The result is congestion, pollution, noise and dangerous conditions for everyone who dares to get in the way.
This week, the Hudson Square Connection Business Improvement District released a master plan [PDF] for the traffic-choked streets around the Holland Tunnel entrance, outlining $27 million in street improvements – from pedestrian space to bike lanes – aimed at making the neighborhood a less hostile environment.
The BID's five-year master plan goes further. In addition to neighborhood-wide recommendations for streetscape features, it focuses on four key places: Varick Street, Hudson Street, Spring Street and "SoHo Square," at the intersection of Spring and Sixth Avenue.
The plan for SoHo Square would convert Little Sixth Avenue into a shared street and construct raised crosswalks to slow vehicular traffic through the expanded plaza. For Varick Street, the BID wants to examine the feasibility of installing a planted median to separate tunnel-bound traffic from neighborhood traffic, to replace the strip of plastic white posts there today. Hudson Street would gain a protected bike lane -- an idea that Community Board 2 endorsed last year --while the entire neighborhood would see more trees.
The Hudson Square Connection, launched in 2009, serves the area bounded by West Houston Street to the north, Sixth Avenue to the east, Canal Street to the south and the Hudson River to the west. It is home to over 50,000 people during the daytime, with 2,500 residents. The plan, developed by a team led by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, Rogers Marvel Architects, Billings Jackson Design, ARUP and Open, would be funded through BID assessments and public dollars.
The BID's recommendations aim to transform the neighborhood’s streets, but traffic will continue to plague the area until policymakers address the underlying reason why many drivers find idling in Lower Manhattan traffic worthwhile -- the free ride going westbound across the island.
The BID’s plan notes that tunnel traffic is a major problem in the neighborhood. Varick Street, it notes, "is choked by cars accessing the Holland Tunnel, which makes it hard for pedestrians to cross and interferes with local deliveries."
Community Board 2 was the first community board in the city to pass a resolution in favor of congestion pricing, and has remained engaged on the issue, hosting a forum on bridge tolls in May. In an email, the BID said it is "not involved" in discussions related to road pricing to reduce congestion.
Even though the topic of fair tolls remains on the back burner, a slate of pedestrian, bicycle and park improvements are a good start to making streets around the Holland Tunnel less threatening for people who live and work in the neighborhood.
In spring 2017, Stephen wrote for Streetsblog USA, covering the livable streets movement and transportation policy developments around the nation.
From August 2012 to October 2015, he was a reporter for Streetsblog NYC, covering livable streets and transportation issues in the city and the region. After joining Streetsblog, he covered the tail end of the Bloomberg administration and the launch of Citi Bike. Since then, he covered mayoral elections, the de Blasio administration's ongoing Vision Zero campaign, and New York City's ever-evolving street safety and livable streets movements.
"In Stockholm, people really thought that congestion pricing would be the end of the world, the city will come to a standstill, no one would be able to get to work anymore and all the theaters and shops would just go bankrupt. None of that happened."