DOT Presentation
Feb. 13, 2020 By Michael Dorgan
The Department of Transportation presented plans for a comprehensive bicycle network at an Astoria public meeting Tuesday night that featured two protected bike-lane routes that will go north south.
Around 130 people attended the event at P.S. 166 on 33-17 35th Ave, where the DOT put forward draft plans for protected bike lanes along Crescent Street and 31st Street. The plan also featured plans to add bicycle lanes on other streets, although they did not involve protected bike lanes.
The agency wants to create a safe north-south passage for bicyclists, particularly from the Triborough Bridge to the Queensboro Bridge. Additionally, the DOT wants other safe corridors for cyclists in the area as many cyclists ride north-south as they look to go into Manhattan.
Alice Friedman, Deputy Director of Planning and Policy for DOT’s Bicycle Unit, presented the plans and said that protected bicycle lanes increase safety for all street users. She said that they help organize streets and data shows a 21 percent drop in pedestrian injuries after protected bike lanes have been installed.
There have been many injuries on Crescent Street between Hoyt Avenue North and Queens Plaza North in recent years, according to NYPD data. Between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2019 there were 615 total crashes– resulting in the death of one pedestrian and the injury of 16 cyclists, 36 pedestrians and 93 motorists, according to city data.
DOT Presentation
The DOT plan for Crescent Street, which is currently without bicycle infrastructure, involves installing a two-way protected bicycle lane along the corridor from the Triborough Bridge to the Queenboro Bridge. The plan would see a traffic lane removed in order for the protected two-way bicycle lane to be installed on one side of Crescent Street
Under this proposal, approximately 5 to 10 spots per block would have to be removed.
DOT Presentation
The agency also plans to install protected bicycle lanes on 31st Street—under the N/W elevated line– from 20th Avenue to 39th Avenue. A protected bicycle lane would be installed on both sides of the street.
Under the plan, there would be two travel lanes on each side of the street, along with a parking lane and a protected bicycle lane. There would be no loss of parking spaces with this route and it would also alleviate some of the streets double parking issues.
Pedestrian and transit access would also be improved with possible floating bus islands and better pedestrian crossings, Friedman said.
Friedman stressed that both Crescent Street and 31st Street designs were both in their concept phases and are still subject to change.
DOT Presentation
The DOT said it plans to install a number of other lanes as part of the bicycle network in Astoria—although none would be protected lanes.
It put forward six new routes, which involve conventional or shared bike lanes. None of these routes involve the loss of traffic lanes or parking spaces.
The routes feature a north south connection that goes that from 20th Avenue to 34th Avenue incorporating 42nd, 43th and 44th Streets; as well as a connection between 20th Avenue and Hoyt Avenue North on Crescent Street and 24th Street.
DOT Presentation
Council member Costa Constantinides, who spoke before the workshop, said there needs to be greater bicycle connectivity in the area.
“We need to have a borough wide plan and a neighborhood plan in western Queens that ensures people are getting out of their cars and getting onto safe modes of transportation,” he said.
The plans form part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $58.4 million Green Wave bicycle plan which seeks to expand the bike lane network in all five boroughs as a response to the rise of cycling fatalities in 2019.
After the presentation, attendees broke off into groups to discuss the proposal.
Attendees were in agreement with the DOT’s plans but also emphasized east-west protected routes were just as important.
Improved signage, speed bumps and greater police enforcement to quell the dangerous levels of speeding, particular along 31st Street, were also proposed.
Calls for extra bike parking as well as a reduction in vehicle parking were also voiced.
One attendee yelled out “any parking loss is a victory,” that was greeted to great applause. Another person said all bike lanes should be “protected or nothing,” that also generated a similar response.
The designs are expected to be presented to Community Board 1 in spring, with plans to install the protected bicycle lanes this summer. The conventional and shared lanes are planned to be installed this fall.
.@NYC_DOT‘s Alice Friedman presents new #Astoria #bikelane proposals to last nights public workshop at @Ps166Q.
Story to follow…#protectedbikelane@queenspost @AstoriapostNYC @LICPOST #queenspost #lic pic.twitter.com/vZM6LiPovx
— Michael Dorgan (@MDorganNYC) February 12, 2020
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40 Comments
Removing a parking lane on Crescent is going to create a serious problem for the hospital workers and visitors there. There are going to be Access-a-rides blocking the bike lane all over the place.
Why we need more bicycle lanes?
NYC is not like Portland, Oregon. We can not ride bicycle all year around. NYC has brutal, snowy, long winter ( This winter is mind tho) and people don’t ride bicycles. Such a waste of using our tax!!!
Or else your comment would be completely pointless!
We do not need any more bicycle lanes here in Astoria!
I see so many bicyclists don’t follow any laws every day. They ride opposite sides of the road, cut in whenever they want, no lights, no helmets, ignore red lights, scratch cars and just run away… And what I see the most is the tons of bicyclists who don’t even use bicycle lanes! LOL They still ride pedestrian walks or roads for cars even there are bicycle lanes right there! My poor babies always got hit by bicycle many times on the pedestrian walks! Bicyclists SHOULD FOLLOW THE LAWS AND BE MORE MINDFUL before they even ask more bicycle lanes!
The city wants us to only use their means of transportation so all our money goes to them. They want to make it a pain in the ass to own a car so you could use the train, bus and citi bike.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2018/10/04/skillman-avenue-bike-lanes-concerning-residents-who-say-fire-trucks-and-ambulances-getting-stuck-in-traffic-queens-nyc
I think if bikers are getting all the new lanes and parking spaces and lanes being reduced for drivers like me that make a living with my vehicle… they should obey the traffic laws… pay registration and license and insurance just like drivers do … it’s only fair… u want the lanes … pay the price too …
Great news! This will be an enormous help for safety. I hope that there is improvement to cross town streets, like 34th drive too. Next, maybe we can get a better distribution of citibikes in Astoria – and get the rest of Qns on the program too.
The city is gonna realized that’s it’s a HIGE mistake just like the bike lanes in Sunnyside….
The lanes have been a huge success and seen a lot of ridership. This means less cars for you and less traffic.
Who told you that? The relatively small amount of bikers doesn’t justify the existence of the lanes. The neighborhood residents didn’t want them and still don’t want them. They hate them. So stop believing the drivel transportation alternatives is spewing. As well as your friend who rides a bike.
That’s my statistic.
Do you have a single reason to believe that, or it’s just worthless speculation on your part?
https://sunnysidepost.com/video-of-held-up-firetruck-on-skillman-avenue-raises-concerns-about-redesign-driver-compliance
I’m excited
It seem that the city has an obsession to increase the number of bike lanes throughout the boroughs. Come on let’s face it, why are we spending millions of tax dollars for less than 1% of the cities population to ride the already crowded dangerous streets. We should be concentrating on improving public transportation and lowering the fares so all can afford to ride. Bikes are fun and should be used by children, in parks and for exercise. Bikes Should not be a person’s sole means of transportation.
You make a great point–anyone that can’t afford a car and parking is a bad person.
Citibike reported 90,000 rides in one day. But yeah other than that no one bikes. I hope you don’t order delivery food–they ride those scary bikes to bring it to you!!!
South bound traffic on Crescent St. approaching the bridge is usually at a standstill already. Removing one traffic lane for bikes? I could walk over the bridge in less time.
You should walk over the bridge: as you say, it would be faster, healthier for you, cost $0, and leave no carbon footprint.
“any parking loss is a victory” says Brad from Ohio who is not from NY. How about the HVAC guy in his van trying to get to the 59th St. Bridge while four people a day use the street clogging bike lanes on Crescent St. Democrats are just the worst. First Mayor who is not a dumb progressive must reverse 80% of the garbage bike lanes and sitting areas that used to be roads. Astoria is rife with young brainwashed libs. I hope I get 100 thumbs down.
Parking loss is brought up EVERY time the scary bike lanes are mentioned. A lot of boomers need cars to get around.
I support the bike lanes and still know that you’re completely wrong.
Better street lighting, better enforcement of driving under the influence laws, and policies aimed at discouraging people from crossing the streets outside of designated crosswalks, especially at night, would be more successful at reducing fatalities than increasing traffic congestion during rush hours, which is really what Vision Zero is all about.
