Transportation Policy

If New York or other large cities are looking for a solution to congestion and its negative impact on the economy, Hong Kong offers an excellent strategy and success story. I was there a few weeks back working on waterfront issues (that rival New York City for unrealized opportunities), and was struck by changes that have taken place since my previous visit five years earlier. In 2001, there were few streets or districts that were comfortable to walk in or engage with despite being known as a bustling shopping city. In the intervening time the city has undergone a major transformation led by non other than the city's Transport Department.

Transportation Alternatives has released a study of parking permit abuse among New York City employees (as observed in nine neighborhoods). Their press release notes the study's key findings:

Last week we asked the Department of Transportation why the agency had not followed through on making safety improvements on the Fifth Avenue bike lane in Brooklyn by end-of-summer. DOT responded with a statement saying that "Share the Road" signs had, in fact, been installed and that, as part of the new citywide bike safety initiative announced two weeks ago, the agency was developing a new and improved way of marking "Class III" bike routes.

Of the ten largest cities in the United States, New York has far and away the greatest population density: 26,402.9 people per square mile, more than double the second densest big city, Chicago. The chart at right shows how the largest metropolitan areas stack up in terms of core population, overall population and core population density.  This fact alone should force New York City authorities to think differently than the rest of the country on all sorts of matters of public policy. New York is a quantitatively different animal than the other big American metropolitan regions in terms of percentage of people that live in the core, density and size of the core and size of the metropolitan area.

Classic Scene near Queensboro Bridge on Second Avenue (note red light!) Every morning I walk past scenes like this near the Queensboro Bridge (QBB) on Second Avenue. Traffic blocks up on Second Avenue north of the two major crosstown exit routes at 60th and 57th Streets all the way to 70th Street and beyond. The … Continued

Today is International Park(ing) Day. Also known as a "parking squat," Park(ing) is a quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings. Here is how Park(ing) Day is being celebrated this morning in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street:

Streetsblog: So, what happened in yesterday's election?

There's an old saying: "There's lies, damn lies and then there's statistics". But it's not the data that lie, if properly collected, it's how you interpret the data that matters.