A Plan To Perfect the New York City Street (curbed.com) 70
An "achievable, replicable" plan for a city that's embracing public space as never before. Curbed: New York and Curbed recruited a team of designers and consultants, led by the architecture firm WXY, to approach the streets as a matrix of overlapping, interrelated networks. The allure of more humane cities has generated an entire library's worth of plans and pilot projects, both top-down and grassroots, for areas like Downtown Brooklyn and Soho. A few years ago, a consortium of Harlem business and organizations collaborated on a plan to redesign East 125th Street. In 2019, the City Council passed a law requiring the Department of Transportation to develop a five-year citywide plan. But this torrent of good intentions and expertise has fragmented the issue further by producing more schemes to ignore, postpone, and gripe about. Most New Yorkers' concerns are exquisitely parochial: The only time a Bronxite is likely to care about, say, the width of Soho's sidewalks is if it makes parking there even worse.
So we tried to imagine what a comprehensive transformation would produce on a generic Manhattan block, to the extent that one exists. We chose Third Avenue between East 33rd and 34th Streets because of its concentration of terriblenesses and virtues. It is congested, dense, torn up, noisy, and lively. Lined by towers and tenements, plied by trucks and fed by tunnels, it's a short walk from offices, hospitals, and trains. Yet we also embraced its frenzy. Our goal was not to impose the serenity of a provincial Dutch city or to streamline the block into anodyne efficiency. New York without friction wouldn't be New York. We aspired to pack all the measures we already knew we should be taking into one vivid frame. An aerial photograph became a platform on which to overlay a possible future city. The result is a real-life I Spy book, filled with details that accumulate into a livable, equitable, safer, and more pleasant place to live. This is no futuristic fantasy of self-sweeping sidewalks or robot-controlled Tesla taxis gliding up at the touch of an app. Instead, we imagined a makeover that could happen now, given urgency and determination. To execute it in permanent, handsome materials would be slow and expensive; a recent project to renovate a stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cost $2.2 million per block. But the DOT has already shown many times that some of this work can be achieved with paint, planters, and boulders. Getting the first draft done matters more than making it perfect and perennial.
Our efforts yielded two big lessons. The first is that every improvement is a trade-off. Protecting bus lanes with concrete barriers, for example, would keep cars out, but it would also keep limited-stop buses from passing local ones. Our street incorporates a possible set of compromises. The second is that even simple tweaks imply a far-reaching organizational overhaul. Enclosed trash bins would push the Department of Sanitation to update some of its trucks and pickup procedures. New regulations and speed limits mean enforcement, and thus money, manpower, and -- most important -- a sense of common purpose.
So we tried to imagine what a comprehensive transformation would produce on a generic Manhattan block, to the extent that one exists. We chose Third Avenue between East 33rd and 34th Streets because of its concentration of terriblenesses and virtues. It is congested, dense, torn up, noisy, and lively. Lined by towers and tenements, plied by trucks and fed by tunnels, it's a short walk from offices, hospitals, and trains. Yet we also embraced its frenzy. Our goal was not to impose the serenity of a provincial Dutch city or to streamline the block into anodyne efficiency. New York without friction wouldn't be New York. We aspired to pack all the measures we already knew we should be taking into one vivid frame. An aerial photograph became a platform on which to overlay a possible future city. The result is a real-life I Spy book, filled with details that accumulate into a livable, equitable, safer, and more pleasant place to live. This is no futuristic fantasy of self-sweeping sidewalks or robot-controlled Tesla taxis gliding up at the touch of an app. Instead, we imagined a makeover that could happen now, given urgency and determination. To execute it in permanent, handsome materials would be slow and expensive; a recent project to renovate a stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cost $2.2 million per block. But the DOT has already shown many times that some of this work can be achieved with paint, planters, and boulders. Getting the first draft done matters more than making it perfect and perennial.
Our efforts yielded two big lessons. The first is that every improvement is a trade-off. Protecting bus lanes with concrete barriers, for example, would keep cars out, but it would also keep limited-stop buses from passing local ones. Our street incorporates a possible set of compromises. The second is that even simple tweaks imply a far-reaching organizational overhaul. Enclosed trash bins would push the Department of Sanitation to update some of its trucks and pickup procedures. New regulations and speed limits mean enforcement, and thus money, manpower, and -- most important -- a sense of common purpose.
Bogus encoding again from a Mac poster no doubt (Score:3)
This is frickin endemic to Slashdot. Nobody seems to know how to properly post messages from a Mac without bogus encoding like this. WHY?
