Re: Extensive plan for traffic calming is revealed

Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News
Attn: Letters to the Editor
30 Henry St.
Brooklyn NY 11201
(718) 858-4483

The Brooklyn Heights Association called the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming project "a baby step in the right direction." They were being kind. In fact, the project has been taking giant steps in the wrong direction for some time now, moving farther away from the community's original goal of reducing traffic on neighborhood streets and making streets safer for walking and cycling. At each step of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project, the Department of Transportation gave speeding motorists and through traffic priority over the safety and livability of Downtown Brooklyn's neighborhoods. As a result, the community is no closer to achieving its goal than it was in 1996 when they took to the streets to demand an end to bad traffic on neighborhood streets.

The DOT's foot dragging in Downtown Brooklyn is an insult. The City knows how to reduce through traffic in neighborhoods that suffer with heavy traffic from highway off ramps. They've already done this in Chelsea and the Upper West Side. By excluding traffic reduction as a goal from the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming project, the City has wasted our time, our energy and our sincerest efforts to improve our neighborhoods.

The agency is also failing to achieve its own stated goals of improving pedestrian safety and reducing speeding. The Department of Transportation's approach to the pilot project is too timid to have any effect on pedestrian safety. These half measures are worse than useless because they discredit the project and jeopardize its future.

With its experience and resources, New York should be leading the way in curbing the negative effects of traffic on the city and its neighborhoods. Proof the DOT can muster up the talent and leadership necessary to revive the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming project exists next door in Manhattan. While the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming project was languishing, both Times and Herald Squares in Manhattan were treated to their own pilot projects. They were made vastly more pedestrian friendly and safer using attractive, low-cost temporary treatments.

Unless the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming's Final Area-wide plan includes strategies like street reversals to reduce traffic, the community is back at square one.

Regards,
Ellen Cavanagh
Campaign Coordinator
Transportation Alternatives

Enc.: Attachment-5 things the city can do to repair the damage.

Attachment

The goal of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project is to reduce through traffic and improve pedestrian safety. Below are 5 things the City should do immediately to repair the damage:

1. Put people first: 80% of Downtown Brooklyn residents don't have a car. Everyone walks. Don't compromise the safety and mobility of the many for the convenience of the few.
2. Change street direction to reduce traffic. The most successful traffic reduction strategies in NYC use changes of street directions on non-arterial streets to reduce through traffic and prevent diversion of traffic from arterial streets onto side streets. Good examples of this are in Chelsea on Manhattan's lower west side and on the Upper West Side.
3. Use inexpensive temporary measures like those in Times and Herald Squares: Use pedestrian protective bollards, planters and paint to test the effect of medians and changes in sidewalk width. The cost savings allows for more flexibility, range and innovation in street design.
4. Use wider neckdowns and bus bulb-outs: Test the effect of wide and narrow street widths at neckdown locations. Lanes on one-lane streets should be narrow enough to enforce driver discipline and still allow safe clearance for cyclists.
5. Use standard height speed humps, speed tables and raised crosswalks: Base speed tables and raised cross walks on DOT speed hump policy and accepted international standards which call for 3.5-4 inch high humps. The two-inch raised crosswalks and speed tables are not effective.