Dangerous roads for walking

I've had criticisms of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign over the years, but in general they share my goals and they do good work. Case in point is their report The Region's Most Dangerous Roads for Walking released back in March. Based on police reports, they provide maps of car crashes that killed pedestrians in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (although the Google Maps limitations make it hard to see them all at once), and they list all the stroads in the New York metro area and Connecticut where five or more people were killed over that three-year period.

It is in a spirit of constructive criticism that I suggest that fatalities per road is not the best way to compare roads. Roads have different lengths, so it makes more sense to compare fatalities per mile. This is a little tricky, because it usually involves some fraction of a fatality, but it you can get past that in your mind you get a better measure of dangerousness. So here, ladies and gentlemen, are New York City's most dangerous stroads, measured on a per-mile basis:

Stroad	Borough	Maximum width (feet)	2008-2010 fatalities	Length (miles)	Fatalities per mile
Brighton Beach Avenue	Brooklyn	95	6	1	6
Bowery	Manhattan	100	5	1.2	4.17
Broadway	Bronx	100	7	3	2.33
Fourteenth Street	Manhattan	85	4	2.2	1.82
Gun Hill Road	Bronx	100	5	3.5	1.43
West Street	Manhattan	195	7	5	1.4
Grand Concourse	Bronx	180	6	5	1.2
Ocean Parkway	Brooklyn	200	6	5.4	1.11
21st Street	Queens	100	4	3.7	1.08
Kings Highway	Brooklyn	135	7	6.7	1.04
Eastern Parkway	Brooklyn	210	4	4	1
Broadway	Manhattan	145	13	13	1
Seventh Avenue	Manhattan	145	5	5	1
Amsterdam Avenue	Manhattan	100	6	6.8	0.88
Avenue U	Brooklyn	80	4	4.8	0.83
Queens Boulevard	Queens	190	6	7.5	0.8
Third Avenue	Manhattan	100	5	6.4	0.78
Fourth Avenue	Brooklyn	120	4	5.5	0.73
Atlantic Avenue	Brooklyn	100	7	10	0.7
Union Turnpike	Queens	100	6	10	0.6
Jamaica Avenue	Queens	90	6	10	0.6
Richmond Avenue	Staten Island	100	4	7	0.57

I should point out that there may be others with at least one fatality per mile, but not listed by Tri-State because they were less than five miles long. Maybe someone at Tri-State can take a look and share that data.

The scariest ones are short stroads like Brighton Beach Avenue and the Bowery. With two bridge exits crossing it, I know exactly why the Bowery is the way it is. You can see on a similar map, CrashStat from Tri-State member organization Transportation Alternatives, that the part of the Bowery up by Gemma and the old CBGB's is not the really dangerous part. Every year, three or four people die for the convenience of Staten Islanders.

Crashes resulting in pedestrian or cyclist injury or fatality, 2007-2009, from CrashStat by Transportation Alternatives

But according CrashStat, the fatalities are pretty evenly spaced on Brighton Beach Avenue. Why six fatalities in three years?

No more permanent parking garages

In the past, I've talked about various negative aspects of parking. Basically, parking encourages driving, parking lots themselves are a special kind of hell, and parking takes resources (land, air, concrete, transit money, builders' money, politicians' time, people's time) away from more worthy uses. The only time I support parking is at the curb, when it replaces lanes for moving mixed traffic. Of course, the famous Donald Shoup has put some numbers on the High Cost of Free Parking.

Tonight I want to talk about garages. More than the one or two car family garages, I mean the big places to park cars that have something on top of them. Sometimes it's more layers of parking, sometimes it's a building. Just about every town bigger than 50,000 people - and many smaller than that - has some kind of multi-story garage, and lots of buildings now include a "parking pedestal" - a few stories of parking with a building on top. When these are at street level, they are deadly to the pedestrian experience, as Ben Fried at Streetsblog has shown on Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue.

Chicago's Marina City is one of the most famous "parking pedestal" developments.

In response to that criticism, some architects have come up with the concept of a "parking sandwich": a building with retail on the ground floor, then one or more floors of parking, and then multiple floors of office or apartment space on top. This has been proposed for the Nyack Superblock, a site that now contains a large surface parking lot.

These multi-story parking garages are their own kind of hell. In Angel or really any violent television show or movie that takes place in Los Angeles after 1970, horrible things are constantly happening to people in parking garages. They're the deserted alleys of the Radiant City.

It's kind of understandable why politicians would want to build parking, or require other people to build it. If you take a short-term view of the world and think that everyone is just going to keep driving, then of course you want to build places for them to put their cars. But for those of us who think it's pretty likely that people will stop driving, it's actually painful to see so much land and air and time and money and materials going into building these things.

The problem is that once you build parking garages, they're really hard to retrofit. Often they're built with enough space in between the levels for cars to drive and people to walk, but not enough to be a comfortable place to live or work if you build floors on top of the concrete and ceilings underneath the next level. They've got these weird ramps - who's going to want their desk in the middle of one of those? Or your kitchen table - you'd be constantly getting breakfast in your lap. And the - I can't call them windows - openings to let light in and fumes out. Often they're the wrong size and shape for windows, usually too narrow. There is a plan to replace one of the hardly-used garages at Yankee Stadium with a hotel, but it would require tearing down the brand-new garage.

Look, most of these garages are already mandated by law. I would be much more comfortable if those laws simply went on and mandated that the garages have to all be of a form that can be converted to apartments or offices fairly cheaply. Sure, that's an additional expense that we're foisting on the builders, but the parking itself is usually an unnecessary burden, so what's a little more? If you're really concerned with the developer's bottom line, then just ease up on the parking requirements in the first place.

Can we do this? Build it into the zoning code? Require it for LEED certification? Let's take action now so that we don't waste too much more.

Gridlock Sam's uninspired, unviable elevated busways

I've already given my main objections to "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's plan to toll the East River Bridges and use some of the money to reduce tolls on the MTA bridges that don't go to Manhattan. I've talked about how Schwartz goes out of his way to provide "something for the drivers," but fails to give them what they really want: validation of the status that they sought by becoming drivers in the first place. I've talked about how this "something for the drivers" is not about compensating the current drivers, but sinking money into durable infrastructure for anyone who will drive in New York City in the next thirty to fifty years. This is not a vision of a sustainable future.

Now I'm going to turn to a relatively minor point, but still an important one. Schwartz's plan includes some improvements to transit, but they're small and uninspiring; what you might expect from a traffic engineer who feels obligated to come up with something to contribute to transit but is completely uninterested in it. It's got several bad points, including these elevated busways along the median of the "LIE, Bruckner and Belt":

"A More Equitable Transportation Formula For NY Metro Area," slide 23

I'm very much in favor of using highway rights-of-way for transit, for a number of reasons linked to my goals (see above). Reducing highway capacity discourages driving. A dedicated right-of-way with grade separation allows transit to move faster, making it more competitive with driving and thus improving ridership and revenue. Using a highway right-of-way enables grade separation without expensive tunneling or property condemnation. But these elevated busways are probably the worst possible way to provide a dedicated grade separated right-of-way.

First of all, Schwartz's proposed elevated busways are expensive. Part of the success of the Lincoln Tunnel XBL comes from the fact that it uses lanes that are already there. The only additional expense is moving the bollards. In contrast, Schwartz's proposal would leave all of the existing lanes for private vehicles and construct expensive elevated roads above them.

Second, the proposed busways do not take existing car lanes. The famous BRT of Curitiba, Bogotá and Guangzhou take lanes away from cars and trucks, thus reducing the competition from government-subsidized private vehicle travel. Schwartz's proposal would actually increase the available road space for private vehicles by removing buses from the roadway.

Third, they are still busways. The only reason to run buses instead of trains is that they can use existing road infrastructure. If instead you're going to construct an entirely new platform, it is much more efficient to put tracks on it.

Fourth, Schwartz gives no thought to Manhattan terminal capacity. More than anything else, this is what convinces me that he just tossed this in to please transit advocates (or bike advocates who spend some time on transit issues). How does Sam Schwartz expect the bus riders to get to their jobs in Manhattan? Does he just want to terminate the busways at the bridges and tunnels and have them fight their way through against private cars? Does he really not know that when the DOT tried to build a dedicated busway on 34th Street, they were defeated? Does he not know that there's an organized movement with political clout fighting against bus stops in Manhattan?

Schwartz's plan is sold as being more politically and financially viable than the plans put forth by Bloomberg and Ravitch. If you build proper terminals for these busways in Manhattan the plan becomes financially unviable, and if you use the existing streets and curbs in Manhattan it becomes politically unviable. Nice try.

Man's parking-lot inhumanity to man

A few months ago I was so caught up in my tablet (probably writing a blog post) that I forgot to ring the bell to get off the bus, and it sailed right past my stop. I was in a hurry, but I said to myself, "No problem, I'll just cut across this parking lot!"

It had been a while since the last time I was in such a big parking lot, so I had forgotten how hellish they were. When you spend a lot of your travel time as a pedestrian being bullied by drivers, you may think that full-time pedestrians are the only people who get bullied by drivers.

I wasn't even bullied by any drivers that day. I just had to walk across an enormous expanse of asphalt, with the sun beating down, constantly aware that a car could come speeding up behind me, or zip around the corner in front of me, or pull out from one side or the other. And this one wasn't even so bad. It was only March, so the sun wasn't too hot. There were no dust storms, or flash floods, or any of the other things that make wide expanses of asphalt so unbearable.

As I walked, I looked at the other people in the parking lot and thought, "They're not full-time pedestrians. They're drivers! They get shat on just like me!" This is not an "us and them" issue. The drivers and the parking lot designers were making "us" (i.e. other drivers) miserable.

But then I realized that even among drivers it's not all "us." The people who park closer in have a distinct advantage: the closer in you park, the longer you're a driver and the less time you're a pedestrian. You can bully the other drivers who get the spaces further out, because they've become pedestrians while you're still a driver. This is one of the reasons people go nuts over parking spaces.

You may think, "Well, okay, but at least it's equal opportunity, because everyone can park closer in; they just have to get there earlier or get lucky." And "handicap" spaces - well, people with handicap permits deserve the advantage because they have a hard time getting around on foot. But this parking lot was attached to a hierarchical institution where the closer-in spaces were assigned to people higher up in the hierarchy. After I crossed that awful parking lot I came to another one, reserved for people with higher rank. Then I came to a smaller lot with numbered spaces that were assigned to specific individuals.

At this institution, the top people get to stay drivers for the longest period of time, while those at the bottom of the pyramid become pedestrians almost as soon as they arrive. That's one way the hierarchy is reinforced. In some places, the assignment of parking spaces is a form of power in its own right, and the person who controls that assignment can exact favors in exchange for granting a preferred space. The really special people (I have no idea whether they exist at this institution) are the ones who get driven around; they always get dropped off at the door, and never have to walk through a parking lot.

This is just one of many ways that drivers bully and harass each other, not just pedestrians. It's worth remembering. And interestingly, as a bus passenger I'm not even at the bottom. I don't have to walk through the parking lot at all (especially if I'm not in a hurry). There are sidewalks for us bus passengers, and although drivers often bring their cars onto the sidewalks and bully us there, it's less common.

Parking lots are hell, and they're hell for almost everyone. So why do we keep building them? Why do we have a large regulatory apparatus whose primary job is forcing people to build parking lots? Why do we have an army of people ready to spring into action the moment they think there's not enough parking? The whole thing is crazy, tragically crazy.

Gridlock Sam's plan is not fair or equitable

I've got objections to "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's plan to toll the East River Bridges and use some of the money to reduce tolls on the MTA bridges that don't go to Manhattan. I've talked about how Schwartz goes out of his way to provide "something for the drivers," but fails to give them what they really want: validation of the status that they sought by becoming drivers in the first place. I've talked about how this "something for the drivers" is not about compensating the current drivers, but sinking money into durable infrastructure for anyone who will drive in New York City in the next thirty to fifty years. This is not a vision of a sustainable future.

Now let's move on to the next big one: it's not fair. Schwartz actually calls his plan "the Fair Plan." This is reiterated by Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer who call it "fair" and "equitable." The problem is that it's only fair if you take a very limited view of the system.

"A More Equitable Transportation Formula For NY Metro Area," slide 14

You've probably all heard the story about the two women who went to King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a single baby. Solomon, in his wisdom, offered to split the baby and give each woman half. One of the women, realizing that half a baby was worse than none, told Solomon to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon replied that she must be the real mother because she was willing to part with the baby rather than see it killed.

Schwartz and his friends spent time talking to people who had opposed the Mayor's congestion pricing plan and came up with something that at least some of them felt would be fair. To me it seems like a classic case of splitting the baby. It will not satisfy the drivers and will prevent transit from successfully expanding into the outer boroughs and suburbs. We have enough money to maintain one transportation system for the area, but we can't afford to properly maintain two - or at least, there are very few New Yorkers who want to pay high enough taxes, gas prices and transit fares to maintain both.

Worst of all, it's an example of a special crazy kind of "fairness" that completely ignores history. It was apparently football coach Barry Switzer who said, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." That's the mindset of New York drivers, who benefit from the billions of dollars poured into the region's highway system over the past fifty years, and zoning codes that require every builder to supply parking, outside of Manhattan and Long Island City. They can't even wrap their minds around the idea that New Jersey drivers already pay tolls to enter Manhattan.

This kind of bizarro "fairness" that ignores history and splits babies is not too surprising coming from Shelly Silver and Peter Vallone, Jr. It's sad to see it coming from Melissa Mark-Viverito and David Yassky. It's downright depressing to see it coming from people like Sam Schwartz, Charlie Komanoff and Brian Lehrer, all of whom really ought to know better.

From Sheepshead Bay to City Hall

On Saturday I wrote about the abandoned Manhattan Terminal at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, where trolleys used to turn around, allowing their passengers to transfer to the BMT Centre Street trains (now the J/Z) and, after 1936, to the E train (now the F). In addition to the trolley terminal, the Centre Street loop was four tracks, two from the Williamsburg Bridge to Chambers Street and eventually connecting with the Montague Street Tunnel (now used by the R train), and two from the Manhattan Bridge intended to connect with the trains from the Brooklyn Bridge. The tracks across the Brooklyn Bridge were removed and the tracks from the Manhattan Bridge reconfigured to connect to the Sixth Avenue line, and two of the Centre Street tracks have now been abandoned.

As I wrote four years ago, that means that these two tracks are now available for additional service. In general I think we shouldn't give rail infrastructure to buses, and I would ideally like to see the old Tomkins and Nostrand Avenue trolleys rebuilt.

In the meantime, I would be willing to see these relatively short tracks used by buses. In particular, the Nostrand Avenue Select Bus will be running from the Bridge Plaza bus station in Williamsburg south to Sheepshead Bay. It will connect to the 2, A and J trains at all times, the 3, C and M trains during the day and the 5 and Z during rush hours. But the transfer to the J/M/Z at Bridge Plaza is not particularly convenient, involving walking a block and a half, crossing busy streets, and climbing stairs.

What if instead the buses continued across the bridge and into the tunnel, where they could whisk passengers right to existing stations with transfers to the N, Q and R at Canal Street and the 4, 5 and 6 at Chambers Street, and the J and Z at every stop?

What if the Nostrand Avenue Select Bus went across the bridge?

There are similar challenges with ventilation as there are in my proposal for the trolley terminal, but with hybrid or natural gas buses we could keep emissions to a minimum. You might argue that the buses would still get stuck in bridge traffic, but not if we gave them a dedicated lane. We might not be able to allow other buses, like the Chinatown vans and buses, into that tunnel, but we could allow them to use the lane on the bridge if there's room.

Something for the future drivers?

I've got a lot of objections to "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz's plan to toll the East River Bridges and use some of the money to reduce tolls on the MTA bridges that don't go to Manhattan. I've talked about how Schwartz goes out of his way to provide "something for the drivers," but fails to give them what they really want: validation of the status that they sought by becoming drivers in the first place. Inadequate as it is, that "something for the drivers" may be too high a price to pay for tolls on the East River bridges.

"A More Equitable Transportation Formula For NY Metro Area," slide 23

Schwartz is talking about widening the Belt Parkway, the Staten Island Expressway and the Van Wyck Expressway. The "Bus Rapid Transit down median," as shown in the image above, would add capacity to the Long Island, Bruckner and Belt Expressways by moving the buses into a new separated lane.

There are people who are currently drivers, who have made Investments in driving like buying or leasing cars, or houses with garages and driveways, or houses or businesses in car-dependent areas. Some of them maybe should have known better, but given the blind eye that we've turned towards pollution, carnage and resource depletion, and the pressure that all of us have felt to Grow Up and Get a Car, because Families Need Cars, we can be sympathetic. I want to see something for those people. I don't know, twenty years of free transit for Nassau and Westchester?

I just don't want something for Drivers, that essentializes their decision to buy a vehicle, and that they can't enjoy if they then renounce driving. I also don't want something for future drivers. Any kind of massive government investment in driving will not just benefit existing drivers, but generations of drivers to come. We want future generations to walk and take transit, not keep driving.

The status quo is crazy. Let's just get that out there right away. This idea that there are two paths to prosperity, one for working class "real New Yorkers" that leads to an SUV and a McMansion in Spring Valley and another for "hipsters from Ohio" that leads to a cargo bike and a Park Slope brownstone, is false. Large lot, car dominated development is unsustainable, and we will bankrupt our city and state if we try to sustain it.

Schwartz's plan would sink a whole pile of this toll money into car infrastructure. Once that money is spent we will feel pressure to make it easy for people to use those roads in order to recoup our investment. They will also enshrine the precedent that we have to keep spending money on roads, and the toll money will continue to be supplemented with the sales and income tax dollars of people who don't drive.

Maybe Schwartz is playing some kind of game. After all, in 2010 his employees gave a talk in Chicago about the advantages of tearing down urban freeways (PDF). Maybe he's only pretending to be unable to imagine that only a tiny percentage of my grandchildren (his great-grandchildren) will want to drive. Maybe he thinks that getting the bridges tolled is the thin end of the wedge, and in twenty years we'll have enough political support to dedicate all the toll money to extending the subways out to Syosset. If so, he's a very good actor. But unless those new highway lanes are secretly built with hidden rails, ready to be unveiled at the implementation of Fair Plan Phase II, we'll be stuck with a lot of new roads to maintain.

The bottom line is that we are never going to get our pollution and carnage down to acceptable levels, maintaining our energy supply and our dynamic economy, and provide access for all to work, commerce and society, as long as our outer neighborhoods and our suburbs are dominated by cars and their infrastructure. We can't give those up for East River bridge tolls. It's just not enough.