Flow versus slow
Cars still reign but traffic calming gaining

Read the latest news about this issue.

In NYC, the almighty god of traffic flow has been knocked down a half-a-peg. However, given the Olympian heights the deity of car firstism inhabits, it will take an unambiguous statement by the Mayor or Transportation Commissioner to create some balance between car and the pedestrians, cyclists and neighborhoods treated as second-class citizens by City traffic planners.

While speed humps and traffic calming are part of the everyday vocabulary of NYC communities and elected officials, they still remain very much the exception. Even the heralded speed hump program remains a tiny part of the DOT's overall work. On the 6,000 miles of NYC streets, only about 70 humps have been installed; and maybe (generously) another 200 locations have under-gone some kind of traffic-calming or
pedestrian treatment.

This amounts to an average of some kind of traffic calming for every 30 miles of road, not including any of the heaviest pedestrian precincts in the city (like any Manhattan avenue south of 96th Street).

The absence of an unambiguous city policy to put pedestrian and community needs on par with traffic flow has caused conservative, often misinformed, traffic engineers to stymie the wide-spread use of traffic calming. In this land of the ad hoc and inconsistent, some innovations have slipped through, such as the "Urban Oasis."
However, without clear guidelines and policies, such advances will be subsumed by the directly-conflicting needs of pedestrians and motorists for the public space we call streets.

"Urban Oasis"

Sidewalk extensions, or "neck-downs," are a crucial tool for improving conditions for pedestrians. They shorten crossing distances and prevent cars from turning sharply into crosswalks. Unfortunately, retrofitting street corners with neckdowns requires prohibitively costly drainage and curb work. Sidewalk extensions also are scarce because they permanently reduce car-carrying capacity, which gives heartburn to NYC traffic engineers.

The good news is that the NYC DOT "Urban Mobility" group has devised
an inexpensive, easily-installed alternative to sidewalk extensions deemed, the "Urban Oasis." The Oasis extends the sidewalk two to four feet with textured paint, and flower planters surrounded by steel posts, called bollards. DOT hopes to install 100 by this time next year. The program is an innovative solution that holds much promise to change the City's streetscape for the better. The question is, will these pedestrian improvements be installed in places they are most needed, including some of the busiest corners in Midtown?

To request an Urban Oasis at a high pedestrian location near you, call/write your local city councilmember or call the DOT Urban Mobility Program at (212) 442-7658.

The missing mini-traffic circles

Floral Park, Queens-with its brick home and lovely front yards-is a quaint community on the border of New York City. Unfortunately, like many New York neighborhoods, it's troubled with excessive speeding and high car volumes on residential streets. On one of the worst streets, motorists rush by two schools to get to the Cross Island Pkwy. Since 1992, councilman Sheldon Leffler and outraged residents have demanded that the Department of Transportation safeguard children from the dangerous traffic.

In the summer of 1996, DOT finally began studying the feasibility of mini-traffic circles. A test site was slated for installation in July 1997, but as of October nothing has been done. Although the community is supportive and the City has Federal funds that can be applied to the project, yet the project seems to have fallen into a black hole. There are two likely reasons for the delay. Mini-traffic circles affect a street's car-carrying capacity-the Holy Grail of traffic engineers. Secondly, there are no clear traffic-calming standards within DOT to help comfort traffic engineers treading on unfamiliar ground.

DOT Commissioner Lynn could easily solve both issues. He is characterized as an "innovator" and capable of breaking up the tightest of logjams. However without Lynn's leadership, many good traffic-calming projects will die on the
vine.

Write Lynn and ask him to approve mini-traffic circle construction and to issue a clear, public policy for the use of traffic-calming methods. The public has had it with the backroom, random nature of decisions surrounding traffic-calming innovations.

Christopher Lynn
40 Worth Street, NY, NY 10013.
Fax: (212)442-7044.

Traffic calming revisited

Twenty years ago the residents of Noe St in San Francisco had an interesting dilemma: to calm or not to calm. Half the street opted out of the calming project, fearful of losing parking. The other half elected to install neckdowns and benches. Now the block that chose parking wants traffic calming. What a surprise, flowers beat parking every time.