By Scott Etkin
Community Board 7’s Transportation Committee unanimously approved a resolution on March 10th that asks the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) to study ways to reduce the number of cars traveling through the Upper West Side en route to someplace else.
The committee’s resolution will be presented for a full-board vote at the Community Board 7 meeting on April 6th; if approved, it would become a formal request to the city’s DOT.
Nearly 75% of the cars traveling on the Upper West Side are “cut-through traffic,” meaning the car’s journey begins and ends outside the neighborhood, according to a model from the analytics company Replica, which used data from the DOT.
That statistic was shared with CB7’s Transportation Committee earlier this month by representatives from Open Plans, a non-profit whose goal is to reduce car traffic and improve pedestrian safety. Open Plans’ presentation introduced the concept of “Low Traffic Neighborhoods” (LTNs) as a strategy to discourage cut-through traffic.
As always, there is a trade-off in the use of street space. LTNs work by pushing cut-through traffic onto boundary roads outside the designated LTN area, which likely adds time to the car’s journey. LTNs do this by redesigning the flow of traffic, using “traffic calming” techniques such as chicanes (zig-zags within a street that encourage the driver to slow down), protected bike lanes, and reduced access to streets outside of key destinations, such as schools.
LTNs are intended to work without taking away parking spaces or access needed by emergency vehicles and buses.
“If done correctly, longer journeys have to use the strategic boundary roads,” said Tayla Schwartz, a senior strategist at Open Plans. “There is a slight inconvenience [to cut-through traffic] but in exchange you get a quiet neighborhood and the streets become safe for everyone.”
Low Traffic Neighborhoods are not a new concept; they have been implemented since the 1970s, and they are currently in use in several cities globally. The dozens of LTNs already in place in London have led to reductions in accidents, vehicle miles traveled, and pollution, according to a study done there.
On the Upper West Side, where approximately 25% of households own a car, Open Plans highlighted West End Avenue and Riverside Drive from West 96th to 106th Street as a potential opportunity for an LTN.
This part of West End is “a street that is probably overdesigned physically for the amount of traffic that it has currently,” said Carl Mahaney, director of StreetopiaUWS, which is part of Open Plans. “On the Upper West Side there are so many blocks that are relatively quiet, but the street is very much the dominion of cars and not other uses,” he said.
The transportation committee’s draft resolution asks DOT to “evaluate the current patterns of cut-through traffic in the neighborhood” and start with streets “around schools, senior centers or facilities for the disabled.”
A recording of the full meeting is available HERE, with the LTN discussion starting at the 1:03:10 mark.
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this should be fun
I lived on Amsterdam Ave for 6 years, I can say it functions more like a highway than a city street – tons of trucks, noise, pollution, tough crossings, and constant through-traffic.
If this proposal focuses on reducing cut-through traffic while preserving local access, it seems like a win for the neighborhood.
Only that would be completely selfish and unrealistic. The avenues are indeed major thoroughfares, and there is a tremendous amount of traffic passing through and in and out of Manhattan. Live on a side street if you can’t bear the traffic.
Except of course that avenues the size of Amsterdam and Columbus exist for the purpose of moving traffic through the city, not just to & from the neighborhood.
The whole idea that it should be otherwise ignores reality. Reality being the fact that neither the West Side Highway nor the FDR drive handle commercial traffic. Accordingly, every truck to and from midtown from points north has to take an avenue either east or west of Central Park. And that’s true whether it’s a step fan or an 18 wheeler.
The notion that we can limit this is fantasy.
something should be tried
The food that you buy in stores and restaurants on the upper west side comes down Columbus and Broadway through other neighborhoods.
By your logic “something should be tried” about the intrusion on their well being, right?
How dare we impose on other neighborhoods this way?
maybe life in the big city isn’t for you, have you considered a nice colonial on a cul de sac in NJ?
That is because Amsterdam and Columbus (other than Broadway) are the only “truck routes” on the UWS; commercial traffic is not permitted on RSD, WEA and CPW. So Amsterdam is the northbound commercial route and Columbus is the southbound commercial route. This has been true for time immemorial.
If the plan limits traffic on WEA and Riverside that will mean more traffic on Amsterdam.
And WEA and Riverside already have very little traffic except for the 96th St access to the West Side Highway. Riveeside is totally empty.
Amsterdam Avenue already lost a traffic lane too.
but you gained that bike lane so your door dash delivery get to you faster.
there are priorities that have to be addressed.
Neighbor evidently doesn’t witness WEA and RSD at rush hours when there is a steady crawl of commuter traffic, even on the RSD service drive from 97th to 111th with controlled intersections at nearly each block. I think this proposal is worthy.
