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Early Addition
Earlier this week, Transportation Alternatives released a study that finds relationships between people's behavior and the neighborhoods they live in. For instance, someone who lives on a high traffic street is less likely to go outside and enjoy the neighborhood or let the children play while someone on a quieter street would get to do those things. Plus:
The study finds that New Yorkers on high traffic streets harbor more negative perceptions of their block, are more frequently disturbed during sleep, meals, and conversations, and, in two of the four study areas, possess significantly fewer relationships with their neighbors compared to residents on low and medium traffic streets. Based on these findings, it is no surprise that 49% of all respondents stated that reducing the number of cars traversing their street would "totally improve" their quality of life. Of those respondents residing on heavy traffic streets, that figure jumps to 62%.The residents surveyed live in Astoria, Brooklyn Heights, Chinatown, and High Bridge (and spoke to people on streets of varying traffic in each neighborhood).
Transportation Alternatives naturally has suggestions for how to improve quality of life under the umbrella of reducing traffic: Improve mass transit and bike paths; lower speed limits and add more speed bumps; and use congestion pricing. The NY Times' Clyde Haberman devoted a column to the study today and noted the number of automobile-related scandals that have plagued local politicians.
Gothamist does believe the streets affect our behavior (there's nothing like yelling at a driver for turning on red) but the quality of the sidewalks are another layer (our morning walk to the subway is along one very quiet street that seems to be where all the dogs like to poop and their owners like to leave it).
Photograph of West 41th Street by edEx on Flickr
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The mayor is big into quality of life issues, such as the smoking ban and noise reduction (ridiculously boiled down to the Mr. Softee jingle-gate a couple of years ago).
Reducing traffic, which would have an indefinitely number of benefits to citizens, would be the greatest contributing factor to his legacy of improving the quality of life for all New Yorkers. It's the one issue that migth have an across-the-board benefit for rich and poor alike!
Instead of reducing trans fats, how about less pollution in the air?
g - totally agree.
The pooping thing isn't related to low vehicular-traffic streets, it's due to low foot-traffic streets. People behave better when they're not given a chance to be lazy in front of their neighbors.
j.b.
i live above a horrendously busy intersection. i wish i had listened to all the people who said: "never face the avenue." i should have asked myself why my big studio was so cheap.
i have grown to loathe my neighborhood. i cannot remember the last time i slept uninterruped through the night. i cannot hear the tv if the window is open. when i get into my apartment at night, almost nothing will get me out again after having to fight through throngs of people to make in my front door. i almost never want to go out.
if i leave my apartment for a week, i come back to a fine coating of black soot everywhere. i cannot imagine what it is doing to my lungs.
i've been living like this for three years and i can no longer take it. i move in three weeks.
As it stands now, the citys population will increase by X million of people within the next decade. The streets can no longer handle any more traffic. Manhattan is a testament to that. People getting hit left and right, bikers killed, pissed off pedestrians, and worse...drivers actually beginning to think THEY have the right of way when pedestrians are trying to cross the fucking street. I hate how they inch up and then speed through when they find an opening. I almost had my toes run over.
If the city wants to really do something good for the quality of life they WILL start making more bicycle lanes, wider ones and start charging tolls for cars entering Manhattan with less than two passengers.
I envision a future where there will be more cyclers than cars. Thats the way it should be in a growing city. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that people on bikes take up a hell of a lot less space than cars.
it's not west 41th street. heh... it was west 4th street at 10th street.
thanks for another published piece
I use the follwing quotes to expand on my points regarding their subjects, I am not making a criticism about the OP:
"I envision a future where there will be more cyclers than cars. Thats the way it should be in a growing city. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that people on bikes take up a hell of a lot less space than cars."
That was on SciFi channel last week wasn't it? While that is a wonderful and sweet sentiment, it's totally unrealistic. And as unneccessary and draconian as the smoking ban. While I would welcome a major reduction in autos on the island I know how the world works, and it's better to be pragmatic than a Critical Masshole.
"People getting hit left and right, bikers killed, pissed off pedestrians, and worse...drivers actually beginning to think THEY have the right of way when pedestrians are trying to cross the fucking street. I hate how they inch up and then speed through when they find an opening. I almost had my toes run over."
2 things come to mind when I read that:
Where were you in the intersection when the crosswalk sign blinked DON'T WALK? Most people don't know(or don't care to know) HOW to cross the street. If you're going to tell me the pedestrian ALWAYS has the right-of-way, guess how that bit of extreme thinking is going to sit with reasonable people who drive... I often am made to laugh by tourists who marvel at how "bold" NY'ers are crossing the street. You see in most American cities they actually use the crosswalk signs. You know, that sign with a little white guy that means it's safe to walk. When that sign turns to a flashing red hand, then maybe it's time to stop doing your make-up, lower your Ipod volume and get off your cell and make HASTE across the street. When it is a STEADY RED HAND well, if you aren't in the crosswalk guess what?
YOU SHOULD NOT BEGIN TO CROSS.
And let me say many drivers don't know how to get thru one properly either. So I think plenty of education is needed here for those that would embrace it. Because it's just as frustrating to get stuck for 3 lights trying to make a right turn than it is to have to wait to cross the street. I also think they should have some jaywalking ticket blitzes to inform the public that autos only have ONE choice, the street, while pedestrians and cyclists use both, many times irresponsibly.
We are ALL trying to get somewhere on a given day, and for most of us our time is valuable. Yours is as valuable as mine, and vice-versa. To simply put your "foot down" rhetorically without being neither practical or intelligent enough to know how to cross the street, well you're just making it tougher on the rest of us, in addition to those who DO try to work together. That's where the frustration of most drivers is borne, from pedestrians who walk around with "blinders" on their heads. Personally anyone who walks out in traffic with a " I have the right-of-way" attitude has some unconscious self-loathing working.
Let the bloodbath over this post begin!
RicktheCabbie said: "While that is a wonderful and sweet sentiment, it's totally unrealistic."
Except that it isn't. NYC lags behind other cities like London, Copenhagen, Chicago, and more, in reducing cars to a minority and increasing bicycle and pedestrian traffic.
You'll see a majority of hybrid autos before you'll EVER see a majority of cyclists in NYC, and we'll be better off for that.
rick- actually, no, not really. pedestrians have the right of way. the problem is that most cabbies and car drivers seem to think that THEY'RE time is more important than time. being a pedestrian and bicyclist in this town, I can tell you that most cab drivers, truck drivers and yahoos from jersey think that saving 1/10th of a second is more important that my own personal safety.
secondly, drivers constantly try to turn into people when pedestrians have light, not when peds have the red. I see this about 80,000 times a day. not to mention the City-estimated 1,000,000 times a day drivers run red lights. and don't give me crap about cyclists runnning red lights -- yes, it happens, and yes, it's annoying and occasionally dangerous, but we're not driving a 2 ton, polluting noisy weapon with limited sight distance.