Today’s Headlines

  • Port Authority Wants NY Harbor to Handle More Cargo Than Any Other American Port (WSJ)
  • Officer Confirms All Your Suspicions About How Cops View Traffic Enforcement (Gothamist, News, Post)
  • Lentol: MTA Will Go Public With L Train Repair Plans in May (DNA)
  • Impaired, Unlicensed Driver Hits and Kills Man on Moped in Glendale (News)
  • School Bus Driver Critically Injures Woman Crossing Street in Maspeth; No Charges (Post)
  • Officers Crash Patrol Car Into Food Delivery Truck in Ozone Park (Post)
  • DOT Showing Plan for 2-Way Bikeway on Clinton Ave Around the Neighborhood (DNA)
  • Scofflaws Have Racked Up $114 Million in Unpaid Port Authority Tolls the Past 5 Years (News)
  • All It Took Was a Letter From One Person in 2009 to Get DOT to Install Dangerous Left-Turn Signal (DNA)
  • 120 New Affordable Apartments in Morrisania Will Come With 68 Parking Spaces (YIMBY)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Reader

    “Now, seven years later — after 17 pedestrian injuries and one death at that intersection, according to the city’s Vision Zero map — the DOT is agreeing to change the signal back.”

    17 serious injures and one death all because DOT acted after one (!) guy wrote a letter. Shame on everyone involved with this. Meanwhile, anyone who wants any form of traffic calming, curb extensions, bike lanes, or other safety measures has to wait years and years and years, only to have DOT back down at the first sign of community board “controversy.” The system is broken.

  • BBnet3000

    The Clinton proposal would be better off as a bike boulevard. If only JSK had introduced those here so that we could keep putting them in today. Unfortunately they don’t have an important sounding brand in Copenhagen (they just call them “any street that isn’t an a major arterial”) so she probably wasn’t interested.

    Likewise with the crosstown bullshit doorzone bike lanes on the Upper East Side. Would you rather be forced into the doorzone on a street with lots of traffic cutting through, or have the whole road on a street with very little traffic?

  • Toddster

    The DNA article is about Clinton Avenue (in Clinton Hill) not Clinton Street (in Brooklyn Heights).

  • Fixed, thanks

  • reasonableexplanation

    So, the total yearly toll revenue that the PA collects is about 1.4 billion, so over 5 years, that’s 7 billion, making the unpaid scofflaws tolls 1.6% of all tolls. That’s kind of high, I wonder why they haven’t gone after these people?

  • This has happened in our city as well. We have one street, which moved to a 1 lane each way with turn lane configuration because of many accidents at this street. The number of accidents decreased when the change was made. Years later, traffic is worse, and there are backups, and the city decided to make it 2 lanes each way with no turn lanes (the previous, known unsafe configuration), after deciding that safety would take a back seat to the “inconvenience of turn restrictions” and the “unwillingness of property owners on the street to give up one single boulevard tree to allow widening”. I hope those who are injured or the families of those who are killed sue people over it.

  • Komanoff

    Wondering how AAA flak Robert Sinclair feels about his quotes seeming to support toll-beating drivers.

    I would lay odds that the toll scofflaws have more crashes (per mile) than toll-payers, on average. We’ll never know, though, due to agency apathy, “privacy” rules, etc.

  • gneiss

    If you wanted any more damning evidence that traffic engineering completely fails to take into account people walking across our streets, read the left turn DNA article. They are perfectly willing to do a “traffic study” if a motorists complains about inconvenient wait times at intersections, but people walking? No problem! They can wait an extra minute or two for the light to change.

    And if they can’t? Well then, totally justified that they get killed or injured for failing to following their carefully crafted traffic pattern.

  • reasonableexplanation

    I mean, if you read the News article it’s pretty clear that the AAA guy is talking people who do pay the toll. Honestly it looks like his quote was just part of a larger interview about tolls that they cut out.

    I agree with him though; the PA tolls are quite high you know, and out of sync with what’s normal elsewhere in the US, even in more expensive cities like SF.

  • Maggie

    I was wondering why this safety fix takes a couple months for DOT to put in place. Is it like they’re physically replacing the traffic light? At first I was thinking they only needed to reprogram the timing algorithm.

  • djx

    I really want to know who the driver was that got that E 79th Street light. There are some very wealthy people over there – I’d speculate it was someone quite well-connected.