Monday, January 09, 1995
Looking For Traffic Congestion Relief in NYC
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Letter on hand from the New York City Department of Transportation, announcing that they have federal funds to support community-based projects for addressing transportation and air quality problems. This is under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, administered by the Fed Highway Administration. Now I understand the mysterious form I had to fill out at the office, explaining my work travel patterns and use of bridges and cars vs. public transportation.
It is ironic that this request should come at a time when the State DOT will choke off the access to our Waterside area for two years, as a result of the routing of traffic through Marginal Street while repairing the FDR Drive North. But tieups due to infrastructure repairs are not the type of problems that the DOT wants to hear about from you and me. I do have a recommendation, borne out of four years of mental strain and torturous driving while the 59th St bridge was under repair. Expedite! Use the Fed money to work overtime on crucial, unavoidable projects, with multiple crews, to shorten the periods of suffering for the public! It is evident that some road and highway repair projects are just stretched to provide extended employment, at immense mental anguish, time costs and suffering to the public.
Back to the environmentalist interest in alternate modes of traffic and air cleanup.Obviously the bike is not the transportation and pollution control answer for most of us. We will never be another Beijing. The bike paths so loved by Mayor Koch have not worked out, midtown congestion is too much, pedestrians were hit and died in bike accidents, scaring us off. Yet, according to Charles Komanoff of the eponymous Energy Associates consulting firm, this judgment may be rash. In 1993 two pedestrians in 664 accidents were killed by bikes (.3 percent), vs 289 in 13,811 accidents (2.1 percent) by cars. There were also 12 bikers killed by cars; spread over the not quite 4,000 bike/car accident rate, that still produces a .3 percent bike death incidence. I still see it as a dangerous form of city transportation - the rate of bike/car encounters under the present road conditions is too high, considering the few bikes in the road. A young bike enthusiast friend from Maine, who came to the city to join the Demented Messenger Service (I think that's what they all are), had three accidents in four months and retired to Arizona to run a mail-box service. Nevertheless, a man in my office rides a one-speed red L.L.Bean cycle across the Queensboro Bridge all summer, for health and visual pleasures. More timid folk limit themselves to using the closed-to-traffic paths in Central Park on weekends, if they dare the ride to and from.
The staggered office hours have been much more successful in shifting the overload on roads and busses away from the deadly drive time congestion times. Then there is the method of installing two-shift operations in business and industry, which also relieves the stress during the daytime shift in the physical plants of our manufacturing and office buildings, besides saving on capital expenses of buying high-cost land and putting up new buildings as business expands. Look at the bright side - it keeps costs down, makes the firms more competitive, and steadies consumer prices. Given that we do not control the population explosion world-wide, what else can be done? We the people, with our infinite capacity for suffering, will just have to take it on the chin some more. In NYC, we will have to literally accept the idea that "the city never sleeps."
Whether subway transportation will ever come back as a substitute for cars, which many use for perceived safety, remains moot. Cars will not disappear if electronic tolls are installed on the East River bridges. That is evident, based on the volume on traffic on the for-pay Midtown Tummel. Certain crosstown streets may just have to be closed for daytime pasenger traffic (cabs excepted), to let trucks in and out, and minimize air pollution. That is already being tested on 56th and 57th Sts, 11-1 PM and 3-6 PM, and may be expanded.
Meanwhile, we now have rollerblading. Fortunately, the 'bladers are more considerate than the bycicle quick-food deliverymen, and use the street rather than sidewalk. If your'e out at 3PM at the corner of Park Ave South and 14th St., be prepared for an experience. There are mesengers darting in and out between cars, competing for space with roller-bladers - kids from our three highschools get out at that time. Skate-boarders practice on both sides of Union Square Park, fortunately not on the three (or is it four?) market days, and rollerblade daredevils try to skate the edges of the park steps facing Bradlees, dropping sparks when metal meets stone, and occasionally themselves.
Some more about the ways DOT is trying to reduce the traffic jams:
Bus lanes are being aggressively enforced, to make sure that buses can move through traffic unimpeded, and that cars don't have to duck lumbering monsters suddenly swerving in their lanes. It also provides emergency access for cops and fire trucks.
Motorists should note that ticketing for "blocking the box" is now done every day, not just on gridlock days. Since November the Police Dept is charged with enforcing the spillback regulations, and they issue a small number of tickets daily (very costly, $50 plus two points!) Watch out, and stay out of the intersection when it looks like the light is changing and you may get stuck. And if you stay prudently on your side of the box, a firendly hand may tap on your window and give you a reward, a free Metro card, good for one ride. Over 100 of these are given out each day.
The faster, high access lane on the 59th St Bridge reserved for cars with 2 or more persons is also a reward for better car utilization.
There are 15 redlight cameras in five boroughs to catch people running lights, and the locations are secret, for obvious reasons.
The DOT would like to encourage us to address their people as traffic enforcement agents and not "browns." Besides, most of them now wear blue uniforms.
If you have some alternate, real proposal for the NYCDOT, or want to bid on a project that will alleviate the transportation and air pollution situation, send information to Sally A. Hood, Director of Community-Based Projects, NYCDOT, 40 Worth St Room 1002, NY NY 10013. NYCDOT is interested in such projects as educating the public (groans!); application and promotion of innovative, low-polluting, efficient modes of transportation and air pollution control; promotion of environmentally sustainable development (wow!). And you can send them to me too, for a follow-up article, if and when. Keep truckin'.
Wally Dobelis thanks Charles Komanoff, Robert Lipsyte and NYCDOT spokespersons for information.