Vision Zero is based on the observation that pedestrians hit by cars traveling at high speeds are more likely to die than if the cars are traveling at low speeds. So Vision Zero’s primary tactic is to reduce driving speeds. Vision Zero’s secondary goal is to reduce driving period by making auto travel slower and less desirable compared to the alternatives. Neither of these are working very well.
Vision Zero Isn’t Working
Vision Zero has diverted cities to an overt anti-auto strategy that sometimes actually makes streets more dangerous. An article posted on the Atlantic’s City Lab
last week documented that many of the cities that have adopted “vision zero” policies have seen pedestrian fatalities sharply increase. These cities, notes the article, have “spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, rebuilding streets to calm traffic and reduce driving,
lobbying for speed limit reductions, launching public awareness campaigns, and retraining police departments.” Yet Chicago, Los Angeles,and Washington, among others, saw sharp increases in pedestrian and/or bicycle fatalities after adopting Vision Zero policies.This won’t be a surprise to Anti planner readers. As described in Policy Brief #25,
Vision Zero is an overly simplistic strategy that fails to solve the real problems that are causing pedestrian fatalities to rise.Vision Zero is based on the observation that pedestrians hit by cars traveling at high speeds are more likely to die than if the cars are traveling at low speeds. So Vision Zero’s primary tactic is to reduce
driving speeds. Vision Zero’s secondary goal is to reduce driving period by making auto travel slower and less desirable compared to the alternatives. Neither of these are working very well.As Policy Brief #25 noted, the real problem isn’t speed but design.The fastest driving speeds are on urban freeways, yet they have the lowest pedestrian fatality rates because pedestrians are normally excluded from the freeways. Traffic on one-way streets tends to be
faster than on two-way streets, yet pedestrians suffer fewer accidents on one-way streets because they only have to worry about traffic coming from one direction when crossing the streets.Moreover, simply slowing daytime traffic doesn’t treat another major problem, which is unsafe behavior. More pedestrians die and the rise in
fatalities is greater during the three-hour period between 3 am and 6 am than the nine-hour period between 9 am and 6 pm. Most fatalities are also away from intersections and a high percentage of nighttime pedestrians who died had alcohol in their bloodstreams. Presumably the same is true for the drivers, but the data don’t report driver alcohol
levels for pedestrian accidents alone.Better street lighting, better enforcement of driving under the influence laws, and policies aimed at discouraging people from crossing
the streets outside of designated crosswalks, especially at night, would be more successful at reducing fatalities than increasing traffic congestion during rush hours, which is really what Vision Zero is all about.
We can say for certain that Vision Zero’s efforts to reduce driving have failed. Chicago and Los Angeles were the first major cities to adopt Vision Zero goals in 2012. Since then, per capita driving in Chicago has grown by more than 5 percent while in Los Angeles it has grown more than 2 percent.
For decades, traffic engineers followed a tried-and-true formula for reducing auto fatalities: improve roadway designs in ways that reduce the number and impact of accidents. Vision Zero has diverted cities from
that formula in an overt anti-auto strategy that sometimes actually makes streets more dangerous (such as when one-way streets are converted to two-way operation). So it is no surprise that Vision Zero isn’t working.
Traffic Fatalities are Way Up — Is Vision Zero Becoming Unfocused?
Cyclists mourned one of their own earlier this year when Aurilla Lawrence was killed. Road fatalities are up so far this year. Photo: Julianne Cuba
Cyclists mourned one of their own earlier this year when Aurilla Lawrence was killed. Road fatalities are up so far this year. Photo: Julianne Cuba
It has been a very bloody year on New York City streets.
The NYPD’s latest stats show that fatalities are up 38.5 percent so far this year, with 54 people dying from Jan. 1 through April 7 — up from 39 over the same period last year.
If that bloodshed were to continue at that pace, fatalities would be on pace to reach roughly 280 deaths, up from the 202 that city officials say were recorded last year and heralded by city officials as a watershed moment for Vision Zero.
The ghost bike for Robert Spencer was installed on last month in Long Island City. Photo: Gersh Kuntzman
The ghost bike for Robert Spencer was installed on last month in Long Island City. Photo: Gersh Kuntzman
It is unclear what is driving the increase in deaths — other than drivers, of course. Total injuries are also up, but only by 1.6 percent this year, even as the number of reported collisions is down 3.4 percent. Injuries to cyclists are up 9.2 percent, with 723 people injured so far this year — an average of more than seven people per day.
