Eric Adams will enter office at a crucial moment for the city's first Open Streets program — allowing restaurants to expand into sidewalks, parking spots and streets closed to cars. | Mark Lennihan/AP Photo
Eric Adams will step into City Hall at a critical moment for New York’s transportation planning.
With the New York area expected to receive $20 billion in new funding from the federal infrastructure package, massive projects that have been sidelined for years are getting a second wind — from building new rail tunnels under the Hudson River to upgrading the maligned Penn Station.
At the same time, city officials are taking a renewed look at how best to use city streets after the pandemic allowed the city to reclaim roads for outdoor dining and recreation, and biking boomed to new heights. But it also brought new hardships, as drivers took advantage of empty streets — causing a surge in traffic violence.
POLITICO spoke to several transportation advocates and experts about what steps they think the mayor-elect should take as the city considers how it can change the way people get around. Here’s what they said:
Vision Zero
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2024 is in jeopardy.
New York City saw a deadly surge in traffic violence during the pandemic, when lockdowns emptied out streets and created more opportunities for speeding and reckless driving. Fatal crashes killed 77 New Yorkers from June to August alone, according to an analysis by Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit that advocates for public transit.
“It’s pretty clear it’s beyond failure. It’s a tragedy of epic proportions,” said Danny Harris, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives.
Adams should focus on getting personal cars off city streets, Harris said, building on the city’s efforts to install rapid bus lanes and cordon off streets to cars for dining and recreation. Transportation Alternatives created a 25X25 initiative that calls on the city to reclaim 25 percent of its street space from cars by 2025, by transforming them into public spaces such as bike lanes and new parks.
The city should also crack down on reckless drivers by, among other things, reducing speed limits and working with Albany to expand the city’s speed camera program, Harris said. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently said cities should have the ability to install speed cameras without asking Albany for permission.
Adams, an early backer of the 25X25 initiative, has said the city should “discourage car use to attract visitors with more open space and open markets.”
Adams has also vowed to reduce the city’s own fleet of vehicles, as well as cutting back on placards that allow city officials to park with impunity — but he hasn’t offered specific numbers.
Open Streets
The pandemic created a new need for open space, especially for New Yorkers who don’t live near parks. Amid pressure from the City Council, de Blasio created the city’s first Open Streets program — allowing restaurants to expand into sidewalks, parking spots and streets closed to cars.
Open Streets have been extremely popular. Before the pandemic, there were only 1,200 licensed sidewalk cafes in the city, said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, an association representing restaurants and nightlife venues. Now there are 11,000.
But the program isn't without flaws. Some communities have struggled to keep the streets closed to traffic, with little funding and resources to set up barriers. Some residents have complained that restaurants aren’t properly maintaining their dining sheds or cleaning up after nights of revelry.
Adams will enter office at a crucial moment for the program.
City officials plan to release new design guidelines for the program next spring — an effort to create some cohesion in the various dining set-ups used in the streets. Adams will be able to influence what the next phase of Open Streets looks like, as it evolves from an ad-hoc effort into a permanent city program.
Adams could also pursue other methods for improving the program, such as creating a new mayoral office dedicated to managing open streets and providing funding to low-income areas to participate in the program, Rigie said.
Rigie also recommended that the city move forward on efforts to build trash containers in streets to remove waste from sidewalks and reduce rat sightings. The Department of Sanitation was supposed to create a pilot for trash containerization, but it was paused because of the pandemic.
“I think out of all the doom and gloom of the pandemic, one bright spot was New York reclaiming our streets for all different uses,” Rigie said.
Biking
The city experienced a biking boom during the pandemic, with New Yorkers looking for fast transportation that wouldn’t put them at risk of contracting Covid-19. The increase in biking pushed de Blasio to expand bike lane access, including by adding a new protected bike lane on the Brooklyn Bridge.
But transportation advocates said the city has a lot more to do to make cycling safe and enjoyable for more residents. Jon Orcutt, the advocacy director for Bike New York, had one message for Adams as he prepares to enter office: It’s quality, not quantity.
“What the city calls protected bike lanes are not — they are crappy flex posts designed not to damage cars,” Orcutt said. “That whole area of policy has become a huge travesty for New York.”
Advocates and local officials have long warned that the city’s current design for protected bike lanes doesn’t do enough to keep cars out after several high-profile crashes — including one last year where an e-scooter delivery worker in Queens was hit and killed by a truck that entered a protected bike lane.
Adams, an avid cyclist who has vowed to ride his bike “all the time,” has committed to building 300 miles of protected bike lanes. Adams has said he wants to see New York embrace a “bike culture” like many major European cities.
Orcutt said there should be less of an emphasis on mileage, and more on improving bike lanes so they are truly separate from roadways.
“That’s the new question — will the new mayor’s bike lanes look different from the old mayor’s bike lanes,” he said.
Buses
The pandemic underscored the importance of the city’s sprawling bus network.
It was initially the most resilient transit service during the worst of the pandemic in 2020, when subway and commuter rail riders fled the system and roads emptied. By contrast, bus ridership dropped only by about 50 percent.
The MTA attributed the strong bus ridership numbers to essential workers who were boarding them to get to work every day. Transportation advocates have since pushed for an expansion of dedicated bus lanes to expedite service.
De Blasio has made some modest gains on that front, after promising 20 miles of new bus lanes last summer. Most recently, the city unveiled two new busways in southeast Queens.
But more can be done, said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, a public transportation advocacy group.
The City Council passed its Streets Master Plan in 2019, which commits the city to installing 150 miles of bus lanes over five years. The city already is falling short of that target, which would require it to add 30 miles of new bus lanes annually, Pearlstein said.
“We’re looking for not a shakeup, but a speed up,” he said.
Renae Reynolds, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said the city also needs to be more proactive in electrifying its bus routes. While the MTA is responsible for buying its fleet of buses, the city could encourage the transition by setting up more electric vehicle chargers along bus routes, Reynolds said.
“There should be exploration about the potential for on route charging so we’re facilitating electrification on all types of routes,” she said.
Adams has committed to building out 150 miles of new bus lanes over four years and expediting the roll-out of transit signal priority technology, which coordinates traffic signals so buses aren’t left idling at red lights. Adams has also pledged to commit capital funding to buy more electric buses until the entire fleet is converted.
MTA Oversight
While the mayor controls the city’s physical streets, much of its transportation planning is left up to state officials.
The MTA board oversees the region’s subway, bus and commuter rail system — controlling everything from which infrastructure projects should get priority to how much commuters will pay.
The mayor gets to appoint four voting members to the board, and county executives in the downstate region also get to appoint one member. But the governor controls the majority of the 21-member board, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo often used that structure to have an outsized influence on how the MTA operated.
During his campaign, Adams faulted the current structure for overseeing the MTA, arguing during a mayoral forum that the city has been treated like a “bastard child.” He then called for the city to have five more members on the board, with one from each borough.
Rachael Fauss, a senior analyst at Reinvent Albany, said it’s difficult to see a path where the structure of the MTA board gets changed given that it requires Albany to agree to weaken its power.
But Adams could have a stronger role in shaping the MTA than de Blasio did, Fauss said, because Hochul has said she intends to empower local agencies to make their own decisions.
“There’s a different governor and I think a different dynamic of how the board members will interact with each other,” Fauss said. “That perhaps gives Adams an opportunity to have his members play a larger role.”
"sound" - Google News
November 30, 2021 at 05:00PM
https://ift.tt/3d4VxIb
Transportation experts sound off on priorities for Adams - Politico
"sound" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MmdHZm
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment