For far too long, we the residents and businesses of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island have suffered under New York’s "nightmare" traffic and its congestion, noise, danger and pollution.
For our children, and for our health, productivity and quality of life, we need relief.
This is not an impossible task. Today there are modern and effective solutions to reduce traffic and lessen its impact on our daily lives.
We the undersigned residents of New York City urge that--in the interest of reclaiming the sanctity, health, and productivity of our neighborhoods--the following five solutions be considered as part of a comprehensive traffic relief plan to reduce citywide traffic volumes by 15% by the year 2009. A 15% reduction need not negatively impact commerce and mobility, as driving trips can be converted to transit, car pooling, walking and bicycling trips.
- Wider and more protected rights-of-way for transit, walking and bicycling
It is not enough to rhetorically encourage New Yorkers not to use their cars. In addition to cleaner subways and more frequent subway service, New Yorkers need faster buses, more comfortable sidewalks, more signal time to cross the street, and safe bicycling. The key to making these improvements is more space: sidewalks need to be wider and buses and bicyclists need more, wider and better-protected lanes and pathways. Specifically, the city should reclaim street space for a new generation of arterial street greenways and exclusive bus-ways, and adopt a citywide blueprint to reshape key streets and squares into pedestrian paradises.
- Parking Reform
New York City can dramatically improve its parking policy. Free and under-priced on-street parking in commercial districts generates a feeding frenzy of trolling motorists, reduces valuable parking turnover, and exacerbates double parking. The city should expand its successful midtown parking-pricing program to commercial districts throughout the five boroughs.
- Traffic Calming
“Traffic Calming” refers to redesigned streets that are safer for walkers and discourage cut-through traffic, speeding and driving in general. The City should expand its limited traffic calming program to equip all NYC residential neighborhoods with traffic safety upgrades such as 15 mph speed zones, speed reducers, wider sidewalks and extended pedestrian crossing time.
- Reduce Truck Impacts
Trucks are a serious concern in New York City. By the year 2020, truck traffic is projected to increase 50% to 70% over today’s already high levels. Trucks are major noise polluters, cause most of the wear on our streets, impact property via vibration damage, and contribute disproportionately to severe crashes and traffic congestion. Though the law sets the maximum truck size at 55 feet, hundreds of grossly oversized trucks roll daily through all five boroughs. The City must better enforce existing truck rules and routes, while developing new policies to protect neighborhoods from this onslaught. This could include traffic calming that discourages truck turns onto inappropriate streets, time-of-day toll schedules to remove some truck trips from peak hours, changes in tolls that distort truck routes and the progressive removal of avenue truck routes onto parkways as infrastructure permits. Implementation of rail and barge solid waste export systems and better NYC connections to the U.S. rail freight network should be accelerated.
- Congestion Pricing
Charging motorists for the privilege of driving on New York’s most congested streets is controversial. Many advocates of congestion pricing regard it as a long overdue and common-sense method that would reduce traffic and generate much-needed revenue for transit improvements. Congestion pricing has reduced traffic congestion in central London by 30% and despite some initial resistance, is now widely supported. Because time is money, the charge will pay for itself with shorter commute times for workers and businesses. Toll collection technology has advanced to the point that it need not contribute to additional traffic congestion. The City should conduct a feasibility study of variable congestion pricing for the major commercial districts in the city.
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