Traffic calming

Commentary, Traffic calming, Walking

Appreciating the 39th Avenue Bicycle Boulevard

Dear Commissioner Garcia:

I am writing to tell you how excited I am for the new Bicycle Boulevard configuration on 39th Avenue, and how much I appreciate it.

A woman crosses 39th Avenue on foot pulling a child in a wagon, while another child rides alongside her on a bicycle

When my wife and I were looking for an apartment in the neighborhood, we visited one in Sunnyside Towers at 46th Street and 39th Avenue, and we decided to rule out the entire building because it had no marked crosswalk in front of it.  My wife was pregnant at the time, and we did not want to worry about our child crossing an avenue rife with speeding.

When my mother, who was 75 years old at the time and will be 83 this year, moved to an apartment on 50th Street and walked her dog across 39th Avenue, where there was also no marked crosswalk, to take advantage of the trash cans generously provided by the Phipps Corporation, I feared for both their lives.

When I found out that 39th Avenue was chosen as one of the city’s Open Streets, I was excited to incorporate it into my daily exercise routine.  That excitement was short lived, as speeding drivers ignored the barricades.  After I was menaced and harassed on 39th Avenue by a city employee in a Parks Department pickup truck, I found it difficult to work up the courage to walk outside in my own neighborhood.

Now I am excited once again to see the new Bicycle Boulevard improvements being installed.  There are marked crosswalks and pedestrian refuges in front of Sunnyside Towers and the Phipps Gardens, as well as in front of Sunnyside Gardens Park.  I feel safe once again walking 39th Avenue every day, and I have already lost a few pounds.

Have I been inconvenienced by the Bicycle Boulevard?  A little: when I call a Lyft to bring my mom to the doctor, the driver may have to take a slightly longer route.  Is it worth it to know that my family and my neighbors and I are better protected from speeding cars?  You bet.

I am looking forward to the completion of the Bicycle Boulevard configuration.  If I am dissatisfied, it is that there is still not as much space to walk as I would like.  I would love a design that would give walkers and runners more space on the two-way blocks, between 47th and 49th Streets, and between 51st and 52nd Streets.

I appreciate all the hard work that you and your staff have put in to making not just 39th Avenue safer, but Barnett, Skillman and 43rd Avenues and Northern and Queens Boulevards.  Please keep up the good work!  We all will be rewarded with lower crash and injury counts.

Sincerely,

Angus B. Grieve-Smith

Background, Commentary, Queens, Traffic calming

How slip lanes make us less safe

Today I took a walk along Queens Boulevard in my neighborhood, where the Department of Transportation has been working to transform the medians into walking and cycling paths like those on Eastern and Ocean Parkways in Brooklyn. One of the most interesting changes is the closing of the “slip lanes” which allowed drivers to switch from the express to the local lanes and back. The slip lanes between 54th and 56th Streets are already closed (see above).

Back in January I attended a DOT revisioning workshop for the Boulevard. We packed the cafeteria at my son’s old elementary school, and in a very encouraging contrast to a similar meeting in 2003, everyone seemed to agree that we need to do something. Peter Beadle, a fellow pedestrian advocate who lives down the Boulevard in Rego Park, focused on the slip lanes when reporting his table’s recommendations. After the meeting, he pointed out to me that Ocean and Eastern Parkways in Brooklyn have no slip lanes, which is a major factor in why they feel so much safer than avenues that are otherwise similarly designed, like Queens, Woodhaven and Linden Boulevards and the Grand Concourse. Here is a slip lane on Queens Boulevard that has not been closed, between 58th and 59th Streets:

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Reviewing the presentation that the DOT gave to Community Board 2, it looks like they are not planning to close this slip lane. Instead, they will make it safer by putting a stop sign in the middle of it. Knowing how cavalierly drivers treat other stop signs, I’m skeptical about this, but it will be an improvement over the current slip lanes.

