Street WarsA weekly series on the battle for space on New York's streets and sidewalks.
Changes Are Coming to New York City StreetsFor now, this is the final installment of Street Wars. But to be clear: The battle for space on New York City's streets is not over. It's obvious to anyone on New York's streets — in buses, on foot, on bikes or in cars — that the current situation feels unsustainable. Street-space conflicts are brewing in all parts of the city, and we — and you — should keep an eye on them. Right now, New York has not only the worst traffic in the United States, but also the worst traffic in the world. In addition to being annoying, traffic is an environmental and public health issue. Idling motors contribute to air pollution that is bad for our lungs. And as a new study has found, record slow speeds caused by congestion have resulted in significant increases in emergency response times. A delayed fire truck or ambulance can be a matter of life and death. And there are other battles brewing. Brooklyn is embroiled in several major fights, including one over the use of Underhill and Vanderbilt Avenues, and another about the dangerous thoroughfare of McGuinness Boulevard. In Queens, there's a big clash over e-scooters and bike lanes — especially on the Queensboro Bridge, which has been experiencing a record number of cyclists and pedestrians lately. On Staten Island, a major road may add two lanes of car traffic, even though adding lanes just causes more traffic, as studies prove (and as anyone who's ever seen images of the "freeway" in Los Angeles knows). The Bronx continues to have the highest rates of asthma — not just in the city, but also in the United States — which, experts say, is at least in part because of the Cross Bronx Expressway. (Thanks, Robert Moses!) A plan to "transform" the six-lane highway Cross Bronx may involve adding more lanes (!) and service roads. In Manhattan, cameras were installed for congestion pricing, which would simultaneously reduce car traffic in Midtown and raise money for public transit, only for Gov. Kathy Hochul to squash the program. A huge question mark looms over the proposal now, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has said it has only about half of the $65 billion it needs to upgrade New York City's subway and bus network — and the shortfall could have been funded through congestion pricing. We may not know what comes next, but we do know one thing for sure: New York will change. New York always evolves. Despite historic districts and landmark architecture, the city is not frozen in time, but alive, growing and transforming right in front of our eyes. Seismic shifts have happened in my lifetime. The New York of my childhood and adolescence looked very different from the New York I live in now.
I rode on subways covered in colorful, spray-painted graffiti. When I took the bus to school, I would get off at my stop and quickly dart away to try to avoid being engulfed in a noxious cloud of the bus's diesel exhaust. Cigarette smoke was everywhere — in restaurants, bars, trains and parks. When I was an assistant at a legendary publishing company in my early 20s, some of the editors smoked in their offices. I used to love to go dancing, but it meant coming home coated with the acrid stench of cigarette smoke clinging to my clothes and absorbed into my hair. The subways are now scrubbed of graffiti. The buses, instead of spewing exhaust, are hybrid or electric. Smoking indoors is rare. But the streets that were clogged with cars in my youth continue to be choked with traffic. People who study cities and think deeply about how they function agree that reclaiming some space from cars is crucial. "Our streets were not built for cars," said John Massengale, an architect and urbanist and a co-author of "Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns."
Massengale is fond of posting a photo on social media of Mulberry Street in the early 1900s, bustling with people socializing and shopping, as a response to people who claim that streets are for cars. It's an example of how New York's streets were once used, and could be again. Massengale's book highlights Lexington Avenue, where the sidewalk was narrowed, most recently in 1960, to make more room for cars, as part of the problem. "Driving is not the point of a city," he said. (One of Massengale's most radical ideas? Removing cars from the Brooklyn Bridge and turning it into a park, with cycling paths and food carts: "It would be as popular as the High Line.") Nicole Gelinas, author of "Movement: New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets From the Car," agrees that fewer cars would make for a better New York City. "We're not going to recover from Covid and from population dislocations and so forth by re-embracing the car," she said. "You could pave over every single sidewalk and give it to cars and you would still have traffic problems." Gelinas said that we need to get people back into the mass transit system and to continue to make it easier and safer for buses, bicycles and people on foot. "As long as we're continuing to make slow progress doing those things, we are heading in the right direction and not the wrong direction," she said. While she'd like to see the city streets safe enough that people feel comfortable biking with their children to school, in her mind, not all bikes are equal. "We have not dealt with the e-bikes very well," she said. "Having the bike lanes largely taken over by a poorly regulated commercial exploitative business, which is the app delivery, is not a good thing for the future of New York City cycling." The good news is that even though congestion pricing stalled out, big changes are in the works, with more coming. Broadway below Herald Square in Manhattan has transformed into a shared street, with two-way bike lanes, seating and planters. More new bike infrastructure is planned, including a bike boulevard on 31st Avenue in Queens, and one on Berry Street in Brooklyn. Plus, existing bike lanes, on Manhattan's Second Avenue, 10th Avenue, 38th Street and 39th Street, will soon be wider. Segments of bike lanes on Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue are also wider. More room in the bike lane means more space for cyclists to pass one another and also allows for the opportunity to bike alongside a friend or family member. And New York City could see a cargo bike boom, like the one London is having, which means deliveries of anything from food to laundry to heavy equipment arrive by eco-friendly electric cycles instead of polluting vans. New York now has "busways" — protected and dedicated bus lanes — on 14th Street in Manhattan, on Jamaica and Archer Avenues in Queens, and on Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. While some of these things seem incremental, they start to add up. "We envision a future of more people-centered streets," said Ydanis Rodriguez, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Transportation. "More plazas and pedestrian space, more outdoor dining, and a continued shift to smaller, safer and more efficient options like bikes, e-bikes and other legal micromobility options. He added, "We will adapt our streets and bring about the culture shift needed to make these changes work for everyone." As for Massengale, he doesn't believe that the city should be completely car-free. "New York needs cars," he said. But he stressed that trying to alleviate congestion without removing some vehicles from the mix will always be unsuccessful. "Traffic engineers do not lead the design teams that make the beautiful, safe, low-traffic streets for people we see in Europe," he said. "New York should do whatever it takes to change our streets now," he added. "We've been a model for the nation, and can be again. No place in America is more ready for safe, slow, walkable streets." And that's all for Street Wars!In case you missed one, here are all installments, in order:
|
Street Wars: The New Battles Brewing
September 30, 2024
0