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This is frickin endemic to Slashdot. Nobody seems to know how to properly post messages from a Mac without bogus encoding like this. WHY?
Or... /. could add a simple regex to correct this -- instead of spending time flagging way too many posts as ascii-art. (Try posting an entry from the Firefox "user.js" file to help people disable new FF "features"...)
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This is frickin endemic to Slashdot. Nobody seems to know how to properly post messages from a Mac without bogus encoding like this. WHY?
Huh? "the width of Soho's sidewalk"
Typed on a Mac.
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This is frickin endemic to Slashdot. Nobody seems to know how to properly post messages from a Mac without bogus encoding like this. WHY?
Huh? "the width of Soho's sidewalk"
Typed on a Mac.
I applaud your ability.
But, do you not see the weird characters in the original TFS and in my blockquote, that I see? "TM" in parentheses preceded by an a with a carat accent?
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This is frickin endemic to Slashdot. Nobody seems to know how to properly post messages from a Mac without bogus encoding like this. WHY?
Huh? "the width of Soho's sidewalk"
Typed on a Mac.
I applaud your ability.
Why, thank you. I tries my best, you know! 8^)
But, do you not see the weird characters in the original TFS and in my blockquote, that I see? "TM" in parentheses preceded by an a with a carat accent?
I surely did see them. But it's not a Mac thing. IIRC, it's related to unicode. Been around on Slashdot a long time. Others might have more details.
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Some shitty software out there is converting apostrophes into U+2019, which is "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK".
Apple's mobile keyboard is known to do it. Maybe the author wrote it on an iPad touch screen. It's the wrong character in any case.
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Thank you for that tidbit; it both confirms my idea that this is somehow Apple-related and gently educates me about the actual root problem.
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Perhaps it's Apple's fault that their browser wants to insert Unicode curly quotes when you just type an apostrophe? Has never happened to me on any Windows or mobile browser (including iPhone Safari).
Re: Bogus encoding again from a Mac poster no doub (Score:2)
No other website has an issue with it.
Slashdotâ(TM)s unique issues with Unicode have been around for decades and they canâ(TM)t be bothered to fix it.
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Becausâ(TM)s JarJar usesâ(TM)s Brandybrand(TM) jeejah, it can'tâ(TM)s be hisâ(TM)s fault!
Stop urbanists! (Score:1)
Two words: HELL NO.
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Re:Stop urbanists! (Score:4, Informative)
On the picture, there are clearly two "general-purpose traffic" lanes, which is less than now, but twice as many as you claim.
Also, your "general-purpose traffic" lanes look quite unsuitable for pedestrian traffic to me.
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Also, your "general-purpose traffic" lanes look quite unsuitable for pedestrian traffic to me.
Don't walk on the road. DUH!
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There is no parking lane. The article explicitly states "We envision drastically scaling back free parking", and graphics further down the article have the lanes labelled.
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Re:Stop urbanists! (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing non-city folk don't think about, is that people in cities don't spend most of their time at work or home with an annoying/frustrating commute separating them from the two. People in cities tend to spend their free time outside their homes. Optimizing streets only for maximum traffic flow and parking makes cities definitively worse places to live. Optimizing streets so cars can GTFO and otherwise pedestrians and bikers can co-exist in peace while enjoying parks and street dining makes cities much better places to live. And if you just hate cities, don't bother driving through ever, please.
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>"people in cities don't spend most of their time at work or home with an annoying/frustrating commute separating them from the two."
Ha!, the chauvinism of someone who lives downtown! Most people in cities have awful commutes sometimes involving a mix of bus/subway/car.
At least in your car you're by yourself, and not standing cheek-to-jowl in a crowded subway with someone for whom showers are against their religion.
"The city will be your living room!"
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>"people in cities don't spend most of their time at work or home with an annoying/frustrating commute separating them from the two."
Ha!, the chauvinism of someone who lives downtown! Most people in cities have awful commutes sometimes involving a mix of bus/subway/car.
At least in your car you're by yourself, and not standing cheek-to-jowl in a crowded subway with someone for whom showers are against their religion.
"The city will be your living room!"
Don't forget puke, piss, and that guy wanking off. All part of the urban experience, amirite?
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chauvinism
awful commutes sometimes involving a mix of bus/subway/car.
Then you'll benefit the most, dipfuck.
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I guess you've never lived in New York City, or a big city at all?
I lived in NYC during Sandy and its aftermath. I vividly remember how all the transportation systems suddenly collapsed, leaving only cars and buses. How would that street work in this case?
Hint: it won't. It'll be gridlocked.
So often traffic in big cities has little to do with how many lanes there are, but oddball situations like light timing that causes traffic to loop around a segment of street(thanks to google maps)
Nonsense. Removing lanes pretty much never decreases the travel time. It instead just increases congestion so more people are forced to move to more inconvenient public transportation.
Optimizing streets so cars can GTFO and otherwise pedestrians and bikers can co-exist in peace while enjoying parks and street dining makes cities much better places to live.
It doesn't. It just creates congestion and forces people to waste more time. The modern urban plann
Re:Stop urbanists! (Score:4, Informative)
Nonsense. Removing lanes pretty much never decreases the travel time. It instead just increases congestion so more people are forced to move to more inconvenient public transportation.
Removing, no. But they're replacing it with bus and bike lanes. If people actually use them (and they need to be able to bike/bus anywhere for this) it will reduce congestion
It doesn't. It just creates congestion and forces people to waste more time. The modern urban planning should focus not on sabotaging the traffic, but on redirecting it. By not allowing dense residential developments, encouraging suburban growth with hub-and-spokes model for transportation, etc.
Encouraging more suburban growth, are you kidding? The last thing America needs is more suburban hellscape. Dense cities where you can walk when you need to go are much more pleasant and require way less resources for maintenance and transportation.
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And this doesn't even touch the elephant in the room: it fucking SNOWS in New York. And snow can easily take out a lane or two. It's OK when your road is 4 lanes wide. But when it's functionally 2 lanes, it just makes it die. Oh, and nobody is going to bike, so gridlock gets even worse.
Encouraging more suburban growth, are you kidding? The last thing America needs is more suburban hellscape.
"Hellscape"? Ask people where they want to live. Overwhelmingly they prefer individual houses, with only a minority
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Bus lanes MIGHT work. But BIKE lanes almost never do. They routinely carry less traffic than they displace.
And this doesn't even touch the elephant in the room: it fucking SNOWS in New York. And snow can easily take out a lane or two. It's OK when your road is 4 lanes wide. But when it's functionally 2 lanes, it just makes it die. Oh, and nobody is going to bike, so gridlock gets even worse.
Bike lanes do work if they're part of a reasonable network that allows people to get where they need to and don't just abruptly end at the end of the street: https://www.researchgate.net/f... [researchgate.net]
It also snows elsewhere where people use bikes such as Sweden and Finland and they do fine.
"Hellscape"? Ask people where they want to live. Overwhelmingly they prefer individual houses, with only a minority preferring urban slums.
Everyone's been conditioned to the white picket fence american dream, and it's not like anything else is even an option in most places when everything is zoned for SFH.
Hell no. Dense cities are the remnant of the dumb era, when people just thought that adding "housing" just solves transportation issues. They are absolutely disgusting and anti-human. Humans evolved to live onnice open plains, not in anthills.
Wow you're right I certainly can't wait to move to this shinin
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Re: Stop urbanists! (Score:3)
Our world-leading obesity rates in the over-40 crowd would go way down.
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Right, letâ(TM)s force everyone over 40 to walk or bike miles instead of the far more sane automobile traffic.
Sane autombile traffic? In Manhattan? Sane is the last thing that comes to mind.
People over 40 can ride a bike just fine. My 60 year old father does. There's also public transport if that's really not an option. And it's not like cars are banned, there's just more options so you don't have to rely 100% on your own car for every trip.
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Bike lanes do work if they're part of a reasonable network that allows people to get where they need to and don't just abruptly end at the end of the street
Cyberax's law: "In a discussion of urban transport the probability of Amsterdam being mentioned by morons who never lived there rapidly approaches 100%". Amsterdam is shit for bikers. It's simply that EVERYTHING else is even deeper shit, including public transportation.
So yeah, "if you take away all modes of transportation but biking then people will bike!".
It also snows elsewhere where people use bikes such as Sweden and Finland and they do fine.
JFYI, the majority of trips in Finland and Sweden are by car. The second option is public transportation. Bike is a distant fourth at 8%: https://www [statista.com]
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...oddball situations like light timing that causes traffic to loop around a segment of street(thanks to google maps): turn right, go one block, left, go one block, left, go one block, right. The drivers that escape the avoided segment fill the next segment, so the next time the light turns green the drivers on the cursed block can't proceed.
Google Maps may contribute to that problem (and Apple maps even worse), but cities induce that in themselves. It is a failure mode of grids when density exceeds a certain threshold and traffic light timings are essentially random, regardless of what navigation software is doing.
The solution is smart lights. But nobody makes a smart light with occupancy sensors robust enough to use it as input, and most cities are not willing to pay for interlinked remotely programmable traffic lights. Los Angeles was th
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But nobody makes a smart light with occupancy sensors robust enough to use it as input, and most cities are not willing to pay for interlinked remotely programmable traffic lights.
Both of those have been in common use in the Netherlands since the 1970s. The occupancy sensor is an induction loop embedded in the asphalt. Sensitive enough to detect a bicycle.
Interlinked lights are a bit rarer, used only on main roads.
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Both of those have been in common use in the Netherlands since the 1970s. The occupancy sensor is an induction loop embedded in the asphalt. Sensitive enough to detect a bicycle.
Interlinked lights are a bit rarer, used only on main roads.
Yes, that same technology is in common usage in the US since at least the same time. They're expensive and make pavement maintenance difficult, so they're only used in left turn lanes, and only at intersections that benefit from them greatly. An unoccupied left turn lane will skip the left arrow part of the cycle of the light in such cases. They are basically never deployed in every single lane at an intersection.
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Look at the street. Right now it's a functional street that supports normal traffic. The reworked street will be a gridlock with ONE general purpose traffic lane and an empty bike lanes next to it. With an empty bus lane (because buses are never on time).
Well, the article is pretty clear, the intent is to eliminate private vehicles, and their parking spaces.
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an empty bike lanes next to it.
What is happening here is an application of Braess's paradox [wikipedia.org] to pedestrians. Turn those lanes over to pedestrians and what you get is even more pedestrian traffic. And more pedestrian/bicycle and pedestrian/car conflicts. So the bike lanes may look empty. But their creation serves to moderate pedestrian overcrowding.
With an empty bus lane
The bus lanes may appear empty. But keep in mind that every bus you see is carrying 350 hot, sweaty bus riders packed in. So the overall efficiency is high.
Re:Stop urbanists! (Score:4, Insightful)
Two words: HELL NO.
Why hell no? I thought you were the greatest country on earth? Are you somehow incapable of doing something basic that dirty Europeans have been doing for years? Projects exactly the way you describe have been implemented all over the world to great success. Heck my current city is doing that RIGHT NOW through the main thoroughfare, reducing 3 lanes each way down to 1 to make space for more pedestrians, a bicycle highway and a public transport lane (tram + bus). Even with the lanes already blocked there's no gridlock, so what are you doing wrong? Note: This project is being undertaken after the roaring success of a similar project on the southside.
Oh that's right, you're too busy worshiping the car to get on a bus (which may be on time if it had dedicated infrastructure). Or maybe you should just cycle. It is after all very pleasant when you have a dedicated lane to get from A to B. (Note: A to B, not from Start to pray to fucking god you don't die to get to A, then cycle to B, and pray to fucking god you don't die from B to destination).
Every city in the world has shown bicycle lanes are only unused when they aren't connected, and they aren't connected because of people like you.
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Why hell no? I thought you were the greatest country on earth? Are you somehow incapable of doing something basic that dirty Europeans have been doing for years?
I was born in Russia, and I lived throughout the Europe. I got my driving license at the age of 27 and the first car at 30.
I know what I'm talking about. The US cities are fucking paradise if you want comfortable life.
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Your appeal to authority is as hilarious as it is lacking in authority. First car at 30? That's like saying I graduated school at 30. It doesn't bolster your argument, it is actively a determent to it. When I turned 30 I had already been driving half my life and was on my 3rd car.
US cities are a paradise for a comfortable life. But that's not what the discussion is about, the discussion is about whether they are a pleasant place for people to live, and they are objectively not which is why so many people ar
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Your appeal to authority is as hilarious as it is lacking in authority. First car at 30?
You've never been outside of the US, did you? I could buy a car (on my own) at 18. I didn't feel the need.
US cities are a paradise for a comfortable life. But that's not what the discussion is about, the discussion is about whether they are a pleasant place for people to live
Reducing road space and adding bike lanes does NOT make cities in any way more "pleasant". It just makes them more miserable.
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The reason why buses are never on time is because they keep getting stuck in traffic which screws up their timetables. Creating a dedicated bus lane fixes that.
And then when buses are not only on time but also able to zip past cars, more people will choose to take the bus, freeing up the general purpose lanes [imgur.com] and making traffic flow faster [wikipedia.org] than before.
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The reason why buses are never on time is because they keep getting stuck in traffic which screws up their timetables. Creating a dedicated bus lane fixes that.
The buses that travel on bus-only lanes are still routinely behind the schedule in the US. And even then, the intervals eat up any time-savings.
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No, that's bullshit.
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Intervals are also a common problem. The closest bus to me has 30 minute interval during the daytime. This means that on average I would wait 15 minutes each day for a bus. That's because I can synchronize one leg of the trip, but usually not the other one. That wait easily eats up any savings from a faster bus lane.
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The photo in your link shows a car behind the bus, so that's not a bus lane.
Holy fuck you're stupid.
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FFS Haven't "UX Experts" Fucked Up Enough Stuff (Score:2)
Now they're trying to apply their shit ideas to streets. Any time people have 'designed a city' it turns out absolutely shit. Get these bozo cunts the fuck out of anywhere they are. Let cities solve problems that they have now, as they are required. This might be a real world example of agile development: don't solve problems that don't exist.
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Most cities in the USA are being terrorized by draconian Robert Moses style state level departments of transportation with rigid, unyielding, and idiotic design standards. These DOTs are run by a generation of 1950s engineers who think that the only purpose of a road is to speed single passenger automobiles though as fast as possible and give kickbacks to their construction buddies.
Although I totally agree with you about UX experts, let's stop pretending that cities are actually being given control of their
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Most cities in the USA are being terrorized by draconian Robert Moses style state level departments of transportation with rigid, unyielding, and idiotic design standards.
None of the modern urbanists is fit to shine Moses' shoes.
He absolutely made the US one of the most comfortable countries that actually allows people to live in their own houses, and not in tiny apartments.
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I'm hoping the new city will have rounded corners and pastel shades.
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Any time people have 'designed a city' it turns out absolutely shit.
Not really. It's only absolutely shit when it's designed for the car instead of for people. Many redesigned cities are an absolute dream to live and work in. Look at Amsterdam, the best thing they ever did was fire the American urban planning expert David Jokinen. Proper town planning (now what the diesel worshipers do) has now made the city a constant top runner in the most livable cities lists and one of the most pleasant places in the world to live.
Your last quote is golden. "don't solve problems that do
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*NOT* what the diesel worshipers do (I wish Slashdot had a Preview function so I had the opportunity to ensure my spelling mistakes don't make the sentence say the exact opposite)
Noooooo (Score:2)
"Yet we also embraced its frenzy."
This is precisely what so many people hate about New York City.
So, "Let's make it better but keep all the shitty parts!"
Oh my f-ing god (Score:2)
When I heard the term "handsome materials" I threw up a bit in my mouth, as the lingering fear when I began to read the article came to pass. This means only one thing: Overpasses, except these ones will run the length of the street sending the street below into permanent night time. No frigging thanks.
And once they do this, everybody will rush in once again creating the problem they were trying to fix.
This is ninteenth and early twentyith century thinking and something cities are doing ever
Lefty Hipster Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Exquisitely parochial. Livable and equitable. Anodyne efficiency. Handsome materials. Etc. ad nauseam.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ . . . normal people who routinely participate in bi-directional communication with others do NOT use these phrases. This is fucking oration. It is literary masturbation for other self-styled "elites" to use as ammo as they continually sneer down at the rest of us scummy hicks who don't live in cities with over a million people. These are probably the same assholes who coined the term "Latinx" that almost no Latinos use [pewresearch.org].
Tokyo already has this (Score:3)
Go to Tokyo..they already have this
Once there, check out the districts of:
Shinjuku, Shiodome, Ginza, Shimbashi... etc..etc. there's lots of them..
wow, quite a result (Score:2)
"Our efforts yielded two big lessons. The first is that every improvement is a trade-off. ... The second is that even simple tweaks imply a far-reaching organizational overhaul."
Congratulations on your stunning achievement.
Next, a deep survey to determine the sun comes up in the east.
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Yeah. I also appreciated this line:
Apparently the dysfunction has become a part of the identity. They want to make improvements, but not too much or you'll not even recognize New York. Let some other big city make real progress.
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I have to admit, if I found myself suddenly on a gum-splattered street corner and there weren't ....I wouldn't expect that I was in New York, either.
- aggressive taxis honking constantly
- swarms of (at best) passive-aggressive pedestrians around me, fixedly and determinedly ignoring each other
- piles of shitty, leaking garbage on the sidewalk, frequently with rodent visitors (esp if you're running in the mornings before said swarms of pedestrians)
Not a fan of that giant urban example of the Calhoun Rat Expe