Percentages don’t tell the full story: In real numbers, there have been 56,405 collisions reported to the NYPD across the city in just over three months — 10,551 of which caused injuries to a pedestrian, a cyclist or a motorist. Drivers ram their cars into each other, into stationary objects and, of course, into people hundreds of thousands of times every year.
The fatality numbers are more or less gruesome depending on which NYPD command you examine:
In Brooklyn North, fatalities are up 20 percent — from five last year to six so far this year.
In Brooklyn South, they have more than doubled, from six last year to 13 this year. Five of those deaths came in the last 28 days. Injuries to cyclists are up 14.4 percent.
In The Bronx, fatalities are up from six last year to eight so far this year, an increase of 33.3 percent. Injuries to cyclists are also up 23.5 percent.
In Manhattan North, there have been four people killed so far this year, up from two over the same period last year.
In Manhattan South, three people have died, up from two. And cycling injuries are up 20 percent.
In Queens North, a slight uptick in overall collisions has led to an increase in fatalities from seven to 10 so far this year, or a jump of 42.9 percent. Injuries to people who bike are up 32 percent this year.
In Queens South, fatalities are down to seven this year, from nine over the same period last year, but injuries are way up. Cyclist injuries are up 21 percent, pedestrian injuries are up 3 percent, driver injuries are up 6.7 percent. There have been 7,545 crashes in just that portion of the borough so far this year, or roughly 77 per day.
In Staten Island, the carnage continues, albeit with lower raw numbers because of the borough’s lower population. Fatalities are up from two last year to three so far this year, and total injuries are up 26.4 percent. Even on quiet Staten Island, there are roughly 28 crashes per day.
The latest reports of a major increase in fatalities came as NYPD officials started a public awareness campaign on Thursday on the dangers of left turns, which drivers typically undertake at higher speeds.
“Left turns are three times as likely as right turns to cause injury to pedestrians and our bicyclists on the roadway,” said NYPD Transportation Chief Thomas Chan. Left-turning drivers killed 21 pedestrians last year — roughly 18 percent of the total 115 that were killed by motorists, according to Chan.
As part of a “public awareness” campaign, the NYPD released a video urging drivers to slow down, use caution and always look both ways when making a left turn. The video featured the families of Allison Liao and Cooper Stock, two children killed by left-turning.
The agency also touted its role in enforcing Vision Zero, saying it wrote 704,284 summonses for moving violations last year, up from 569,754 in 2014, when Vision Zero got underway, an increase of 23.6 percent. It is unclear what percentage of those tickets were written to drivers of cars and what percentage were written against cyclists, who are frequently the subject of NYPD crackdowns, despite causing a minuscule number of injuries — and zero fatalities — compared to drivers.
But that effort comes with some concern that Mayor de Blasio has lost focus for his Vision Zero program. As he ponders a presidential run, de Blasio has been inconsistent on street safety, rejecting calls for more car-free streets and announcing a parking placard crackdown that will actually end up encouraging more NYPD officers and employees to drive to work. A pedestrian safety announcement by the mayor back in February offered little new in the way of proposals. He announced that he would slightly trim the city’s massive vehicle fleet, he left out a key detail: city workers drove 25 percent more miles last year than they did in the mayor’s first year in office. The mayor has also not committed to finishing his own administration’s improvements on Queens Boulevard or restoring the protected bike lanes on Dyckman Street that officials removed last year.
He didn’t even challenge Whoopi Goldberg when she attacked his documented Vision Zero successes!
Meanwhile, City Council President Corey Johnson has been announcing a raft of legislation and proposals that he says are designed to “break the car culture.” This week, the Council’s official response to the mayor’s fiscal year 2020 budget called for far more spending on livable streets issues such as car-free streets, pedestrian plazas and 50 miles of protected bike lanes — roughly three times more than the city built last year.
Activists are worried that Vision Zero is losing its momentum.
“We have always maintained that the pace of implementing life-saving street changes has been wholly inadequate — too many projects are stalled or not initiated at all because of unacceptable deference to the status quo,” said Transportation Alternatives’ co-deputy director Marco Conner. “When Mayor de Blasio holds out on these street redesigns the cost is paid in human lives. Whether based on political calculations or when prioritizing parking over safety, this should be no surprise. Time after time action is not taken until someone is killed — and sometimes even that is not enough. The fourth phase of Queens Boulevard, Ninth Street in Park Slope, and Central Park West are all different examples of live-saving changes either stalled, too late, or not even initiated following tragedy.” (A woman was killed on Amsterdam Avenue last month — another roadway whose life-saving redesign has been stalled by a car-centric community board.)
Conner said that the mayor needs to step up simple, life-saving strategies such as installing more leading-pedestrian-interval signals, sidewalk bulb-outs and plastic bollards.
“We know what works,” Conner said. “He can start by supporting the Vision Zero Street Design Standard bill that now has a super-majority of 43 City Council Members as sponsors and which would save countless lives by providing public transparency and helping to ensure that safety is always prioritized over convenience.”
The city of Cambridge, near Boston, became the first city in the U.S. to pass such a bill, when it voted unanimously last week to require the city to install protected bike lanes whenever it rebuilds a street.
Vision Zero is failing, as 2019 sees 30% jump in traffic deaths compared to 2018
New York City has seen 65 traffic deaths in New York City through April 28, according to the most recent police data. That’s compared to 50 traffic deaths recorded at the same point last year. Photo Credit: Jeff Bachner
There were 65 traffic-related fatalities between Jan. 1 and April 28, according to the most recent police data.
After years of reducing traffic fatalities, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature street safety program is failing New Yorkers in 2019.
Deaths on city streets are on pace to rise this year for the first time in the Vision Zero era, with areas like northern Queens and southern Brooklyn experiencing the most notable increases in cyclist injuries and overall traffic deaths.
There have been 65 traffic deaths in New York City through April 28, according to the most recent police data. That’s a 30% increase from the 50 traffic deaths recorded at that point last year and averages to a lost life nearly every other day of 2019.
“When I ride my bike it’s free transportation; free exercise and it’s carbon-free. It’s three wins in one — the only downside is I might get killed,” said Jacob Ouillette, an artist from Chelsea, as he biked to work in Long Island City recently.
Through mid-March, there were six cycling deaths in the city, when 10 were logged in all of 2018. Cyclist injuries are also rising. There were 968 biking injuries recorded this year, up 9.6% from last year, according to police data.
Ouillette bikes to avoid transit — the MTA is a “complete disaster” of an organization, he said — but he and others are constantly reminded of the danger that comes with their commutes. In the NYPD’s Queens North patrol borough, which includes neighborhoods like Long Island City, Astoria and Woodside, traffic fatalities have increased from 9 through April 28 last year to 13 this year.
“It’s honestly too frequent to recall just one. It happens every trip,” said Jonathan Wong, from Astoria, when asked if he remembered a recent near collision during a bike commute. Wong has become jaded after four years of biking from his home to Manhattan for his job in menswear.
“You get used to [close calls],” he said.
Just on Thursday, 3-year-old Emur Shavkator was walking in a crosswalk in Bath Beach alongside his mother when he was struck and killed by the driver of a commercial van who was making a right turn and failed to yield, according to police. Traffic fatalities in that southern Brooklyn patrol borough are up from 7 through April 28 last year to 14 this year.
Driver error — either distracted driving, speeding or the failure to yield — was the cause of at least 50 of this year’s citywide traffic deaths, or about 77%, according to police data.
De Blasio’s Vision Zero program, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024 through safe street designs and better enforcement and education, helped traffic fatalities drop from 299 in 2013 to 202 last year — the lowest number of traffic deaths ever recorded on city streets.
But advocates believe de Blasio has lost focus on his goal and will be rallying on the steps of City Hall this week to call for the mayor to redouble his commitment to protect commuters on city streets. The city has completed 139 street improvement projects under Vision Zero, but critics believe such safety features should be coming at a faster clip. Families for Safe Streets, a support group branch of the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives, is pushing for the mayor to adopt TA’s Vision Zero Street Design Standard.
The program would require the Department of Transportation to install safety infrastructure — like bike lanes or pedestrian crossing islands — whenever a street is repaved. That would bypass the city’s typical community outreach policies, an idea that has upset some community board members around the city who value sway over street projects that could impact the number of vehicle lanes or parking spaces.
“We know it’s those changes that save lives and we can’t be fighting one street at a time, investing a huge amount of effort to overcome a small minority of people who are opposed,” said Amy Cohen, of Families for Safe Streets. “Systematic change is needed and we need the mayor to step up.”
Others have become increasingly frustrated with the city’s use of its police force under Vision Zero. Kenny Lawrence, whose daughter Aurilla was killed while biking in Brooklyn earlier this year, wrote in a recent Gothamist opinion piece that he was “furious” when he learned that cyclists were being targeted in a ticket blitz following the tragedy.
“Did Mayor de Blasio not understand that many of these cyclists who were being targeted were actually headed to a memorial ride in honor of Aurilla?” he wrote.
Jon Orcutt, a spokesman for Bike New York and former DOT policy director, believes the city has already found a Dutch-inspired design that could make intersections much safer for cyclists — though it has been slow in rolling it out. The DOT began piloting the design, known as “offset crossings,” in 2017 at several intersections around the city, where paint and bollards are applied to adjust vehicle turning angles so that drivers can better see cyclists while also slowing those cars down.
Orcutt said the city should go back and add the designs to popular curbside bike lanes, like on First and Second avenues. He considers the design superior to the current standard for intersections with protected bike lanes, where turning drivers and cyclists have to mix in the same lane
“The strong critique of the mixing zones is that you’re basically a bicycle in mixed traffic at the toughest part of the route, which is the intersections,” Orcutt said. “You’re only protected from traffic for the easier, straight-ahead part.”
The DOT has pushed back against the idea behind the Vision Zero Street Design Standard and the notion of automatically installing offset crossings along protected bike lanes, reasoning that the city should not pursue a one-size-fits-all approach to street changes.
Brian Zumhagen, a spokesman at the DOT, said in a statement that the city would take action following this year’s trends, though didn’t offer details. The DOT will continue using off-set crossings where appropriate, and the city soon plans to update the mixing zones on First and Second avenues when the streets are repaved, Zumhagen said.
“We are deeply troubled by any loss of life on our streets,” Zumhagen said. “While progress on traffic safety is not always linear, we will not rest in our Vision Zero work and are committed to stepping up our safety redesigns, which along with other measures have brought fatalities to historic lows.”
Vision Zero Isn’t Working
An article posted on the Atlantic‘s CityLab last week documented that many of the cities that have adopted “vision zero” policies have seen pedestrian fatalities sharply increase. These cities, notes the article, have “spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, rebuilding streets to calm traffic and reduce driving, lobbying for speed limit reductions, launching public awareness campaigns, and retraining police departments.” Yet Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, among others, saw sharp increases in pedestrian and/or bicycle fatalities after adopting Vision Zero policies.
This won’t be a surprise to Antiplanner readers. As described in Policy Brief #25, Vision Zero is an overly simplistic strategy that fails to solve the real problems that are causing pedestrian fatalities to rise.
Vision Zero is based on the observation that pedestrians hit by cars traveling at high speeds are more likely to die than if the cars are traveling at low speeds. So Vision Zero’s primary tactic is to reduce driving speeds. Vision Zero’s secondary goal is to reduce driving period by making auto travel slower and less desirable compared to the alternatives. Neither of these are working very well.
As Policy Brief #25 noted, the real problem isn’t speed but design. The fastest driving speeds are on urban freeways, yet they have the lowest pedestrian fatality rates because pedestrians are normally excluded from the freeways. Traffic on one-way streets tends to be faster than on two-way streets, yet pedestrians suffer fewer accidents on one-way streets because they only have to worry about traffic coming from one direction when crossing the streets.
Moreover, simply slowing daytime traffic doesn’t treat another major problem, which is unsafe behavior. More pedestrians die and the rise in fatalities is greater during the three-hour period between 3 am and 6 am than the nine-hour period between 9 am and 6 pm. Most fatalities are also away from intersections and a high percentage of nighttime pedestrians who died had alcohol in their bloodstreams. Presumably the same is true for the drivers, but the data don’t report driver alcohol levels for pedestrian accidents alone.
