ROSENTHAL CONSIDERING TRAFFIC SYSTEM THAT STOPS CARS ALL FOUR WAYS FOR PEDESTRIANS

This is a very bad idea. In one place it has already been implemented – 66th and Columbus – the change dramatically reduced the amount of time allocated to pedestrian crossings. A clear step backward for pedestrians designed to make it easier for cars to turn.

While you’re at it, how about an effort to enforce traffic regulations for all the new bike traffic you’re shifting focus toward? I have nothing against getting people out of cars, but the bicyclists that are replacing some of that clutter have total disregard for street lights, signs, flows of traffic, and basic laws. Where we used to teach our kids to look both ways when crossing, we now teach they must look three or four times – once each way and once again – often in the direction that traffic of any sort was never intended to flow. As ubiquitous as CitiBike has become, any effort to educate and encourage bike safety has been invisible, including advising riders that biking on sidewalks is illegal.

This is great news! I absolutely fully support this. Cars & pedestrians do not mix. Speaking from the standpoint on my mother-in-law that got hit by a cab making a left turn that failed to yield, something that could have been prevented with four way stops.

Restrain cars, make more buses, allow scooters and bike to park. That is the city I want to live in.

Great idea! I’d nominate 110th and Broadway for one such intersection: transfers between buses and train, the #1 train stop, two bus stops, one on each corner (#4 and #104, uptown and down), West Side Market, an elementary school, a drugstore, and a six-lane highway (Cathedral Parkway a/k/a 110th Street) crossing Broadway.

I just came back from London where most of the busy intersections stop traffic in all directions and it is a godsend, especially since for most overseas visitors, the traffic is also traveling on the opposite sides of the streets. I agree with the other posters here about the irresponsible bicyclists who go through red lights, there must be some way they could be ticketed and the points put onto their drivers’ licenses (if they have one) or at least be fined.

Milton wrote,

I’m all for safety but the bikes and pedestrians are just as much at fault as the cars. Negotiating the streets of NYC has become like the Wild West! All should be held responsible for obeying the rules!

I must say that this is a most cogent and concise synopsis that I feel should be underscored. It seems that every story that concerns traffic safety (particularly, the dangers that intersections pose to pedestrians) brings-out tendentious, often intransigent advocates who fall into one of three distinct camps (pro-biker; pro-pedestrian; pro-motorist), each narrowly and even zealously advancing their own agenda and narrative, while mainly dismissing anything that runs counter. (Much like matters involving rent regulation or any number of other contentious topics.)

I would like to mention, as particularly troubling, adults who, with children in-tow, engage in careless and reckless behavior such as jaywalking (even into traffic); standing out onto the curb while waiting for the light to change (if they even wait for it change); or walking while under the spell of their digital master (a.k.a. their “smart” device). I am afraid that I have seen many instances of such shocking imprudence. (To say nothing of all the children I’ve seen riding scooters or even skateboarding without the protection of a helmet, mere inches from a parent…) Then there are those instances where it is the child whose eyes remain fixed-upon a diversion while walking or even crossing the street with a parent. There may be no undue danger to the child in such a situation, provided that the supervising adult remains sufficiently alert and watchful. But what kind of training is that for an impressionable youth, to be allowed to remain oblivious to his surroundings while navigating the city streets? What kind of influence?

(At least one such incident that I witnessed stands-out in my memory as having a particularly charming and even quaint aspect: the boy’s head was buried in a (paper) book. All the same, let us not forget that in the context we are discussing here, even the most wholesome diversion is no less potentially deadly than any other.)