Three keys to Vision Zero

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This article was published 17/05/2014 (4154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Slow Zones

• New York City will create eight more neighbourhood slow zones, where speed humps and speed signs force drivers to go 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) instead of the regular 30 (48). There are already more than a dozen slow zones throughout the city, requested by neighbourhood residents or groups.
• The city will create 25 arterial slow zones, where the speed limit will shrink to 25 m.p.h. (40 km/hr). Among the first on the list is about 13 kilometres of New York’s famous Broadway, slated to become a slow road this summer.
• Ultimately, the city wants permission from state legislators to reduce the urban speed limit everywhere to 25 m.p.h.

Dave Thom subverts his better nature and floors it over a speed hump. His Hyundai SUV crests the summit and gently thuds on the other side. “But try that in a Camaro,” said Thom. “When these first went in, I saw a guy lose his muffler.”

Thom, a Canadian expat whose mother spent her teenage years in Portage la Prairie, championed the first slow zone in Manhattan, convincing the city to install a few humps and reduce the posted speed limit to 20 m.p.h. as a safety measure.

The slow zone, one of a growing handful in New York, covers a few square blocks in Inwood, a mixed-income enclave on the very northern tip of Manhattan that is often used by commuters as a cut-through to avoid the toll on the Henry Hudson Bridge.

Thom, an engineer who works for a large real estate development firm, first got active on the traffic-safety front when his young sons hit that tricky toddler age where they hate holding hands and can dart off the sidewalk faster than the sharpest parent.

That innate parental fear, combined with the neighbourhood’s speeding problems, prompted Thom to lobby for a slow zone.

They’re fairly easy to get. A resident just needs to show modest local support and get approval from the area’s community board. There’s no need for long, costly traffic studies, and the speed humps, road paint and signs cost so little department of transportation engineers often have a “let’s try it and see” attitude.

Since slow zones first emerged under former mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York neighbourhoods have been clamouring for them. Last fall, DOT approved another 13, though five times that many neighbourhoods applied. Residents in the Bronx were particularly put out their neighbourhoods got rejected.

In Inwood, the only low-grade grumbling Thom heard was when a few much-coveted parking spots at corners were removed so pedestrians were more visible and so big signs could be installed alerting drivers to the slow zone.

The signage signals to the good drivers to take it slow, which in turn sets the pace for all. But, especially in New York, signs and paint do little. It’s the speed humps that work. Commuter traffic still cuts through Inwood, but they do it more slowly, even though there are only 10 speed humps in the slow zone, one or two per street.

“If anything, we’d like more of them,” said Thom. “There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing someone flooring it and then seeing the taillights when they realize there’s a speed hump.”

 

Enforcement

• Increase the number of speed and red-light cameras, which means getting permission from the state legislature in Albany. The city already has dozens of red-light cameras, but speed enforcement has lagged. New York wants to increase its speed cameras from about 20 to 140.
• Police will hand out many more tickets for speeding and failure to yield to pedestrians, the two top causes of fatal crashes. Collision investigators will get more training and will reconstruct more crashes — the ones with critical injuries, not just fatal outcomes.
• After several years of cuts, the traffic unit will be bolstered by more than 50 officers to 263, and precinct cops will do more traffic enforcement, as well.

Traffic is arguably the least sexy assignment for any police officer, especially a member of the legendary NYPD. That’s part of the reason New Yorkers frequently complain about the lack of enforcement. Drivers cut into crosswalks, speed down residential streets and roll through stop signs and there never seems to be a cop around to catch them.

Key to Vision Zero has been getting the slow-moving NYPD on board, and it appears, even to skeptics, this has happened.

At a recent town-hall meeting on traffic safety, more than a dozen uniformed officers crowded into the front row of the high school auditorium, and the NYPD’s top traffic cop made his umpteenth public pitch for the NYPD’s commitment to Vision Zero.

“After Mayor de Blasio made the announcement, we sent a letter to every precinct just saying, ‘by the way, this is who we are, we’ve done research on best practices, on enforcement, would you like to meet with us? Give us a call,’ ” said Noah Budnick, deputy director of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. “We sent that out in mid-February, and over the following three months I met with more police precincts than I have in the 10 years I’ve worked here.”

Intersection fixes

• The city will overhaul 50 intersections and corridors a year to add a menu of safety fixes such as clearer lane markings, better lighting, more stop lights, bump-outs that give pedestrians a better view into the intersection and medians where slower walkers can take refuge if the light changes.
• Street lighting will be enhanced at 1,000 intersections.
• Install more traffic signals and enhance lane painting.

By Winnipeg standards, it looks a little like Confusion Corner: a mess of merge lanes, no-turning rules and paved islands to avoid. On a sunny morning last week, two forlorn cyclists found themselves stuck in the middle of the intersection trying to turn left, shrinking from traffic shooting by them in all directions.

If Jackson Avenue in Queens looks scary, you should have seen it before.

“To get from here to the other side was almost impossible,” said Steve Blanco, a musician and Long Island City resident for more than decade, who chatted while nursing a coffee outside a local shop. “I still see people almost get hit all the time.”

That intersection, at the foot of the Pulaski Bridge, is one of a couple dozen city traffic engineers try to redesign every summer. Under Vision Zero, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to double that to 50 as part of a bid to eliminate traffic deaths in the next decade.

Before the overhaul three years ago, cars coming off the Pulaski Bridge jumbled down unclear lanes and into an intersection bogged down by many complicated movements. Crosswalks were confusing or nonexistent and on-street parking cluttered the flow.

Now, bigger medians and islands give pedestrians a refuge and shrink lane widths, a signal to drivers to slow down and smarten up. The turning lane off the bridge and onto Jackson is delayed, giving walkers a head start through the intersection. Parking has been eliminated at some corners to improve visibility. The department of transportation says injury crashes have shrunk by two-thirds.

Trouble is, Jackson at 11th Street is one of several intersections in the booming neighbourhood that need attention. Two women out for a mid-morning coffee break point down Jackson to the next big crossing as the one they fear the most. And, longtime neighbourhood resident Sheila Lewandowski said the huge construction boom that has transformed Long Island City’s warehouses into glass condo towers has so dramatically increased car and pedestrian traffic that fixing one intersection doesn’t quite cut it.

“I do think it’s good to target 50 a year, but we should also be looking at the next 50,” said Lewandowski, who runs a local theatre and is a supporter of Vision Zero.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca