Dear Commissioner Weinshall:

We write to reiterate our recommendations for tangible outcomes resulting from the NYC DOT’s truck route management study. We believe it is in the city’s best interest to develop stronger controls on truck movements within the city, and to prepare city agencies and communities for the higher truck volumes that every available projection reports for the future. To that end, the single most effective step the DOT could take would be moving truck routes off city streets and onto highways. This would provide immediate relief to New Yorkers.

In letter to you dated August 21, 2003, we urged you to ensure that this study will not recommend half-measures or stop short of developing an extensive, proactive tool-box to help city government and neighborhood leaders cope with the worsening onslaught of truck-related impacts, including pedestrian fatalities, noise and traffic congestion, damage to buildings and infrastructure, and disruption of quality of life.

A major focus of the study should be an investigation of options for re-routing as much truck traffic as possible from city avenues and streets to the limited-access highway network. The mid-20th Century notion of "parkways" as idyllic greenways for motorists has long been rendered obsolete by the sheer volume of New York City traffic, and by changes to those roads over time that have made them little different than the city’s "expressways." The Department’s decision last winter to allow some trucks on part of the Grand Central Parkway adjoining the Triborough Bridge is a positive example in this regard. It should be followed with more ambitious steps to re-route trucks from streets to highways. Of course, allowing trucks on highways from which they are now prohibited should be done along with imposition of greater truck restrictions on parallel avenues and streets.

We have attended several of the truck study’s community outreach workshops over the past few months. While it is apparent that many positive recommendations will be made, we are concerned about the continuing assumption that truck routes belong on city streets at all. We believe that the best results will be achieved by a progressive approach to moving trucks from streets to highways whenever possible, as soon as possible. Wherever existing infrastructure does not accept modern truck weight or size, NYC DOT repair and rehabilitation plans should automatically include an upgrade and modernization of the infrastructure to allow for truck traffic on all city highways.

We urge you to identify and implement a study area which would allow you to monitor the effect of moving trucks off streets and onto nearby highways, as was successfully executed with part of the Grand Central Parkway. The study would help identify more cases where trucks should be allowed on currently restricted highways, as well as the "tradeoffs" of tighter truck access rules to nearby local streets such highway access could facilitate.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to working with the Department on these important issues.

Sincerely,

Christina Hemphill
Transportation Director
New York City Environmental Justice Alliance

John Kaehny
Executive Director
Transportation Alternatives

Jon Orcutt
Associate Director
Tri-State Transportation Campaign

NYC Environmental Justice Alliance
115 West 31st Street #709
New York, NY 10010 212-239-8882

Transportation Alternatives
115 West 31st Street, 12th floor
New York, NY 10010 212-629-8080

Tri-State Transportation Campaign
350 West 31st Street #802
New York, NY 10001 212-268-7474