Traffic Calming

Last Wednesday we learned about the Department of Transportation's plan for a major reorganization of traffic flow through Park Slope, Brooklyn. In Streetsblog's comments section, Andy Wiley-Schwartz of Project for Public Spaces asked: What problems are DOT's traffic engineers trying to solve with this particular set of solutions? Or, to put it another way: What triggered this initiative? Why now? I put the question to DOT and here is what the press office came back with:

While Michael Primeggia, DOT's Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations is trying to sell one-way mini-highways through Park Slope as a pedestrian safety improvement, his boss, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, is hawking the exact opposite. On Thursday, March 1, at the City Council Transportation Committee oversight hearing on the Mayor's Long-Term Planning initiative, Weinshall touted two-way streets as successful traffic calming measure for Downtown Brooklyn. From her lips to your ears:

Against the backdrop of news that three more pedestrians were killed on Saturday, a hundred people rallied for pedestrian safety on the steps of City Hall on Sunday. Karla Quintero of Transportation Alternatives, above, started with a moment of silence for those killed by the automobile on the streets of New York and called for 2,000 fewer pedestrian injuries and deaths by 2009 (pdf). Speaking in English and Spanish, she listed five objectives for the improvement of pedestrian safety:

The New York Times came out advocating for progressive transportation policies in its Sunday City section editorial, saying that the departure of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall presents "a great opportunity to take bold action on a vexing quality of life and health issue: traffic congestion."

"What became clear to me in this discussion was that the engineers were thinking from the motorists' viewpoint."  -- Iris Weinshall, New York Newsday, April 29, 2001

Park Slope's Fifth Avenue: a pedestrian- and bike-friendly, two-way, neighborhood Main Street.

Like Third Avenue in Brooklyn, Manhattan's Ninth Avenue is emerging as one of New York City's new "Boulevards of Death." This afternoon, the Clinton / Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition, the community group that has been organizing the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project, broadcast the following news and call to action:

As people living in the neighborhoods around Downtown Brooklyn are learning the hard way, New York City government's installation of pedestrian safety and traffic calming measures is remarkably slow and expensive. Even as children are dying while crossing the street in potentially preventable crashes, and even with projects approved and funded, New York City's bureaucracy appears to be organizationally unable to move faster than a snail's pace when it comes to installing fine-grained, spot-by-spot pedestrian safety and traffic calming measures.