Diagram: NYC DOT
Diagram: NYC DOT

More importantly, it will allow for a continuous pedestrian path alongside the bike path on this entire stretch of Queens Boulevard. This afternoon I walked from 51st to 58th Streets on this path, and because there was only one lane of moving vehicles to my right it felt relatively safe. Once this path is continued all the way to 63rd Street (and hopefully beyond, one day), I think it will become a popular stroll, like the paths on Ocean and Eastern Parkways are now. The DOT has already painted crosswalks and put up signals for pedestrians:

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(If you zoom in on this picture, you can see that the last car that went through here was doing 38 in a 25 mile an hour zone. We’ve got a lot more work to do.)

French, Paris, Traffic calming, Translation

How about we start by widening the sidewalks, Ms. Hidalgo?

Et si on commençait par élargir les trottoirs, Madame Hidalgo?” December 8, 2014. Le Monde. By Olivier Razemon, translated by Angus B. Grieve-Smith. View the original post for full-size images.

Trottoirs-Paris-10-091943Banning diesel vehicles, partially pedestrianizing the four central districts, bike paths, routes dedicated to “environmentally friendly” vehicles… The Mayor of Paris seems to have realized the danger that air pollution poses to people who spend time in the Paris region, whether they live there or not (details here).

These steps, which will be debated at upcoming City Council meetings, will be attacked by various lobbies and may become a political football. Anne Hidalgo knows a thing or two about that. Her Tour Triangle project was defeated last november by an ad hoc coalition in the chamber. The next round of residential parking rate increases, which the administration is quietly promoting, is still being debated by the ruling coalition. City Hall is worried that the Communist city council members will refuse to touch it, perceiving it as an attack on low-income households.

Piétons-sacrifiés-2859Discouraged pedestrians. So to bring down pollution, but also noise and frustration, while easing commutes, what if we started by widening the sidewalks? When you think about the street space available, when we encourage one mode of transportation, in this case walking, we discourage the others. Take a look at the photo above. To cross the intersection you’d be better off on a motorcycle than trying on foot. Pedestrians deserve better: according to a study by Insee, half of all trips in the capital are made on foot.

Potelets-ParisA little strip of asphalt. In small streets, a sliver barely a meter wide is left for pedestrians, whether they’re traveling solo, with others, with a stroller, in a wheelchair, or pulling a suitcase. The lane is wide enough that a speeding car or motorcyle can terrorize passersby, sending them running for their little strip of asphalt.

Trottoirs-Paris10-019King Bollard. Bollards, metal ones in particular, are installed to prevent sidewalk parking, but wind up limiting the movement of pedestrians. But that’s not all: green trash cans, angle-parked motorcycles, café tables and chairs, loose trash, yellow trash cans, and so on. There’s a lot going on on a Parisian sidewalk.

Trottoirs-Paris-18-161725All it takes is one irritant. In a lot of our streets, particularly at certain times of day, pedestrians have no choice but to walk in the street. This is not always dangerous, because drivers slow down automatically, but it’s inconvenient for everyone. A single car on a quasi-pedestrian street can upset fifty pedestrians, just like a single train passenger yelling into a cell phone at the expense of everyone else’s peace and quiet.

Paris-piéton-3282Like a racetrack. For pedestrians it is impossible to cross certain intersections in one light, thanks to barriers placed by the city. What you see in the photo above sends the message: Streets are sacred, like a racetrack, no trespassing. When we install these protections we forget that people who move with their bodies like to move fast too. If we freed pedestrians from the confines of these sidewalks we would at the same time cut down on the speed of cars, and eventually on unnecessary car use.

Trottoirs-Paris-2001Let’s talk business. On the Grands Boulevards, in many places, there is still a lane across the sidewalk to allow drivers to access the parking areas. Sure they do it slowly, but they push pedestrians aside, behind bollards. And this hurts businesses! Despite what you may hear from developers, and even from some business people, the best customers for local businesses are pedestrians and cyclists. They may buy less per visit, but they shop more often – as long as they feel comfortable on the street.

Trottoir-disparaîtSidewalks erased. Sometimes when people are doing construction they will close the sidewalk, but not the bike lane. You might think they do it on purpose, to set up the kinds of conflicts so beloved by the tabloids. This might be a good place to note that in calmer cities dedicated bicycle infrastructure is no longer necessary: bikes ride in the street, leaving plenty of space on the sidewalk for pedestrians.

Barrière-piétons-4176That pointless barricade. Sometimes we just can’t figure out the rationale behind certain installations. In the above photo, at the exit of the Colonel-Fabien metro station, this little barricade obstructs the flow of people leaving the metro and waiting to cross the street. What is the point of this piece of steel? There must once have been one, but it has been forgotten by everyone, including the transportation department.

cycling, News, Queens, Traffic calming

What a difference some paint makes

On the evening of September 28, 2013, college student Luis Bravo was killed by a hit-and-run driver in my neighborhood while walking down Broadway on the way home from the supermarket. As I wrote a few days later, that part of Broadway is too broad, and has always felt dangerous to me. I asked for the roadway to be narrowed from four lanes to two, and the width given to expanding the sidewalks.
Broadway 076
At the request of our City Council member, Jimmy Van Bramer, and other community leaders, the Department of Transportation studied the road and determined that we do not need four lanes there. Just this week they repainted it, transferring that width to a painted median and extra-wide parking lanes. Compare the above picture that I took today with one that I took last year, from just a block further west:
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At 5:30, the height of rush hour, there was no gridlock, no cars backed up for more than half a block, and many gaps in between platoons of cars. The cars were moving steadily, but slower than before. There were also several bike commuters taking advantage of the extra-wide parking lanes, as you can see in the photo below (at the corner where Bravo was killed):
Broadway 062
I haven’t ridden a bike on this section, so I don’t know how safe the parking lanes feel, but I still would rather see wider sidewalks than these painted medians and turn lanes. The real test, as my neighbor Al Volpe wrote to the Woodside Herald, is whether the paint will slow down cars at 11PM. If it does, we may well have saved others from Luis Bravo’s fate.

Commentary, Queens, Traffic calming

When Broadway is too broad

This past Saturday, a young college student was killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking on Broadway at 58th Street here in Woodside. I know the danger he felt. Just two weeks before I was walking home from a dinner date in Jackson Heights. At 59th Street, a block before the corner where Luis Bravo was killed, I said to my wife, “Let’s turn here. This stretch of Broadway always feels dangerous to me.”
IMG_2688
The width of this stretch of Broadway is puzzling. It’s a strange gap: years ago, before I moved to Queens, I walked most of the length of Broadway, from Elmhurst to Astoria, and this area almost made me regret my trip. A few blocks east, at 63rd Street, it’s seventy feet wide. A few blocks west, at 53rd Place, it’s also seventy feet wide. Between those two streets, the road widens to ninety feet, and from two travel lanes to four.

Maybe the people digging the subway needed a ditch that wide because the local and express tracks come together at Northern Boulevard. Maybe the city engineers thought that Broadway needed to be four lanes wide to bring cars from 34th and 35th Avenues to Northern Boulevard. If so, they were wrong. There is never a traffic jam on those blocks, even in the height of rush hour. There’s lots of room for the cars, which encourages drivers to speed.

We have already looked into ways to make this area safer. My City Council Member, Jimmy Van Bramer told Streetsblog that earlier this year, at the request of my neighbor Ed Surmenian, his staff asked the City Department of Transportation to study changing the timing of the traffic signals. The DOT responded that the signals were properly timed.

Stephen Miller of Streetsblog tells us that the DOT has proposed “road diets” for similarly overbuilt streets like Morningside Avenue, to take space away from cars. The Morningside Avenue proposed configuration would certainly be an improvement over what we have, but it would just waste that space on painted medians.

The sidewalks on Broadway should be widened, giving that space to pedestrians. The sidewalks on the south side are relatively comfortable, varying from ten to fifteen feet wide, but the ones on the north side are all under ten feet wide. The sidewalks on both sides should be a minimum of twenty feet wide.

You may say that you don’t see that many people walking on that part of Broadway, so why have twenty foot sidewalks? I say that people don’t walk because they don’t feel safe, just like my wife and I turned off when we got to 59th Street. With wider sidewalks and slower cars, more people will walk. It’s a natural connection between Jackson Heights and Astoria, after all.

Another thing that would bring people to walk in that area would be interesting stores and restaurants, but the zoning doesn’t encourage it. West of 63rd Street the avenue is zoned for residential construction, and west of 57th Street it’s manufacturing, but there’s very little manufacturing on Broadway itself. A C2-5 commercial overlay would allow people to build stores along Broadway in this section that look just like the ones west of 49th Street and east of 72nd Street.

I know that Jimmy Van Bramer and his staff have been working hard to make the district safer to walk in. I know that Borough Commissioner Maura McCarthy wants pedestrians to be safer in Queens. So let’s take away those extra lanes of Broadway and make the sidewalks wider. And let’s bring in the Department of City Planning and make it legal to build stores and restaurants right up to the sidewalk. Let’s make this part of Broadway a place where people can stroll in comfort.

Commentary, congestion pricing, Queens, Traffic calming

Envisioning a great walking boulevard

Boulevard Auguste Blanqui near the Rue de la Santé, Paris 13th Arrondissement
Boulevard Auguste Blanqui near the Rue de la Santé, Paris 13th Arrondissement

The latest Wall Street Journal told the world what many of us in Sunnyside already know: times are hard for small businesses. Many shops and restaurants have closed in the past year, and many storefronts sit vacant. This is partly due to the structure of this recession, where we’ve seen consumer spending drop while rents have stayed high. But it has a lot to do with how we feel when we walk down the Boulevard.

The great boulevards in Paris have many lanes for cars, but they became famous because they were great places to walk. For a century and a half, they have been destinations in themselves, where people from all over the city went to stroll, to flirt and to socialize.

This promenading has been great for business. When people stroll, they take the time to window shop, and that often leads to buying. When they see friends, they want to chat, and they often do that over coffee, drinks or dinner. This is why the boulevards of Paris are lined with shops and sidewalk cafes.

Like many of New York’s boulevards, Queens Boulevard was planned in homage to the Champs-Elysées and other boulevards in Paris, with wide sidewalks and medians.

A 1914 proposal for the layout of Queens Boulevard by the Queens Chamber of Commerce. New York City Municipal Archives.
A 1914 proposal for the layout of Queens Boulevard by the Queens Chamber of Commerce. New York City Municipal Archives.

In the near-century since Queens Boulevard was first built, auto traffic has increased, and the city has adjusted the boulevard to prevent drivers from complaining about getting stuck in traffic. The roadway was widened to four lanes in each direction plus a parking lane, and the traffic signals retimed to favor east-west traffic. The city even had plans to construct an elevated highway as on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx, but eventually chose Borden Avenue instead. In 1967 the parking lane was eliminated during rush hours.

The current configuration of Queens Boulevard does not encourage anyone to shop or dine. Drivers are not able to park at the curb during the peak rush hours, and much of the parking under the elevated train is available for twelve hours at a time and is taken by long-term commuters rather than short-term shoppers. There have been several pedestrian deaths and numerous injuries, and the speeding traffic does not encourage strolling, especially when there is no barrier of parked cars at the curb.

The pedestrian environment has improved somewhat with 2003 safety plan. Some streets were pedestrianized at the entrances to subway stations and some entrances to parking areas were closed, making it safer for pedestrians to cross the boulevard. Sidewalk extensions were constructed at several corners, making it safer to cross side streets. Traffic signals were retimed to give pedestrians more time to cross the boulevard. Although these improvements have helped, they are relatively minor.

Many in the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce are aware of this problem and have put forward further proposals to improve the situation. Recently, the City Council passed legislation to allow sidewalk cafes to be placed on Queens Boulevard, and the Chamber has long been asking for the parking under the el to be limited to four hours at a time. We are working to get the rush hour parking restriction lifted, to improve safety and invite more customers.

I propose a bigger vision than this, a vision that draws from the experience of Paris, a vision of a boulevard with more trees, wider sidewalks and calmer traffic, a boulevard where people stroll and linger. This may sound pie-in-the-sky to you, but many of the Parisian boulevards were more like Queens Boulevard in the late twentieth century, and have only become more pedestrian-friendly in the past twenty years. The Champs-Elysées, with its thirty-foot sidewalks, is a great model, but Sunnyside is a middle-class neighborhood, and we can be a great walking neighborhood without becoming one of the most expensive shopping districts in the world. Paris also has middle-class neighborhoods that are more like Sunnyside.

The Boulevard Auguste Blanqui, in the relatively modest Butte-aux-Cailles neighborhood, has the same bones as Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside. It is about the same width, and has an elevated train in the middle with head-in parking underneath. But where Queens Boulevard has four driving lanes and a lane of parking (outside of rush hours) on each side, the Boulevard Blanqui has two driving lanes, two lanes of parking and a bicycle lane. The remaining space is devoted to wider sidewalks, big enough for two lines of trees, park benches and sidewalk cafes serving pizza in this historically Italian neighborhood. The strip of land near the elevated tracks is also wider, with a third line of trees in it.

Interestingly, it wasn’t always this way. The sidewalks were widened in the 1990s, along with those of nearby commercial streets, as part of the “Tranquil Neighborhood” plan of right-wing District Mayor Jacques Toubon. This is widely credited with making the neighborhood more of a destination for shopping and dining, particularly at sidewalk cafés. Incidentally, the sidewalks of the Champs-Elysées were widened at the same time.

If you like this vision, you’re probably wondering how we can get from here to there. Queens Boulevard is a major route to the Queensboro Bridge from eastern Queens and even Nassau County. The Department of Transportation is reluctant to make changes that will back up cars and bring complaints from drivers. How could we ever get them to go along with a plan to remove driving lanes and widen the sidewalk?

The answer is congestion pricing. The reason so many people drive through Sunnyside on Queens Boulevard is to get to the “free” Queensboro Bridge – whose recent multi-million dollar renovation has been paid for out of our income and sales taxes. Many of them would have a shorter trip if they took the Queens Midtown Tunnel or the Triboro Bridge, but they take the Queensboro Bridge because it’s free. If we charge a fair price to drive over the bridge and enter Manhattan, a lot of them will stay on the Long Island Expressway or the Grand Central Parkway. A number of others will take the train or bus instead. The City estimated that the amount of stop-and-go traffic in Western Queens would drop by 38.6%. With congestion pricing, the justification for five car lanes on Queens Boulevard disappears.

This, believe it or not, is just one of the many benefits that we could see in Western Queens if we passed congestion pricing. It won’t just benefit Manhattan, it will benefit every neighborhood that people currently drive through to get to Manhattan. It will be good for business and good for our quality of life. Will our leaders rise to the occasion? Will they be stuck in old arguments and petty rivalries, fighting for working-class drivers who don’t exist? Or will they have the courage of District Mayor Toubon, and Paris’s current Mayor Delanoë, who were able to see past the propaganda to a future of calm strolling and socializing on a great walking boulevard?

Commentary, Queens, Traffic calming

Parking on Queens Boulevard: Good for business, good for safety

This appears today as a letter to the editor, on Page 8 of the Woodside Herald (PDF).

In a June 4 op-ed, Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce President Ira Greenberg laid out the Chamber’s transportation agenda for making Queens Boulevard better for business. One of his top recommendations was to allow for parking along the Boulevard at all times. This would not only be good for business, but it would also make the Boulevard safer for pedestrians.

For most of the day parking is allowed along Queens Boulevard, but from 7 to 10AM every weekday, there are No Standing zones on the north side of Queens Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue. From 4 to 7PM, the south side of Queens Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue and one block of 43rd Avenue are No Standing zones.

This restriction means that if morning drivers commuting to Manhattan stop for juice from Go Natural, they get parking tickets. Evening drivers who stop to pick up a bottle of wine from Lowery Liquors get tickets. Drivers who don’t want tickets shop elsewhere, and that means that Sunnyside gets the pollution, noise and danger from the cars passing through, but receives no economic benefit to offset any of it.

The rush hour parking restriction is not just an economic hardship. Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside has been the site of numerous pedestrian injuries and at least four deaths. There is a very real danger of out-of-control cars injuring people on the sidewalk. In 2007, the New York Times reported that a sixteen-year-old boy named Gonpo Dorjee was seriously injured while waiting to cross the Boulevard at 47th Street. He was unable to walk for months.

One thing that protects pedestrians like Dorjee from speeding cars is parked cars. Without the parked cars, the only things protecting pedestrians from a wayward vehicle are the parking meters, and they will be replaced by muni-meters in a few years. As Ira wrote, “Pedestrians waiting to cross every block feel unsafe as they stand inches from fast moving vehicles.” When we feel unsafe, we shop elsewhere. A double-whammy for the stores along Queens Boulevard: less business from drivers, and less business from pedestrians.

This parking restriction is a relic of the old Department of Transportation, where moving traffic was more important than business or safety. Over the past several years the DOT has made protecting lives a higher priority. We have already seen this change on Skillman, 43rd and Barnett Avenues, where speeds have gone down and injuries are less common.

Removing the rush hour parking restriction is the next step in the direction of safety. It would not have protected Gonpo Dorjee, because he was hit on the corner, but it will protect thousands more. It will also bring more customers to Sunnyside businesses, in cars and on foot. Good for business, good for safety, good for Sunnyside.

Commentary, Traffic calming

What real demotorization looks like


Photo by Mary Teresa Giancoli, Crisma Imaging

In May, Cap’n Transit highlighted this quote from J.H. Crawford:

Once the last car disappears from the street, it becomes a playground for people of all ages. This can be seen any day in Venice or Fes. Peace, safety and tranquility settle over the street, and a rich and vibrant social life takes the place of the stink, noise, and danger of cars.

This playground can now be seen on Governor’s Island. On Sunday we went with some friends to visit the island; one friend wanted to hear Judy Collins perform.

We had last been to the island in 2003, when it was first opened to the public. It’s a lot friendlier now. The ferry is relatively frequent and fast – except when it has to take on a full load of passengers on a weekend evening. Many of the houses have been turned into art exhibition spaces, and there is a creatively designed miniature golf course. There are multiple vendors of food and drink. These are especially necessary because the supply of potable water appears to have gone away with the coast guard.

Most excitingly, there are bike rentals. This gave me and my son the opportunity to ride a bike at the same time. We haven’t done it in Queens because I don’t feel safe with him on a bike unless I’m on foot to give him my full attention. On Governor’s Island, for $30 an hour a friend and I were able to rent a two-person surrey. It had seats for our kids in the front, and they loved it. We rode around the entire island in half an hour, and spent the other half hour visiting various sights along the way.

What is especially nice is that there are almost no motor vehicles on the island. Judy Collins’s equipment van was there, and a few other trucks for carrying large loads. There are several electric vehicles, including a few bus kinda things that seated about fifteen people, and shuttled them to far points on the island. The entire National Park Service appears to be suffering from severe muscle atrophy, since they seemed to be incapable of going five feet without getting into electric golf carts. On the whole, they were pretty easy to ignore, though.

Once we ignored them, what a feeling! In pretty much any park in the country, if you’re on a path that’s wide enough, you can’t escape the feeling that some self-important jerk will want you to move out of the way at short notice so he can trim some hedges or deliver a load of charcoal briquets. On Governor’s Island, we could walk all over without worrying about that. We could ride the surrey around the island and go as slow as we wanted without the possibility of being rear-ended by two tons of metal.

We had that peace, safety and tranquility, and that vibrant social life, that Crawford describes. Now that’s demotorization!