I bet these are mostly people either originating in the UWS or going to the UWS. Want to add another lane on the Henry Hudson Parkway?
Another “plan” for another nonexistent problem.
West End Ave is already down to one lane, that during the day is a delivery zone for Amazon, Fed Ex, UPS and Fresh Direct trucks. What through traffic are they talking about? Is it going from where to where?
Riverside Drive (also down to one lane) in that same area is downright peaceful during the day with virtually no traffic, except for the very occasional speeding M5 busses that are all bunched together.. The only other time that it is busy is if there is some catastrophic accident on the West Side Highway and then it is packed.
Again, this scary sounding premise will consume so much time at CB7 that there will be little time left over to debate a nine million dollar renovation of a playground.
You’re OK with 3/4 of the neighborhood traffic not being neighborhood traffic? Riverside Drive doesn’t represent the neighborhood. Walk over to some of the other avenues.
And you know that because??? I am very skeptical of the statistics claimed by those who are lobbyists working for hedge fund backed paid advocacy groups presenting to community boards who are fundamentally big real estate oriented. Young “urbanists” who support bike lanes no matter the cost to businesses, pedestrians or drivers, and big real estate who are working through these groups to gentrify poorer neighborhoods. Follow the money.
Yes-people pass through these neighborhoods to get to their homes, their jobs, their children’s schools-last I heard that wasn’t illegal.
Your neighborhood is not an isolated island. All of Manhattan is pass-through territory. It’s amazing how little understanding people have of geography.
Yes, we live in the middle of the biggest city in America, obviously most traffic will not be neighborhood traffic and it’s ridiculous to expect otherwise.
Yes because it brings commerce here
You cannot complain about NIMBYism and then complain about traffic not being “neighborhood traffic”. If 100% of traffic in every neighborhood is “neighborhood traffic”, then what is the point of motor vehicles? Are you willing to build more highways?
need to less the use of cars in a city rife with public transportation
Yes and public transportation has its limits and always will have its limits. You force people you perceive as beneath you to use transit while you have a choice of electric citibike, Lyft or transit whenever it suits you. It is easy to say things as an urban elite. This is the problem people have with Democrats, you want everyone to think and act the way you want them to.
Hey-this is not Democrats!! I know hundreds of NY Dems furious about this urban elitism ruining their quality of life.
So we load your packages on a bus or subway?
I doubt they want to use subways for freight!
The article specifically mentions WEA and Riverside Drive. I’m not sure what your comment means. I’m NOT for this plan
Actually, the entire problem, as I see it, is that the entirety of Manhattan for commercial deliveries and trucks, has become more burdensome on certain corridors because so many lanes of travel were eliminated over the years. The of rest of Manhattan relies entirely on four avenues going downtown. These are Columbus, Broadway, Lexington, and 2nd Avenue.
Yes, there is heavy traffic there.
The remaining streets going north south have some sort of restrictions on truck traffic.
This is the “through traffic” that the authors of this proposal are possibly talking about.
As far as east west streets, none of our local streets can provide that access that is required for trade.
Urbanists want a high tech 19th century. Manhattan had way more people concentrated into less space at the turn of the 20th century.
yes, those walk up tenement apartments shared by multi generational families were awesome. and the smells of the street from the waste from horses was like perfume. let’s strive to bring it back
no one wants horses.
Of course ee are! Most of us don’t have cars! Who else would be driving? We’re not a private community, these are public streets!
Or would you like to cut into Riverside Park to add lanes to the West Side Highway, if you don’t want cars on what you seem to think of as neighborhood-only streets?
How else should they go?? No commercial traffic on CPW, WEA RSD and Highway is allowed
The folks with fancy apts on WEA and RSD want to add traffic to the commercial avenues.
Streets are public and they should stay that way.
How long until “partner” block associations, neighborhood associations and “community groups” privatize the streets?
As it is Open Plans is looking to hire staff who’s job will be to liaise with community groups and not just take over community boards, but the block associations too, in every neighborhood.
Nymbyism again! I guess there is no concern about increasing traffic on Amsterdam Ave? Or for that matter other parts of the neighborhood that are less better off?
West End was fine until they took the 72nd entrance to the highway away and took the lanes down to two lanes. Big mistake closing the highway entrance.
There is an entrance to the highway on 72nd Street.
There used to be an exit from the highway, but that was maybe 30 years ago.
The 72nd st entrance to the highway closed?
Seriously?
Oh, I’ve lived on West End for 30 years, traffic flows more smoothly now than before they shrunk the lane numbers. I agree that’s not the case around 96th during rush hours. Otherwise, it’ an improvement I’ll take whether I’m driving, riding a bike, or walking, and I do all of the above on West End, regularly.
You are SO right! Can this mistake be corrected under our new regime?
I’m all ears. Tell us how to restore the Henry Hudson Parkway exit at 72nd St. without removing two or three of the buildings on Riverside Blvd. Not that I’d be 100% opposed to that, but the folks living there might.
LEAVE US ALONE WE DO NOT WANT THIS
Yes we do!! Dense residential neighborhoods like the UWS need safe streets
We don’t have safe streets, and closing blocks down (while calling them open) won’t make them so! We have tens of thousands of unregulated motorized bikes speeding every which way in our communities without following traffic laws and who the Mayor just made unaccountable for their behavior by quashing c-summonses! Talk to any NY emergency room doctor and ask him how safe e-bikes are on city streets. They see severely injured crash victims each and everyday. Not just pedestrians but the e-bike riders themselves! But the city council who likes campaign cash supports the lobbies who stop e-bikes from being licensed with sincere efforts made to do so in the form of Priscilla’s Law,
This is part and parcel of a small group of wealth backed advocacy lobbyists like Open Plans, Trans Alt, and Open NY looking to transform the city into a wealthy, elitist suburban-urban space for young tech 15 minute city advocates. Sadly they create their undemocratic utopias without any regard to anyone older than their parents. The elderly, the disabled, and just old pedestrians are very poorly served by this city under the spell of this monied elite that Community Board 7 seems to love. They never met a bike lane they didn’t like! Or a closed street they could call “Open” that made those who lived there unable to reach their apartments by car and slowed down emergency vehicles to boot. The majority is not with this group folks.
An UES community board voted down “closing streets” lock, stock and barrel just last week. They’re not buying what this group is selling as they know it’s just a prelude to shutting down more viable streets all over NY. And that’s exactly what CB7 should do-vote down more closed streets.
The usual argument – how to protect people from … themselves! Open your eyes when you cross the street – cross at the corner, listen to your mother? DOT stay out of our neighborhoods – we need commerce and we need commercial services.
We do 🙂
So Harlemites should be able to stop the trucks bringing food to Zabar’s from going THROUGH their neighborhood?
Yes WE do
We don’t.
Where exactly are cars, trucks and non MTA busses supposed to go? Riverside Drive, CPW, West End Avenue and the Henry Hudson Parkway are supposed to be cars only. Broadway and Amsterdam are the only streets on the UWS that they can go on. How exactly are you redirecting when there are no other streets? This seems like the tail wagging the dog.
Urbanists want private cars except their ubers and lyfts to be excluded from local streets. They see those who don’t have the privilege of living in a neighborhood as beneath them and not worthy of being on “their” streets. They want us to scuttle in like rats, know our place beneath them and then scuttle out like rats.
And Columbus too also has trucks/ thru traffic
I would suggest they take the West Side Highway
So do you want to upgrade it to interstate highway standards? Would you advocate for funding for that? Right now as it is, MTA buses are discouraged from using the west side highway between 57th and 79th Streets due to weight concerns. The FDR drive was rebuilt in the 1980s and buses can’t use it north of 23rd Street, even though they were allowed to before about 1986.
what a great idea, shifting all the buses onto the limited access highway will really be a hit with all of the bus riders
Sounds good. Can they do anything to reroute the loud rattling trucks that thunder through the neighborhood almost every weekday morning about 5:30 or 6:00 AM? It sounds like they’re delivering empty dumpsters while driving over potholes. Maybe that’s what it is, empty dumpsters being delivered to midtown construction sites and loading docks. I don’t know but they’re loud.
Amsterdam and Columbus are local truck routes. You have all these urbanists that want off hour deliveries and more stuff being built and then you have people complaining about the trucks!
The big trucks come in at night, empty out in midtown, then head back empty in the early AM and since they’re empty yeah, they rattle when they hit the bumps.
We could end this and the bane of having food and supplies in the stores south of Central Park.
Those are totally unnecessary, of course.
Because NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD.
oh my, another transplant whining about the sounds of the city. you should consider a nice home on a cul de sac in the ‘burbs, you’ll have the tranquility that you crave and a 15 minute drive to anywhere
Urbanists move to the city from the suburbs and then demand a more dense version of same suburb that is like a campus of a private college located in a suburb. Cities and suburbs both have people with diverse needs but urbanists want control. They don’t help the perception that Democrats are scolds.
Love it!
What I would like to see is a more representative way of getting community feedback on ideas like this. Right now, community board meetings are filled with a small, self selected group of people who have hours of free time. They tend to be a very loud minority who is very effective at getting their way. Why not run a survey? Mail, phone, text, or even just standing on a corner and asking people. “Does the community support this?” is a question we should at least be trying to answer!
The community board on the UWS is stacked with urbanists and you’re still not happy.
Stacked with lobbyists and politicians looking for votes and how to spend tax money. DOT stay away from our streets.
You must not live on Broadway, Amsterdam, or Columbus if you love this. RSD and WEA are already by far the quietest avenues on the West Side.
Once again, people who live in a city and want it to be like the suburbs. This is NYC, if you choose to live here, you should understand that it’s a city. If you wish to live in a suburban environment, you are cordially invited to move to the suburbs. Or Staten Island. Please stop trying to make the city like the suburbs. The vast majority of us live here because we like living in a city, and we’d like it to stay this way.
…. That’s exactly the point – NYC is about urban living and this plan facilitates that. Treating our streets as highways for through traffic is for the burbs and we could learn a lot from other major global cities like London and Paris that have done exactly this sort of thing.
Urban living includes a place for people who drive.
If I was the governor of NJ, I would order the national guard and NJ State Police to block all entrances to the GWB, Lincoln and Holland Tunnels from New Jersey. Block the Outerbridge, Goethals and Bayonne too allowing only Staten Island residents and deliveries (MTA express buses between Staten Island and Manhattan using the NJ Turnpike to “cut through” traffic in Brooklyn would be banned). Oh and have the Palisades Parkway Police block the Palisades Interstate Parkway at the state border so that those in Rockland County can’t use NJ to “cut through” to get to NYC or so NYC residents can’t “cut through” NJ to get to Rockland and points upstate also (I have seen Manhattan elected officials do this to get to Albany).
A blockade that is just like the Berlin Blockade in 1948. Then you all will cry foul and file a lawsuit trying to stop it. You complain about traffic ills and if we did something like that about it in NJ to solve your traffic problem once and for all and also demonstrate how valuable NJ is to the NYC (and Philadelphia) metro areas, you would be upset about it to no end. People like UWS Dad want an exploitative relationship where the UWS gets to exploit and treat areas outside Manhattan as a source to extract from with no mutual benefit.
Through traffic to the burbs. That is not really true. Plenty of through traffic is to the outer boroughs and other parts of Manhattan. We have a constitution and that constitution allows for interstate commerce.
What do you really want? A wall built around NYC to shield you from the burbs? What if we decided to close the GWB, Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, would you support that?
Sorry, that’s plain wrong. I chose to live in this neighborhood in part because of access to the ‘exits’ as well as access to the core. That means the use of several forms of transport ( inclusive of bikes btw)
Others do too.
The approach here is NIMBYism, pure and simple. It says that you, living on 50th St, can’t have a truck come through the avenues built for trucks to bring food to your store because that’s ‘traffic through my neighborhood’ and not ‘traffic to my neighborhood.’ Ditto for a disabled person from 115th taking a cab to 34th.
It’s selfish and it stinks.
I agree that the city shouldn’t be the suburbs! So why is all of our street space devoted to free parking? We should prioritize walkability. If you want maximum convenience to drive and park everywhere, I agree you should move to the suburbs or Staten Island or literally anywhere other than one of the few neighborhoods in the entire country that doesn’t need to be built around cars and parking.
Ridiculous comment. We love NYC as it is. Trains, cars, bikes and feet. Multi modal. And if you think that only wealthy own cars and park on street. You’re wrong. Those of us on street can’t afford a garage but rely upon our cars for work and tending to family responsibilities out of the city. No one drives to midtown
Josh P,
Quite a few advocating for no-cars are people from suburbs who moved to NYC.
Seems strange suburban transplants would tell others to move
“Free” parking which is already paid for by taxes, licensing fees, registration fees etc. helps facilitate the movement of people and goods that public transportation cannot easily do and is also a good safety valve for and competition to the transit system. When you have the MTA and NJT as the only games in town when it comes to public transit, the threat of people leaving the system and deciding to drive is something that may actually motivate agencies to provide better service.
The MTA’s job is to make hard decisions that no elected official wants to be held directly accountable for. There is a big consumer preference, and justifiably so, for one seat rides. To truly have a city where cars come last, you are going to have to placate so many different people that I highly doubt urbanists want to please. For starters, I highly doubt the overwhelming majority of Manhattan residents want NJ Transit and other private buses from NJ, Rockland and Orange Counties directly serving areas like the UWS or UES. Manhattan residents have repeatedly opposed express buses from the outer boroughs, but cried foul when the MTA tried to cut the X90 and X92 between the UES and Wall Street.
There’s an agency of the MTA called MTA Bus Company which the city subsidizes ALL operating losses of, which were formerly NYCDOT supervised private bus companies that were more accountable than the MTA was as they got NYC issued franchises, but NYC and NYCDOT didn’t want the transit oversight role, in part because being a transit system that is more accountable, requires placating too many people that the MTA doesn’t have to. That’s the closest we’ve come to an unlimited transit budget in NYC and seeing how they handled the NYCDOT supervised private operators and how they act with MTA Bus Company, NYC is not interested in truly making day to day service better. It’s easier to push an agenda and pass the buck. The urbanists are more interested in ideology and dogma than things that work for people.
Yes, there should be no seniors or people with mobility issues living in Manhattan. They should all move to the suburbs. I wonder how old you are Josh. I am 83 and have some issues. I cannot walk to the subway or to a bus stop, or wait in the bitter cold or searing heat. Many seniors move to the city so that they do not have to drive. But they rely on cabs and Uber to get around.
There are also families who use cars because it fits their needs more than a cargo bike does. Urbanists would be more than happy to turn NYC into a utopia, I mean Streetopia, that resembles Lois Lowery’s novel the Giver where people who are “unwanted” are “released”. That is where we are going.
Fergedabout it!! .. Many of us living in the City have been here for many decades!! We rely on our buses and subways as always!!! Keep those M 57 buses going more frequently !! No subways on the Far West Side..
I’m 41 with two young children. How old do I have to be before we matter as much as you do?
But it’s a very big city! Not every part of it is like every other part. That’s why we have (or, more properly, had) neighborhoods.
Riverside Drive has virtually no traffic, and West End Ave not much more. If that’s what folks want to reduce, they’re nuts.
But in any case, we are not a private community and children do not play in the streets. Trying to keep people out because, I suppose, some rich folks want no cars and total silence is just plain selfish.
But if we do that, can we please move ALL the sirens to those avenues and get them off the commercial avenues? That would actually make things better for a lot of us.
We can start by reducing the allowed decibel levels sirens can reach.
If you want to reduce traffic everywhere in the five boroughs including the UWS get the state to build the Oyster Bay-Rye Bridge which would enable non-NYC-bound Long Island trucking to bypass the city completely.
100%.
I bet a lot of trucks in Manhattan are making deliveries or otherwise doing business here. The one thing I will mention is that NJ Turnpike traffic is heavier ever since they took two traffic lanes away on the BQE near the promenade.
Another push by the rabid anti-car brigade. If this goes through, then they will complain about the traffic on Broadway and Amsterdam.
The goal has always been to make car ownership so miserable ppl get rid of cars or move.
The first thing I would like to see is better enforcement of the “no commercial traffic” law on WEA. Commercial trucks (including semis), box trucks, long-distance buses – none of them belong on WEA but they are there ALL THE TIME, and the NYPD does little to no enforcement along the avenue. They are too busy “hiding” a patrol car on RSD and 80th to “catch” drivers making the left turn onto RSD – which should be allowed, even if it means a separate turning light.
There is also the fact that WEA has essentially become one lane in either direction due to the continuous presence of Fedex, UPS and other delivery trucks double parking to make deliveries, as well as moving trucks (which are supposed to find space on the – much narrower! – side streets).
A lot of traffic tickets in Manhattan are “gotcha” traffic tickets, not even tickets for serious safety issues or excessive speeding. There’s an intersection down in the West Village with a stop sign and a traffic light with one stop marker being both the stop sign and the traffic light stop marker which is a big ticket trap and TVB judges (there’s no plea deals in NYC traffic courts) dismiss them in the interest of justice.
Wah wah wah this sounds amazing but my car is a person too! Citizens Unite-Carred!
People drive cars, people use cars. They are not anthropomorphic beings and I would hope that the movie Cars did not convince you otherwise.
My car won’t be able to visit it’s car family via carpool for it’s weekly Hoboken to Rego Park round trip bumper to bumper traffic slam jam!
The larger problem is not WEA, it’s a handful of side streets like 100th St that feed the WS Hwy + Riverside across town which at peak times feels like Broadway.
It’s hard to believe how much people will complain about anything here.
The proposal (which commenters may want to take a look at) is about instituting measures that would decrease speeding traffic, traffic that just uses our neighborhoods to get somewhere else, and to increase safety for pedestrians. They have lots of different possible measures that would contribute; it’s not about sending WEA traffic to Amsterdam, for instance. I, for one, welcome efforts looking into lowering traffic. You know how quiet the streets were after the snowstorms? Why not have that as our measure of what neighborhood streets would be like.
Yes, living like it was a snowstorm all the time is such a dream for so many people.
It was even better during the pandemic!! How bout we keep the pandemic going to cut down on car traffic on those pesky streets that have through traffic!!
Everybody passes through a community to get somewhere else. The M5, M7, M10, M11 and M104 all pass through the UWS to go up or downtown. The BxM2 passes through the UWS to get to Riverdale. But I guess UWSers want streets “livable” for the director of Open Plans who lives in a $16,000+ a month rental apartment.
“You know how quiet the streets were after the snowstorms? Why not have that as our measure of what neighborhood streets would be like.”
You’ve just described what it feels like, everywhere I’ve ever lived, outside of NYC. A spectacular level of quiet.
You know, all the places UWSers tell everyone else to go when they complain about living here, lol?
It is exactly about sending traffic to Amsterdam. That is what “LTNs work by pushing cut-through traffic onto boundary roads outside the designated LTN area” means.
Amsterdam already lost a traffic lane for a bike lane. Since it’s an e-bike speedway now, any talk of removing the Amsterdam and Columbus bike lanes. Urbanists will keep pushing until someone stops them and rips out these bike lanes. Urbanists are like Putin and Hitler, appeasement doesn’t work, they have to be stopped like the fascists they are. They even say that NYC shouldn’t have infrastructure for those they deem “outsiders”. It is difficult to coexist as a community with urbanists when they implicitly see those who disagree with them as beneath them and are divisive and manipulative. They have to have the bike lanes ripped out.
To where? Oh, you can’t get there from here.
The Rag’s comments section never disappoints on how right-wing it swings. Only right-wing people would be opposed to slower traffic in the neighborhood that can potentially prevent traffic deaths.
Thinking a disabled person on 115th ought to be able to cab it to 35th on Columbus isn’t ‘right wing.’
Thinking a person living on 50th ought to be able to shop locally, purchasing goods trucked through other neighborhoods, isn’t ‘right wing.’
The trucks bringing food to Zabar’s and Citarella have to go through Harlem, the Upper East Side, etc.
Should they be stopped?
We should stop them and let Manhattan’s economy collapse so they can learn the hard way.
Exactly, especially when the neighborhood votes like 80% for Democrats, clearly the comments here are not representative.
Reminder that there are many active commenters thar have admitted they moved to Long Island or Florida but can’t seem to shake their UWS obsession
UWS Dad,
BTW visionary and head funder Open Plans and Transportation Alternatives bike advocacy is Mark Gorton – wealthy tech guy who was primary backer of RFK Jr’s presidential bid.
So actually some major Trump support in bicycling /no cars community
Omg..TransAlt Dad here again.
No, we are local and not right wing. We just don’t agree with your woke nonsense. Get over it.
I wonder if UWS Dad is Mark Gorton?
Perhaps it’s time to reflect that even w a left wing neighborhood, nobody supports this. Thats how bad it is.
It’s not right wing at all to prevent “Open Plans” take over our streets to”Open Streets”
If you cut the traffic anymore, you will completely strangle businesses.
These advocates who have so much of an axe to grind with those who drive are literally cheering businesses that are going under in Astoria because they expressed concerns about a bike lane there.
Well, one thing we’ve learned: if there’s a problem, putting up a sign will solve it. Oh, wait … /s
They could start by restoring and reopening the TWO, count ’em two exits from on the West Side Highway that have been closed and/or slowed down for multiple years. And one of them (125th st) isn’t even being worked on.
Open Plans seems to only have non-drivers as their constituency and propose plans that just cater to them. BUT, it is insane not to realize that even non-car-owners need advocation for FASTER traffic. (Taxi rides. deliveries, repair trucks, buses etc.)
is a wall around the UWS the answer?
I realize that society is devolving but returning to medieval wall cities is going a bit too far.
someone might be in need of a clue, the streets are used for passage to get to other places.
You should read the coming of neo-feudalism by Joel Kotkin!
The congestion area should be extended farther northward. WEA traffic north of 60th Street has increased since the advent of the charge. Suburbanites look for parking on our streets, so that they don’t have to enter the congestion zone.
“Open Plans” is the conglomerate that includes Streetsblog, and others, devoted to eliminating cars. It should be called out for its distortions:
1. “Households” aren’t people. They’re occupied dwelling units. True that 28% of households on the UWS have cars. True also? About 40% of the population has cars. Why? Most non-owning households are single person, and the vast majority (over 60%) of families of 3 or more have cars.
2. The “cut through” traffic in the 96 – 106 zone is because of the 96th Street entrance and exit from the highway. What’s a doctor who comes in from Jersey to head to Mt. Sinai to do? What’s a teacher who lives on 90th and teaches in Co-Op City to do? Of course they’re not driving within the neighborhood, they’re cutting through.
3. West End was cut from 2 lanes/direction to 1 about 15 years ago. It worked. And it reduced traffic, so now the claim is ‘it’s underused?’ Seriously? The goal of cutting and smoothing traffic flow was commendable and worked. So now what? Remove the main artery through which taxis, Ubers, and delivery vehicles ride? Absurd.
4. The only decent idea coming out of this group is to cut speeds on our one lane side streets to 20 MPH.
Makes a ton of sense, this is a dense residential neighborhood, yet many drivers treat Columbus & Amsterdam like a highway
It is a highway – designed as a commercial viaduct, always was and always will be. Reality check please.
Glad you agree we have a highway running through our neighborhood. There’s a reason urban highways are a disaster; it’s dangerous and unpleasant. If this traffic is making a local trip, then the LTN program will have minimal impact.
100% of the food sold in the stores and restaurants of the Upper West Side is brought here on the avenues you’re talking about and it all cuts through other neighborhoods before reaching us.
Should they get LTNs making it even harder and more expensive for the food to reach us?
Is that what you want?
If every other neighborhood is an LTN, then you have a big problem.
C D S Car Derangement Syndrome
Have fresh direct take an empty storefront every 3 blocks on Broadway. Load all the customer bins into that space and make the customer drag it that last block. Trucks are only around for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening.
This could be the biggest waste of time in history. Oh yes let’s keep traffic out so ALL our businesses crumble. Truckers and vans eat and drink and shop here. More ways to ruin the economy.
Ha vehicle traffic is not driving sales at local business & by definition if the destination is local, a LTN does not hamper local trips.
So what if Harlem decides to have LTN’s or the UES decides to have them? Yes plenty of people drive to the UWS to visit us and shop here for the day. Trips that would be harder to do on Metro-North or NJT which readily provide access to Midtown only.
A Modest Proposal:
Before implementing such changes, first get residents (healthy and mobile) to stop getting e-commerce .
They should commit to walking and shopping locally- thus reducing vehicle volume.
Also ban building staff or school or hospital staff who live far away and drive in.
And give up Uber use
This will result in huge decrease in vehicles
UWS residents will not give up Uber or e-commerce but they will make sure that “outsiders” do not drive in. Maybe UWS unionized workers should strike and maybe you’ll see how valuable we are. I don’t care about tips as much as I care that I can commute here without it negatively affecting my quality of life.
UWS doorman,
Yes residents seem oblivious to the work of building staff and how many workers must commute from far away
When I get groceries delivered, that means I am not using my car to shop. Though my mobility issues allow me to walk short distances, they do not allow me to carry groceries (or other heavy purchases that do not fit in my shopping cart) for several blocks. So, what would make you happier: eliminating the deliveries I receive or eliminating the shopping trips I would otherwise take in my car? The inherently contradictory demands of the anti-car cabal are ridiculous!
96th Street and Amsterdam is a hellish traffic swamp EVERY day. Cars blocking the box with flurries of annoyed drivers honking. I work from home and with the noise from sirens, car horns and loud trucks it is often difficult to hear other people speaking within my own apartment.
PLEASE help stop making the streets outside of our homes highways!!!!
I think the volume of comments says it all — this is a terrible idea.
Still, why is CB7 stacked with these Open Plans / Open Streets people?
t seems that they don’t represent the community equally or fairly,, but rather are a select group that serve as an echo chamber for those who have appointed them.
I know, it’s impossible to get on CB7 unless you answer their questions “correctly.” Others need not apply.
Hamilton-you got that right!! I’m frankly impressed. Why are so many members of CB7 also lobbyists?? Particularly Trans Alt, Open Plans and Open NY?? Should paid members of these groups be serving on CB7??
This seems analogous to NIMBY thinking. It doesn’t affect me personally, since both friends I used to visit in the low 70s off WEA have died (one at 70 years old, of COVID with an underlying heart condition , and the other at 104 years young.) I was rarely on Riverside Drive, but, obviously, WEA was part of the route I took while driving there, though not the blocks mentioned here unless I was coming from North of that neighborhood, which was rare. Lots of times I traveled there by bus from Queens, but sometimes it was necessary (or more convenient) for me to travel there by car.
Open Plans is the BIke Lobby, I rarely have trouble with cars when crossing a street it is the bikes that are the problem. Zero stop at red lights and they have no regaurd for pedestrians. If I was a betting man I would have to say only about 10% of bike riders can speak or read english, which is a problem when an accident happens.
Every street should have multiple types of protected bike lanes. Cyclists can then chose the form of protection most suited to their needs. These lanes would preclude all vehicular traffic except for one southbound lane on Riverside Drive. Police, ambulance and city services would be encouraged to find two wheeled alternatives to their current vehicles. In Denmark they are experimenting with bicycle trash removal in a small town with a population of 15. This should scale nicely to a city of 8 million people.
Or we could just look at what London or Paris are doing: bike lanes, school streets and low traffic neighborhoods
European cities are more car centric than American urbanists care to admit. It’s easy to admire as a tourist.
This is utterly ridiculous and a total waste of money. Look at a map! The Upper West Side links upper Manhattan to Midtown.
There was another report that stated 500,000 cars come through the upper west side daily. That would include the west side highway. So almost half is coming from The Bronx daily.
That does not include the rest of upper manhattan.
A large volume of traffic originates from Upper Manhattan and the Bronx to head towards the Manhattan core, with roughly 224,583 daily commuters from the Bronx.
So basically to stop that type of commuting one would need to entice Bronx drivers to take public transit. You want to cut down on traffic maybe better to increase public transit options in the bronx.
these are NYC drivers (mostly bronx)
Also the upper west side has roughly 32,000 legally registered cars in the upper west side there are approximately 6,000 more cars that register outside of the upper west side at another location (out of state plates, the soft insurance fraud vehicles).
Anyway the number is not 32,000 on the upper west side of vehicles it is closer to 39,000. When you walk around at night you can see all the out of state plates of upper west side residents. You solve this by residential parking permits that require the vehicle/insurance to use the same upper west side address.
So maybe for bronx drivers you charge them on a ezpass/metro a high toll and then credit it back for taking public transit and portion some back the days they take public transit. Something like if you really want to drive then you pay $25 to cross into manhattan and take that same device/app on the metro on another day and get a substantial credit. The device/app would be associated with a bronx registered vehicle.
The construct would need to be setup in a way you do not violate the commerce laws etc.
In summary
Residential permits are needed
Bronx residents with cars need to be enticed to take public transit by tolling/crediting and also probably giving them more public options.
NYC needs to invest more in the bronx to cut down the traffic cut through flow on the upper west side.
Forget about pushing drivers to other streets, reduce the traffic volume in general.
Residential parking permits would likely violate the commerce clause or dormant commerce clause. Especially a city so interdependent on interstate commerce like NYC that lacks parking garages and has had no parking minimums in areas like the UWS since 1982.
The Bronx has the most amount of express bus service to and from Manhattan outside of Staten Island, but public transportation has its limits and the MTA tried to reduce express buses between the Bronx and Manhattan in 2019 after congestion pricing passed but before the pandemic and was forced to withdraw the plan after loud opposition. Not only that, but Manhattan residents opposed express buses between the outer boroughs and Manhattan when the subways were worse in the 1970s and 1980s. Not only that, Manhattan CB8 has repeatedly voice opposition to express buses between the outer boroughs and Manhattan in their district needs statement.
https://www.riverdalepress.com/stories/huge-crowd-protests-off-hour-service-cuts,70553
I wonder how many UWS drivers cut through other neighborhoods to get where they are going? Are we allowed to cut through the UES to get to Queens or Long Island? Imagine if every neighborhood took on this mentality to make as difficult as possible to cut through? Ridiculous
Open Plans, Streetopia, Streetsblog, Streetspac, and Riders Alliance are all part of the malevolent bicycle lobby called Transportation Alternatives. It’s all funded by a hedge fund millionaire because he once had a fever dream about a car free world? No, he and his minions are making money hand over fist from uber, lyft and the bad choices of our voters.
Yes our Community Boards have lots of TA crazies on them. MCB7 Transportation Committee is chaired by a cartoon villain who is a long time TransAlt board member. Don’t continue to be suckers. Say NO!
Or maybe it is both vision and making money hand over fist off of it?
I agree with any attempt to reduce cut through traffic BUT that attempt on 103rd st is just down right ugly. A total eye sore. If it I’m implemented aesthetically I’m for this.