OPINION: Clinton Street Has a Traffic Problem. So Let’s Make It A ‘Low Traffic Neighborhood’

Manhattan’s Lower East Side is one of the densest, most-walkable neighborhoods in New York City. Yet the design of its streets does not support its residents’ needs. More than 80 percent of Lower East Siders don’t own a car, and only 5.5 percent commute to work by car, but the streets prioritize cars above all else.

One particularly egregious case is the segment of Clinton Street between Delancey Street and Houston Street. This single corridor receives 4 to 6 times the vehicular traffic of its neighboring streets, despite its similar width and pedestrian traffic stemming from its mix of commercial and residential properties.

Clinton Street cannot continue to manage 16,000 cars per day. The Department of Transportation must redesign this particular street — and it’s an excellent candidate for a Low Traffic Neighborhood redesign.

With a few minor but pivotal changes to the roadway’s design, DOT could transform life for both residents and the many tourists and visitors who walk down this street in the heart of the Lower East Side. The key to this vision is one simple change: removing vehicle access from a single point on Clinton Street.

Anyone who lives on the Lower East Side or has spent time around Delancey Street can immediately point to why traffic on Clinton Street is so much higher than neighboring streets: the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp. For vehicles traversing this East River bridge from Brooklyn’s Williamsburg to the Lower East Side, the first opportunity to exit the bridge roadway is a right turn onto Clinton Street. It’s currently a high traffic street by design.

Drivers coming off the bridge’s four-lane road turn directly onto a one-lane, one-way roadway shared with a painted bike lane and busy sidewalks on either side. This creates a dangerous situation where cars barrel onto the local road or speed through the red light entirely. That same off-ramp has busy crosswalks and bike paths that are frequently packed with cyclists and pedestrians navigating the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. The immediate vicinity contains dozens of bars and restaurants, a public school and a public park.

These conditions have led to more than 100 crashes, causing dozens of pedestrian, cyclist and motorist injuries — and several fatalities — in the past decade. The intersection of Clinton and Delancey Streets is one of the most dangerous in all of the Lower East Side, with approximately 30 reported crashes, 37 injuries and one death. The mayor made headlines in his first week by paving over the infamous Williamsburg Bridge bike bump, but we need more than a one-time photo-op. We need the city to address the situation, just feet away from that bump, that has caused a constant stream of damage, injury and death.

The good news is that we know how to fix this. A few minor changes to the road, especially the reduction of bridge traffic turning onto Clinton Street, can solve the problem while maintaining access to delivery and emergency vehicles.

This is the concept embodied by Low Traffic Neighborhoods, which use street redesigns to re-route traffic. The major plank of Clinton Street’s redesign should be the removal of the dangerous Manhattan-bound Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp onto Clinton Street. Drivers who want to head uptown can instead turn onto Essex Street and Allen Street, both of which can more safely accommodate a much higher volume of traffic. Clinton Street itself would remain open to local residents and delivery vehicles, minus the endless procession of cut-through traffic clogging roads and endangering pedestrians.

Permanent LTNs provide the greatest potential for improving pedestrian safety and residential livability with cost-efficient solutions and lower administrative overhead in the longer term. The city should pilot an LTN around Clinton Street and save residents and visitors from the burden of incessant, dangerous and unnecessary cut-through traffic.