Traffic Calming
Streetsblog Basics
Making Streets for Walking: Dan Burden on Reforming Design Standards
One of the foundational documents in our country's history of car-centric street design is what's known as the Green Book. These engineering guidelines, which have been published in various editions by the American Association
of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) since the 1930s, are only "green" if you're looking at the cover.
April 8, 2010
How London Is Saving Lives With 20 MPH Zones
When Mayor Bloomberg announced that the new pedestrian spaces in Midtown are here to stay, he made special note of the safety improvements on Broadway, which he called "reason enough to make this permanent." And after the mayor told reporters that the city was getting lots of requests for similar livable streets treatments, the speculation started: What's next?
March 22, 2010
Bay Ridge Mother Stirs Street Safety Awakening at Brooklyn CB 10
Maureen Landers was walking to pick up her son Max from P.S. 127 in Bay Ridge last April when she was struck by a motorist turning onto Fourth Avenue. Her stroller -- thankfully empty -- was flattened. She was rushed to the hospital but did not sustain major injuries. As for the driver, he didn't even receive a ticket.
March 12, 2010
Queens CB 6 Eager for Safety Fixes (Just Don’t Touch Their Parking)
As we've recently seen in Astoria, DOT doesn't always bring innovative traffic calming tools to streets that need them. What happens when they do? At a community board meeting in Rego Park last week, the agency rolled out a broad selection of ideas including neckdowns, road diets, and pedestrian refuges. The Queens CB 6 transportation committee seemed ready to listen -- except when discussion briefly turned to the possibility of eliminating parking spaces.
January 20, 2010
DOT Shows No Traffic Calming Ingenuity for Astoria’s Deadly 21st Ave
Over the last six weeks, Astoria residents have made a strong push for a safer 21st Avenue, a street plagued by speeding cut-through traffic. In response to requests for traffic calming, NYCDOT recently sent what one resident called a "cryptic letter" explaining only that the street would not be receiving speed humps. Although DOT is now studying additional measures, residents would like to see a stronger response from the agency.
January 14, 2010
Report: Tame Traffic, and More People Will Choose to Walk and Bike
It may seem obvious that speeding traffic discourages walking and biking. But the evidence is scarce and scattered. A new paper by Peter Jacobsen, Francesca Racioppi and Harry Rutter aims to improve the understanding of how traffic affects cyclist and pedestrian behavior by collecting the existing research in one place.
January 5, 2010
Council Members: If Only There Was Some Way to Deter Reckless Driving
Yesterday the City Council held a hearing on street safety for older New Yorkers. The hearing came while the deaths of Lillian and Peter Sabados, an elderly Staten Island couple run down by Allmir Lekperic on Thanksgiving eve, are still fresh in people's minds. But when it comes to keeping drivers like Lekperic from harming others, The Staten Island Advance reports, some of the borough's council reps seem to think they've exhausted their options:
December 4, 2009
Eyes on the Street: Bigger Sidewalks, Better Bike Lanes, Safer Streets
Clarence Eckerson sends these shots of DOT street safety improvements taken on a recent ride near the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Above is the newly traffic-calmed intersection of Joralemon and Hicks -- part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project -- which now sports two sidewalk extensions. (According to the Post, a third corner was slated for a curb extension, but DOT changed plans after residents said they were worried about how fire trucks would negotiate the turn.) Says Clarence: "I am sure the speed reductions will be dramatic, the equivalent of a chicane."
November 23, 2009
In Progress: A More Walkable, Bikeable, Trottable Park Circle
There's a very nice set of livable streets improvements underway at Park Circle, where Brooklynites heading to and from Prospect Park mix it up with traffic heading to and from the Prospect Expressway, Ocean Parkway, and the Fort Hamilton Parkway. Construction was still in progress when I took these pictures a few days ago, but it's already making a big difference for pedestrians and cyclists. (And, I assume, the equestrians coming from Kensington Stables, although I didn't see horseback riders during my visit.)
November 20, 2009
Streetfilms Shorties: Why Don’t We Plant Trees in the Road?
Clarence recently dug up a few unused nuggets from last year's junket to Melbourne, Australia. Watch and see how curbside space in residential neighborhoods has been repurposed for plantings that double as traffic calming treatments. Whatever red tape they had to hack through to plant trees in the roadbed, not just on the sidewalk, they've hacked through it in Melbourne. Have to say, though, the trees planted in the bike lane (or the bike lane painted around the trees) had me scratching my head.
October 20, 2009