Mark Gorton
Recent Posts
Opinion: Congestion Pricing Does Not Begin to Compensate Society for the Harm and Violence Caused by Cars
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Much of the coverage of congestion pricing focuses on the need for a toll to reduce congestion or pollution. And that's important. But drivers need to know that they do far more harm than merely causing traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. Put simply: Cars destroy the human living environment in the city.
OPINION: CityRise Will Step Up for Streets When the Mayor Won’t
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A civic group seeks quick, practical solutions to the post-COVID "carmegeddon" — and support for struggling retail businesses at the same time.
Op-ed: DOT Rebuffs Community on Riverside Park Rotunda Traffic Safety
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Last October, the Department of Transportation presented to Community Board 7 a $150- to 200-million plan to renovate the Rotunda at West 79th Street in Riverside Park. The Rotunda is topped by a traffic circle that cyclists use to get to the Hudson River Greenway, the busiest bike route in the country. For years, cyclists […]
Op-Ed: Here’s a Better, Cheaper and Safer 79th Street Rotunda Plan
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In this opinion piece, the publisher of Streetsblog — and a daily Upper West Side cyclist — weighs in and offers an alternative proposal.
An Open Letter to CB 7 Transportation Chairs Dan Zweig and Andrew Albert
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Mark Gorton is the publisher of Streetsblog and lives on the Upper West Side with his wife and four children. This is an edited version of a message he sent to Dan Zweig and Andrew Albert, the co-chairs of the Community Board 7 transportation committee, after neither of them voted in favor of extending the […]
Smart Para-Transit: Working Out the Details
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This is the fifth and final installment of Mark Gorton’s essay on Smart Para-Transit. You can download the complete article here. A regional Smart Para-Transit system would have many operational elements. Dealing with all such details is far beyond the scope of this article, but I will touch upon some of the key operational issues. […]
Smart Para-Transit + Car Sharing = No Reason to Own a Car
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Here is part four of Mark Gorton’s essay, "Smart Para-Transit: A New Vision for Urban Transportation." The Smart Para-Transit system I have described would be capable of replacing many of the automobile trips in the New York area. However, by itself, it would be insufficient to completely replace the need to own a car for […]
Eliminating Congestion Through Smart Para-Transit
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Here is part three of Mark Gorton’s essay, "Smart Para-Transit: A New Vision for Urban Transportation." The biggest constraints on the transportation capacity of New York City’s road networks are the bridges and tunnels. The river crossings are jammed with traffic for a good fraction of each day. The only way to get more throughput […]
Peer-to-Peer Mass Transit: How to Make it Work
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Here is the second installment of Streetsblog publisher and LimeWire founder Mark Gorton’s essay, "Smart Para-Transit: A New Vision for Urban Transportation." Part 1 is here and you can also download the complete pamphlet. Advances in information and communications technology offer the possibility of optimizing the performance of our existing road network in ways that […]
Smart Para-Transit: A New Vision for Urban Transportation
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This is the first article in a five-part series by Streetsblog publisher and LimeWire founder Mark Gorton: Traffic is a crushing problem that oppresses our city, yet many people who drive into New York each day do not have a good alternative. I’m an engineer by training and the traffic flow problems facing large cities […]