As far as traffic calming is concerned, it’s wonderful! Drivers are totally disoriented by this new weird stuff in the road. The cars look very tentative, like a cat creeping into a cardboard box. They look as if they aren’t sure if they just drove into a plaza by mistake, and they slow down to ridiculously low speeds and let pedestrians cross anywhere in the street.

Huge success in my opinion.

Shared space ? dedicated lanes for certain users

The round bollards are something I saw in Madrid, where it looked and worked great. Except ours are shaped like olives stuffed with pimento.

@Mike: that’s what I thought. I certainly wouldn’t want to ride over those cobblestones!

I love the look of cobblestones and the concept of a shared space that privileges pedestrians over automobiles; still, it would be nice if that space were accessible to cyclists.

Easier said than done Dave.

Get the community to approve removing the cobblestones and modifying the curblines. Take a few years to establish a BID, in a non-commercial area, funded with millions of dollars for capital construction projects. Hire an architect to design the new space, coordinate moving any disturbed sub-surface utilities, do an EIS and public review, get approvals from all city agencies, including permits for sidewalk cafes in the roadbed, and presto – you’re done!

Until of course someone has to maintain it…

I say kudos to DOT for getting this first-of-its-kind shared space implemented in a timely fashion.

Albert – good point! I’m sure no one thought of that, and the restaurants are now doomed to run out of food.

Re: Peter (#14) and Dave (#8). I agree that there’s a temporary feel to this set of changes, but that’s the beauty of it! For the relatively low capital cost of $90k, you can try this out to see what works.

It’s more than obvious that there’s latent demand for seating here, whether this is the final solution or not.

As for the cobblestones, they’re certainly difficult to bike on, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world. There are plenty of other streets to ride along around here.

Geez we have certainly become picky haven’t we folks.

Space for people is better than space for cars. I can’t wait to bring out a picnic blanket and just sprawl anywhere I want on those cobblestones. Even if I have to walk by bike there.

WHACKEDDDDDDDDDDD!!!

This should cause some accidents.

On the other hand, the outside seating area at 14th & 9th is amazing. Great job on that!

People, this is a perfect example of a good idea gone bad thanks to the major impediments of any project of this kind in NYC.

The result is a bad joke at best.

Extremely Ugly, but somewhat functional.

This looks fairly pointless. What was so bad abough the”chaotic free-for-all”?

What European plazas are you talking about where car traffic and restaurant seating mix it up and mutually regulate one another? I guess I missed that the past few trips, or maybe you missed something about the way things actually work. Gimme a break.

nick – those are all nice thoughts, but a few things to consider:
1) your shared space approach is a wonderful idea. can you please convince the powers that be that doing what you suggest won’t lead to a massive lawsuit against the city the first time a car plows into tables full of people since there is no curb or objects in the roadbed to stop it?
2) this wasn’t spending a lot of money – that’s the point. if you want something more intensive you’d have to spend a lot of money. and if you want to spend a lot of money on public works “like they do in europe” may be we need european-level taxes and a government system in which cities have more political power (and hence get more of their $$ back).

Listen. Really.

There will never be a design that everyone thinks is perfect. Never.

This was the result of an intensive process that clearly the complainers didn’t participate in. There are a lot of competing interests involved in any project of this magnitude – and none of them, not even you, Mr. Complain-it’s-not-perfect-for-you, got everything they asked for.

What do I think? Suddenly cabs are driving verrrry slowly rather than trying to mow people down while leaning on their horns. People are lingering in the public areas, sitting on the stones, appreciating what was a car-strewn area. The streets have been reconfigured to actually discourage through-traffic and to keep the traffic from overflowing into neighboring residential areas. Parking zones have been redesignated to reflect the current uses and to keep double-parkers from bringing traffic to a honking halt.

And all of that was done while keeping in the historical context of this landmarked district.

And with the cooperation of city agencies, the public space in this immediate vicinity has been completely transformed in the span of months. It’s not exactly what came out of the GGUIP process, but it embraces many of the principles. Maybe we’ll see more parts being incorporated as times goes on – and American drivers prove that they are responsible enough to handle it.

In the meantime, I think it’s a dramatically improved space and an impressive returning of public space to the non-driving majority that uses this neighborhood. Complain about that.

Also I drove across 14th today (the closest carwash to me is at 15ht/10th) and noticed they put two-way traffic on Washington. What the F***? All this talk of traffic-calming measures and they redirect traffic to allow for easier flow? Who’s the moron who implemented that?

It’s the “morons” who live in the residential blocks just to the south who had to deal with the massive volumes of circling traffic. Maybe you want to talk to the “morons” on 5th Ave. in Brooklyn about two-way streets being better for traffic calming – you know, the ones that stopped the one-way plan to push large volumes of traffic to Atlantic Yards.

Since you (plural, not just Dave) know so much, why not come to the planning meetings and tell your side, that it’s not important to keep the circling out of the residential blocks by putting in a 2-way traffic flow… or that your designs for granite blocks is a lot better than DOT’s….

And if you can’t imagine how the traffic pattern is going over, why not go have a look. It was decidedly tame when I was there Thursday night, and without triple-parking, there was very little honking.

I think my point was to reconsider how space is regulated – not in terms of legislation, but in terms of how we in US urban centers think of sharing it. Our urban culture is dominated by the automobile. I think if you examine the way we talk about things, mostly we examine these issues from the perspective of the car: regulating traffic or even making pedestrians safe from traffic – both these ideas are actually about the car, not about accessibility and not about pedestrians.

That’s not a criticism, it’s an observation. By bringing Europe into the picture (and no, I’m not talking about the major intersections of Paris, but I can take you to quite a few places in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and a score of small towns) I was meaning to illuminate the idea that the original culture of non-motorized transportation is given priority in civic planning and the automobile is still considered relatively new in that context.

Yes, autos are heavily taxed in Europe. And the quality urban living and the possibility of sustainable living is so much greater in Europe due to higher taxation – they also earn more and work _less_ than we do. What I suggested as a point of reference above was an observation about urban psychology, not a solution to the expense. Things cost money, plain and simple. But don’t get uptight about it – the question is how is cash best spent and to what overall benefit. And where do you want your tax $s to go? I mean, the higher taxes result in a direct benefit to one’s daily life in Europe, one that is perceivable. Trust me, the taxes are worth it.

Still, I see the concept as the issue here, not the money.

Who is responsible for this absolute disaster? There wasn’t any urban planning involved other than a chaotic placement of hideous mismatched blocks, metal planters and alien orbs. The concrete blocks are too inviting for homeless to find another place to invade.

This could not be a more pathetic attempt at organizing what used to be a gorgeous and quintessential West Village setting.

Let someone who knows what they’re doing remove this eyesore and design a materpiece this space derserves. This is an incredible opportunity to creat art and something should be done…speak up fellow neighbors!