Better street lighting, better enforcement of driving under the influence laws, and policies aimed at discouraging people from crossing the streets outside of designated crosswalks, especially at night, would be more successful at reducing fatalities than increasing traffic congestion during rush hours, which is really what Vision Zero is all about.
We can say for certain that Vision Zero’s efforts to reduce driving have failed. Chicago and Los Angeles were the first major cities to adopt Vision Zero goals in 2012. Since then, per capita driving in Chicago has grown by more than 5 percent while in Los Angeles it has grown more than 2 percent.
For decades, traffic engineers followed a tried-and-true formula for reducing auto fatalities: improve roadway designs in ways that reduce the number and impact of accidents. Vision Zero has diverted cities from that formula in an overt anti-auto strategy that sometimes actually makes streets more dangerous (such as when one-way streets are converted to two-way operation). So it is no surprise that Vision Zero isn’t working
We need a new name – Vision Zero just isn’t working
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/culture/article-we-need-a-new-name-vision-zero-just-isnt-working/
New existing protected bike lanes are under utilised. Only a handful of people who ride bikes who say they are great use them. The majority dont and the bottle neack this cause in traffic only adds to the pollution and slows things down. first respondents EMS, Fire Police already have a hard time getting through areas like this. This will only make things worse not better. Bikes and Cars existed together for over a hundred years NOW they want to change things for the worse not the better. Bikes dont obey traffic rules and regs like cars do and cause more accidents with pedestrians with people. Bike abusers ride on sidewalks no bike safety training no licenses no insurance they have it easy already.
Always sad to see how many car lovers attempt to trash any idea by this city to make it healthier and safer. More and more people are biking and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this city is getting so congested that having a car is truly a luxury. One day NYC will catch up with the rest of the USA and world in creating more bike lanes, but in the meantime we have to wait for the old car loving farts to die off…
I ride a bike and live in Astoria and I would literally take any street besides Crescent or 31st Street to get to the bridge. Way too much congestion when so many side streets are essentially deserted.
The problem with non-bike lane streets is that drivers are even less aware of bikes. Some even get agressive when they seem to think that a bike is slowing the down on their way to a red light. I’d take a bike lane first.
Sounds great! I will use these lanes everyday. Excited for DOT to make east-west protected bike lanes too. Very cool!
How many members of the DOT and council members use their permits on their dashboards to park by meters or hydrants and, more importantly, how many of them take their bike to work? Bicyclists go through red lights, stop signs, zig zag in and out of traffic while people are crossing or cars are making turns and never get a ticket! NYC and NYS take note: bicyclists DO NOT: pay for registration, licenses, inspections, insurance, meters, taxes for parking in lots, taxes when they gas up or any other fees that drivers of all sizes of vehicles have to pay and wait at DMV to renew their licenses. We are a driving and walking city and this has gotten way out of hand!!!!! I hope the next mayor realizes who pays for this city and it’s lousy, broken down roads!
All we are doing is removing that ridiculous double parking on 31st and adding a bike lane. Good! More people need to start biking.
Right, and cars never do that and actually kill people.
We are becoming a biking city.
>>Bicyclists go through red lights, stop signs, zig zag in and out of traffic
Neither do walkers. So now we should tax people to ride their bike? Are you kidding me?
>>bicyclists DO NOT: pay for registration, licenses, inspections, insurance, meters, taxes for parking in lots
The 31st plan looks ok because they are just moving parking to between the pillars but to make Crescent street now down to one lane is ridiculous. We don’t live in the suburbs where it’s only a few vehicles. What I’ve seen is that outside of Manhattan most of these bike lanes in the outer boroughs barely get used. People survived for many, many years without bike lanes. This is just more wasting of our tax dollars. Oh and I’m a biker.
Like traffic isn’t already bad in Astoria… Wait until these things get implemented. Get ready for a nightmare.
Maybe you should ditch the car and get a bike.
Because I can attach skis to my bike and bike 100 miles to the slopes…
Exactly. 31st street is a nightmare-find another street to ruin.
A bit of traffic around the bridges during rush-hour hardly constitutes as a “traffic problem”.
Y’all acting like this little neighborhood is Times Sq or something. Sheesh!