One-Way Streets

A report from NY1's Susan Jhun today describes the dangerous conditions at an intersection right next to P.S. 8 in the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, where parents and students constantly contend with cars darting the wrong way down the block.

How fast do cars travel on Prospect Park West? Criminally fast. All the time. Members of Park Slope Neighbors clocked cars routinely exceeding the 30 mph speed limit -- including one sociopath racing at 65 mph -- during a ten-minute stretch earlier this month. Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue form a one-way pair funneling drivers to and from the free East River bridges and the Prospect Expressway, a configuration that makes for hazardous conditions. Last summer a school bus driver struck and killed cyclist Jonathan Millstein on Eighth Avenue. A few weeks ago a 57-year-old pedestrian was nearly killed a couple of blocks away from the Millstein incident. Parents are afraid to walk with their children across the corridor's dysfunctional intersections. NYPD enforcement is sorely lacking.

Not getting flattened by a 50,000 pound "big rig" is a good reason to stop at a red light if you're on a bicycle. But how about less skin-saving reasons? Are there in fact, good reasons to ignore traffic regulations when you can, because after all, they are really meant just for cars?

Congestion in Jackson Heights: The DOT needs some new ideas

Every week, KCRW radio's Marc Porter Zasada sets out to fathom Los Angeles on his show The Urban Man. This week he talks about neighborhoods, how fragile they are and how easily they can be lost to bad traffic engineering: