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Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

nytimes.com

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Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#111

Post by amarshall »

randallsquared wrote: post #88
randall wrote: post #9

Imagine if, in high density areas like Manhattan, cars were simply not allowed. Wow. The thought of how pleasant Manhattan would become if only cabs + busses + delivery trucks + ambulances were allowed makes me almost too happy. Would be so awesome.

I just don't understand this. I moved to Manhattan last year, and while there some things I've been annoyed about, it wouldn't have occurred to me to put "cars" on that list. I didn't bring my car here, and having driven a rental a couple times in the city, it's hard for me to imagine why anyone drives here if they don't have to: the experience as a driver is far, far worse than as a pedestrian.

Cars are noisy (engines, superfluous horns) and lower air quality. They often drive aggressively and are a hazard to bicyclists and pedestrians. They cause congestion, slowing buses that are vastly more space-efficient.

Look at some of “urban plazas” [1] that have replaced short sections of road and witness how much more peaceful and open the city can feel when roads are removed in favor of people. Or, go down to 14th St. I was there this past week and it was wonderful—so much quieter and more open, and buses were moving smoothly.

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/list-of-plazas.pdf

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#112

Post by amarshall »

electric_muse wrote: post #14
rubyboss wrote: post #5

I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.

Walkable cities sounds great until you have luggage to carry or groceries to lug. It’s all about the collective good over that of the individual.

Around half of NYC residents don’t own a car. In Manhattan 3 of 4 don’t own one. Luggage bags have wheels and lots of older people have small wheeled carts for moving groceries, etc. more easily.

Movement of all but the rarest, large items is not a problem.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#113

Post by lkbm »

refurb wrote: post #109
megaremote wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40,000 people are killed every single year in the USA due to cars. Over 2 million are injured or disabled. And that is direct deaths, not including deaths from pollution. That is the tip of the iceberg for problems with cars. And yet, you can't see why cars are a problem? I don't believe you.

Millions are killed by medical mistakes. Does that mean we should do away with doctors? You can’t count the negative and ignore all the positives.

We don't have a effective alternative to doctors. We do for cars, at least in dense urban settings.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#114

Post by lkbm »

electric_muse wrote: post #14
rubyboss wrote: post #5

I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.

Walkable cities sounds great until you have luggage to carry or groceries to lug. It’s all about the collective good over that of the individual.

What do people in NYC do? The majority don't have cars[0]. Do they take a cab to the grocery store?

This appears to be a solved problem.

[0] https://edc.nyc/article/new-yorkers-and-their-cars

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#115

Post by clairity »

thebradbain wrote: post #17
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #3

As far as I'm concerned, cars have no place in Manhattan, and should be banned from all but a handful of designated roads. Maybe give out special licenses to the disabled, or anyone else who physically requires a car—that way, they'll actually be able to get around at reasonable speeds, too.

Instead of an outright ban, I'd love to see price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing (prohibitive in the sense that it wouldn't make financial sense to drive a car as the primary mode of transport, not that if someone needed to occasionally use a car they couldn't) within Manhattan, with the aforementioned provisions carved out for those who demonstrate a need for a car. That way, for any of th…

i'm a big fan of mixed-use streets. for example, on a 6-lane street, you'd have sidewalks for foot traffic, 1 grade-separated lane each way for bikes/scooters, 1 protected lane each way for buses, and 1 lane each way for cars, with the car lane being progressively congestion-priced (by income/wealth so that you don't completely shut out the poor from driving into the city when necessary).

for efficiency and traffic calming, narrow the car lane to 9-10 ft wide (rather than the typical 11-12 ft in the US), but leave 11-12 ft wide lanes for buses (and emergency vehicles). 6-8 ft bike lanes allows 2-abreast biking/scootering. widen sidewalks and plant trees along all of them. there should be no free street parking, except for the disabled (and maybe temporary commercial use), limited to side streets rather than major thoroughfares.

i'm cheering for LA to do this, with it's awesome weather, endlessly-wide streets, and bad and worsening traffic.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#116

Post by Ericson2314 »

Ironically with a superblock style plan, 14th Street would be one of the only streets where cars are allowed.

Jokes aside, yes, I really hope this is the beginning of the end of cars in Manhattan. When it was announced I was thrilled: here was the perfect flash point to grow the anti-car movement in NYC. Now we have to deliver.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#117

Post by kunai »

cryptonector wrote: post #21
baxtr wrote: post #6

Cities were designed around cars. It’s time for a change.

New York wasn't.

Until Robert Moses came along, after which every borough outside of Manhattan got royally screwed with noisy and polluting elevated freeways, demolishing thousands of housing units in the BX and black and brown neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.

Things change over time. It's never too late to reverse that painful legacy, and this 14th St. project is but the first step.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#118

Post by kunai »

electric_muse wrote: post #14
rubyboss wrote: post #5

I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.

Walkable cities sounds great until you have luggage to carry or groceries to lug. It’s all about the collective good over that of the individual.

Ride-hailing apps now make that point moot, as do on-demand car rental services like Zipcar and car2go. Nonetheless I've never had a problem getting groceries on and off the bus.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#119

Post by kunai »

thrower123 wrote: post #107

This kind of thing makes sense in Manhattan. Manhattan is relatively tiny, and it is dense, and there is workable public transit. A subway system with stations every quarter mile or less does wonders. It just doesn't extrapolate to anywhere else in the country particularly well. Even Boston is a shit-show without cars, and that is another dense, old, East Coast city with legacy public transit, albeit much less well d…

Congestion charges and upzoning would fix that issue, but people with the same outlook on this problem (aka NIMBYs) that you do seem to hate those things as well.

People often forget this fact but the vast majority of cities east of the Mississippi in the U.S. developed without cars for most of their existence. Streetcars were the name of the game until the 1950s, after which personal car ownership was heavily pushed and subsidized by the government after bending to the will of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

The entire idea of designing our cities around car ownership and the single-family household is extraordinarily new and unnatural. There's nothing prohibiting us from creating density in these post-WWII cities; just look at Denver or Portland and their massive successes with public transit and upzoning.

Re: Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

#120

Post by Scoundreller »

jrockway wrote: post #93
Scoundreller wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done. Makes snowplowing a mess. NYC can’t just shutdown like Vancouver does every time it snows :)

It is street parking that ruins winter for bikes. The snow plows can't get to the edge of the road, so the bike lane which marks the parking/plowable road area suffers. I don't think it's a big deal because we don't really get a lot of snow in NYC. A plan to improve the 50 weeks a year without snow on the ground is better than not doing the plan because a couple weeks in February will be miserable.

About 20-40 inches per year in NYC, while 12 is lucky in a year in Vancouver. And is prone to melting when the sun comes out.

The Pacific moderates a lot better than the Atlantic!

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