Traffic Calming

When DOT presented plans for traffic calming along Long Island City's 44th Drive in March, the department chose to put the four lane street on a road diet, using some of the reallocated space for a painted median. That still left enough space in the extra-wide parking lanes for a bike lane, however, a fact which Queens Community Board 2 pointed out at the time.

Assembly Member Dov Hikind is stooping to a new low, even by Albany's standards, to ensure that traffic keeps on menacing pedestrians to the fullest extent possible on NYC streets.

The speed limit will be reduced from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour in the Claremont neighborhood of the Bronx, Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced today, fulfilling a promise laid out last year in the city's pedestrian safety action plan to pilot a 20 mph zone in one New York City neighborhood. Similar slow speed zones in London have been proven to save lives and prevent injuries.

When faced with the question of how to fix a dangerous street, the first instinct of many New Yorkers is to call for the most familiar symbols of regulating cars: the stop sign and the traffic light. Nothing, they think, could more effectively force dangerous drivers to stop speeding through their neighborhood than these familiar red symbols. Just this month a community group in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn asked the city to remove a bike lane and zebra stripes from Oriental Boulevard -- measures that have a real traffic-calming effect -- and add a new traffic signal where the road intersects with Falmouth Street. But stop signs and traffic signals are usually ineffective, even counterproductive, if the goal is to make streets safer.

What's a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, "A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road."

What's the most effective way to make city streets safer? As Chicago Alderman Mary Ann Smith told Streetfilms, "Signs don't do the job, even having police officers on the corner does not do the job." To prevent traffic injuries and deaths, you need to change how the street functions and make it feel slower for drivers. You need traffic calming.

DOT presented plans for two Long Island City street redesigns to Queens Community Board 2's transportation committee last night. One, a standard road diet, would calm traffic on 44th Drive by replacing one moving lane in each direction with a painted median and left turn bays [PDF]. The other, a novel design for a single block of 48th Avenue, manages to make four of six lanes into on-street parking [PDF].

DOT's plans to improve pedestrian safety along the length of the Bronx's Macombs Road [PDF] received a unanimous vote of support from Bronx Community Board 4 last night, according to District Manager José Rodriguez. The plan puts Macombs on a road diet and reconfigures dangerous diagonal intersections that lead to drivers taking fast turns across the crosswalk.