Letter on hand from the New York City Department of Transportation, announcing that they have federal funds to support community-based projects for addressing transportation and air quality problems. This is under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, administered by the Fed Highway Administration. Now I understand the mysterious form I had to fill out at the office, explaining my work travel patterns and use of bridges and cars vs. public transportation.
It is ironic that this request should come at a time when the State DOT will choke off the access to our Waterside area for two years, as a result of the routing of traffic through Marginal Street while repairing the FDR Drive North. But tieups due to infrastructure repairs are not the type of problems that the DOT wants to hear about from you and me. I do have a recommendation, borne out of four years of mental strain and torturous driving while the 59th St bridge was under repair. Expedite! Use the Fed money to work overtime on crucial, unavoidable projects, with multiple crews, to shorten the periods of suffering for the public! It is evident that some road and highway repair projects are just stretched to provide extended employment, at immense mental anguish, time costs and suffering to the public.
Back to the environmentalist interest in alternate modes of traffic and air cleanup.Obviously the bike is not the transportation and pollution control answer for most of us. We will never be another Beijing. The bike paths so loved by Mayor Koch have not worked out, midtown congestion is too much, pedestrians were hit and died in bike accidents, scaring us off. Yet, according to Charles Komanoff of the eponymous Energy Associates consulting firm, this judgment may be rash. In 1993 two pedestrians in 664 accidents were killed by bikes (.3 percent), vs 289 in 13,811 accidents (2.1 percent) by cars. There were also 12 bikers killed by cars; spread over the not quite 4,000 bike/car accident rate, that still produces a .3 percent bike death incidence. I still see it as a dangerous form of city transportation - the rate of bike/car encounters under the present road conditions is too high, considering the few bikes in the road. A young bike enthusiast friend from Maine, who came to the city to join the Demented Messenger Service (I think that's what they all are), had three accidents in four months and retired to Arizona to run a mail-box service. Nevertheless, a man in my office rides a one-speed red L.L.Bean cycle across the Queensboro Bridge all summer, for health and visual pleasures. More timid folk limit themselves to using the closed-to-traffic paths in Central Park on weekends, if they dare the ride to and from.
The staggered office hours have been much more successful in shifting the overload on roads and busses away from the deadly drive time congestion times. Then there is the method of installing two-shift operations in business and industry, which also relieves the stress during the daytime shift in the physical plants of our manufacturing and office buildings, besides saving on capital expenses of buying high-cost land and putting up new buildings as business expands. Look at the bright side - it keeps costs down, makes the firms more competitive, and steadies consumer prices. Given that we do not control the population explosion world-wide, what else can be done? We the people, with our infinite capacity for suffering, will just have to take it on the chin some more. In NYC, we will have to literally accept the idea that "the city never sleeps."
Whether subway transportation will ever come back as a substitute for cars, which many use for perceived safety, remains moot. Cars will not disappear if electronic tolls are installed on the East River bridges. That is evident, based on the volume on traffic on the for-pay Midtown Tummel. Certain crosstown streets may just have to be closed for daytime pasenger traffic (cabs excepted), to let trucks in and out, and minimize air pollution. That is already being tested on 56th and 57th Sts, 11-1 PM and 3-6 PM, and may be expanded.
Meanwhile, we now have rollerblading. Fortunately, the 'bladers are more considerate than the bycicle quick-food deliverymen, and use the street rather than sidewalk. If your'e out at 3PM at the corner of Park Ave South and 14th St., be prepared for an experience. There are mesengers darting in and out between cars, competing for space with roller-bladers - kids from our three highschools get out at that time. Skate-boarders practice on both sides of Union Square Park, fortunately not on the three (or is it four?) market days, and rollerblade daredevils try to skate the edges of the park steps facing Bradlees, dropping sparks when metal meets stone, and occasionally themselves.
Some more about the ways DOT is trying to reduce the traffic jams:
Bus lanes are being aggressively enforced, to make sure that buses can move through traffic unimpeded, and that cars don't have to duck lumbering monsters suddenly swerving in their lanes. It also provides emergency access for cops and fire trucks.
Motorists should note that ticketing for "blocking the box" is now done every day, not just on gridlock days. Since November the Police Dept is charged with enforcing the spillback regulations, and they issue a small number of tickets daily (very costly, $50 plus two points!) Watch out, and stay out of the intersection when it looks like the light is changing and you may get stuck. And if you stay prudently on your side of the box, a firendly hand may tap on your window and give you a reward, a free Metro card, good for one ride. Over 100 of these are given out each day.
The faster, high access lane on the 59th St Bridge reserved for cars with 2 or more persons is also a reward for better car utilization.
There are 15 redlight cameras in five boroughs to catch people running lights, and the locations are secret, for obvious reasons.
The DOT would like to encourage us to address their people as traffic enforcement agents and not "browns." Besides, most of them now wear blue uniforms.
If you have some alternate, real proposal for the NYCDOT, or want to bid on a project that will alleviate the transportation and air pollution situation, send information to Sally A. Hood, Director of Community-Based Projects, NYCDOT, 40 Worth St Room 1002, NY NY 10013. NYCDOT is interested in such projects as educating the public (groans!); application and promotion of innovative, low-polluting, efficient modes of transportation and air pollution control; promotion of environmentally sustainable development (wow!). And you can send them to me too, for a follow-up article, if and when. Keep truckin'.
Wally Dobelis thanks Charles Komanoff, Robert Lipsyte and NYCDOT spokespersons for information.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:09 PM 
