waiting on the avenues. Needless to say, these conditions do not enhance the neighborhood or promote the well-being of residents.

As a reinforcement, regulations can be matched to design elements. German traffic calming schemes are almost all within Tempo 30 zones — areas with a speed limit of 30 km/hr, or 18 mph. (The New York City street speed limit is far higher, 30 mph, is undifferentiated between avenues and side streets, and is rarely enforced.) Dutch traffic regulations change at the boundaries of traffic-calmed areas, where signs herald different speed limits and street design.

Empirical data show that motorists in traffic-calmed areas drive much more slowly, with less braking and accelerating. One study found a 60% drop in traffic injuries on traffic-calmed streets, and a 50% drop in the cost of personal injuries and vehicle damage. [38] A study of vehicular accidents in Hamburg, Germany found that the percentage of accidents resulting in death was almost three times as high — 70% vs. 25% — for vehicle speeds of 40 mph vs. 25 mph. Even where accidents occur, injuries are far less severe at slower vehicle speeds. [39] In Japan, reduced cyclist fatality rates since 1970 are largely attributable to tighter speed limits along with greater provision of bicycle traffic facilities. [40]

Bicycles and Traffic Calming: Special Considerations

A traffic calming strategy for side streets and other residential areas has broad advantages over the approach of dedicated bike lanes. Most importantly, street users are not segregated, so that narrow roadways need not be physically divided into even narrower, unsatisfactory strips. Rather, auto traffic is slowed to a pace less threatening to other potential road users. The entire community — not only cyclists — benefits from reconfiguring streets to reassert the rights of non-motorists. Traffic calming measures may even work to moderate the pace of New York City cyclists, who would no longer have to push as fast as space allows to survive in the current culture of speed.

Traffic calming measures for New York City will need to be designed with cyclists in mind. Common European features like strips of cobbled surfaces can jar cyclists and be slippery when wet. Narrowing devices like “traffic throttles” can also force dangerous proximity of cars and bicycles, unless a channel for cyclists is cut through the throttle (see illustration). [41] Traffic-calmed streets in Germany require cyclists to use separate bike lanes, a rule some cyclists here would find onerous. Danish and Dutch traffic planners reason differently that the lower motor vehicle speeds resulting from traffic calming schemes allow cyclists to cope more safely with cars, making separate lanes unnecessary. [42]

Redesigned Streets: Consequences for Delivery Vehicles and Taxis

Bicycle lanes and traffic calming zones will affect curbside traffic patterns, especially by delivery vehicles and taxis. Although many goods are delivered to businesses and shops in off-street loading docks, others are handled at curbside. The majority of these could be done with hand-trucks, obviating the need for vehicles to park directly at the building. In cases where proximity is required, special nighttime or early morning hours when trucks may use bike lane space could be established.

Taxis constantly invade Manhattan's few bicycle lanes, often darting across several lanes of traffic and cutting off cyclists to pick up or drop off fares. This practice will undercut curbside bicycle lanes unless the City resolutely enforces traffic laws and keeps bicycle lanes clear of motor vehicles.

In high-congestion areas, the City can ban taxi cruising and require passengers and drivers to use fixed cab stands, as proposed 20 years ago as part of the city's short-lived Transportation Control Plan to comply with federal clean air standards. [43]

Finally, bicycle lanes need to be maintained to the standards outlined in Chapter 6, Road Surfaces. Indeed, they should be accorded priority over motor vehicle routes because of bicycles' sensitivity to surface conditions. As the AASHTO guide has noted, “Neglected maintenance will render bicycle facilities unrideable, and the facilities will become a liability to the state or community.” [44]

NOTES: