Report on CB 12 Traffic & Transportation Committee Meeting, 12-7-2009, 7 pm

Meeting was slightly more productive than November’s meeting because Josh, the DOT rep, was there.

1. Steve from Assemblyman Farrell’s office came in person to put forward a proposal to make 157th Street one way between Broadway and Morgan Place.

   1. Liz, from the main board, explained that a similar “quick-fix” change had been made 10 years ago and that it hadn’t solved the traffic problem.

   2. A resident argued against the change, saying that the street was used by through traffic from I-84 via the Macombs Dam Bridge to the Henry Hudson on-ramp at 158th Street. There was too much right-turning traffic already.

   3. The committee resolved to ask DOT to study traffic conditions on that block and on surrounding blocks.

2. DOT’s Safe Streets for Seniors program. Hillary Poole from DOT came to speak about her program. There are 25 areas around the city drawn from historical crash data. WH is in Phase I: 175th to Nagle, and Broadway to Audubon. Hamilton Hgts is in Phase II: W 145th to W 165th Streets, Broadway to St. Nicholas. Like most of these projects, DOT plans to make crossing streets easier for seniors. This includes pedestrian islands, longer crossing times, four-way reds, and neckdowns as well as fixing broken street infrastructure. Hillary asked for any problem intersections anywhere in the neighborhood: I added Jeremy’s proposed crosswalk on Bennett Ave in front of the 190th St A train station (just north of 192nd St, actually). Changes will take place in 2011-2012.

3. Josh from DOT updated the committee on plans to revise the intersection of W. 162nd, Amsterdam, and St. Nicholas. Apparently they are going to make St. Nicholas traffic dogleg around to improve traffic flow. There will be a workshop at the committee in February 2010.

4. Dyckman Greenway Connector: Josh says that they are working on finishing the Inwood/Sherman Creek traffic study first, so as to have new, fresh data on the traffic before making any changes. When that’s done, then they will have a workshop with stakeholders. Maybe in the spring.

5. PS 278 wants more crossing guards on 218th & Broadway, and to be included in schools with School Safety Routes.

6. TLC will add “livery taxi stands” on 187th between FWA and Cabrini, and 191st between Pinehurst and FWA. This should reduce the crowding of livery cabs.

7. Teachers from MS 324 and PS 8, among other schools at West 167th and Jumel Terrace, want assigned parking spaces. Josh said that wasn’t the plan of the Mayor’s office, and that schools with parking spaces had them as legacies.

8. DOT says that they can’t put in angle parking on West 170th west of Broadway in any shape or form; it’s too narrow, or there are too many grocery trucks, or something. No. Committee asked for clarification so they could help the neighborhood out by understanding how angle parking could be instituted.

9. There is a new traffic signal planned at Audubon and West 166th.

After attending two of these meetings, I see that the general method of this committee’s work is to get community input at the meetings, then to ask DOT to study the situation, then to look at the study before deciding what to recommend. This process takes a long time, as we can see from the months already spent on the Dyckman Greenway Connector. The committee does not want to act hastily, as they did with the previous inadequate solution to the traffic in the West 150s.

For us as an advocacy group, I think this means that we can’t expect a lot from the board. If we asked the board for a protected bike lane on Broadway from 155th to 218th Streets, they would pass it along to DOT to study, and DOT would come back in two or three years or however long it would take to do that kind of study, and only then would they consider supporting it.

The elephant in CB 12 is of course, the GWB and Trans-Manhattan Expressway. We need some kind of bridge tolls or congestion pricing to keep folks from using our neighborhood as a bridge on-ramp and to support better transit and parks in the area. DOT can do screenlines and traffic counts as if it was something immutable, like the fossil record, but in my opinion something should be done to reduce traffic now.

The one great thing about the transportation committee’s meetings is that everyone with a beef about transportation in the area ends up there. We could do a lot of good recruiting at the meetings because the people who show up to discuss their issues are already involved enough to go to a meeting and sit through an hour or so of other business. I think if we sat down as a group and thought through how we could come up with a broader message that would appeal to everyone who didn’t drive a car, not just cyclists, we could recruit many of the people who come to the meetings with safety issues or traffic issues. Perhaps we should also shift our monthly meetings to the same day as the committee, but earlier, so that we could all attend as a group.