[IndianaTrails] Time for New York pedestrians to reclaim city

[Robert J. Matter]

Indianapolis' future Cultural Trail is gaining international notoriety
and is mentioned in this good China Daily op-ed piece. -RJM

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-01/30/content_796078.htm

Time for New York pedestrians to reclaim city
By Robert Sullivan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-01-30 07:36

NEW YORK: For the past two decades, New York has been an inspiration to
other American cities looking to revive themselves. Yes, New York had a
lot of crime, but somehow it also still had neighborhoods, and a core
that had never been completely abandoned to the car. Lately, though, as
far as pedestrian issues go, New York is acting more like the rest of
America, and the rest of America is acting more like the once inspiring
New York.

As a New Yorker who has spent two years researching roads and
transportation across the United States, I am saddened to see our city
falling behind places like downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, where
one-way streets have become more pedestrian-friendly two-way streets,
and car lanes are replaced by bike lanes, with bike racks everywhere.

Then there is Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has a walkable downtown with
purposely limited parking and is home to a new bus plaza that is part of
a mass transit renaissance in Michigan. The state is investing in
high-speed trains, and it is even talking about a mass transit system
for the nation's auto-capital, Detroit, where a new pedestrian plaza
anchors downtown. In Indianapolis, Indiana, an urban walking and biking
trail will soon link inner-city neighborhoods something New York
certainly hasn't tried.

1950s thinking

We have lost our golden pedestrian touch in New York mostly because we
still think about traffic as though it were 1950 and we needed Robert
Moses to plow a few giant freeways through town to get the cars moving
again. But the fact is that more roads equal more traffic.

London now charges drivers a fee to enter the core business area, but
here such initiatives are branded as anti-car, and thus anti-personal
freedom: A congestion fee, critics say, is a tax on the middle-class car
commuter. But as matters now stand, the pedestrian is taxed every day:
by delays and emissions, by asthma rates that are (in the Bronx) as much
as four times the national average. Though we think of it as a luxury,
the car taxes us, and with it we tax others.

And yet, here in New York, we even have the debate over bicycle traffic
backwards. We focus on drivers' complaints about the bicycle commuter
who races through red lights, rather than on the concerns of the mother
biking her child around organic-food delivery trucks that idle in
bike-only lanes.

In December, the police say, a bicyclist was killed on the Hudson River
Greenway by a drunken driver speeding along a bike lane that was
completely separated from the road. Asked what was being done to improve
safety in light of the biker's death, Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested
that bikers "pay attention."

He told a reporter, "Even if they're in the right, they are the
lightweights."

Contrast this response with that of Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago after
a 4-year-old pedestrian was killed in a hit and run. Daley immediately
set up a pedestrian awareness program, suggested that police sting
operations arrest speeding drivers and proposed to add 500 miles of bike
lanes, so that there would be one within a half-mile of every resident.

One reason New York is losing its New York edge may be that the city's
revival is partly based on a strange reversal: The city is the new suburb.

Families have returned to the New York that was abandoned years ago for
lawns and better public schools. They've brought with them a love of
cars. A new study by Bruce Schaller, a local transportation consultant,
shows that half the drivers in Manhattan are from the city and that more
city residents than suburbanites drive to work every day.

New Yorkers always find good reasons to drive. Public transportation is
dirty, time-consuming, a hassle, unsafe. Walking takes too long. The
children will be late for school. But choosing the car is no longer safe
for your children who already don't get enough exercise, for anyone's
lungs or for the future of New York as a livable place. There are even
such things as second-hand driving effects: Studies show that people who
live on high-traffic streets tend to stay inside.

Elegant solution

The simple and elegant cure for the loss of New York's inner pedestrian
is to open up car-clogged streets and public spaces. Another of
Schaller's surveys, sponsored by the citizens' group Transportation
Alternatives, showed that 89 percent of people questioned on Prince
Street in SoHo got there by subway, bus, foot or bicycle, and that the
majority would gladly give up parking for more pedestrian space.

With a million more New Yorkers scheduled to arrive by 2030, true
sustainability requires the city or at least its residents to make a
bold move. Some neighborhoods are already working on it. The Ninth
Avenue Renaissance Project, sponsored by a coalition of residents and
businesses, has held community workshops on converting Ninth Avenue from
the Lincoln Tunnel access ramp into a pedestrian boulevard.

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the city's Department of Transportation has
replaced parking spaces near a subway station with rows of bike racks.

But these are tiny steps. Boston's mayor has endorsed converting Hanover
Street in the city's North End into a car-free pedestrian mall.

Why don't we do the same in part or even all of SoHo? In Los Angeles,
some traffic lights are programmed to change for approaching buses (a
signal in the bus alerts the light). Why can't the same happen on 14th
Street?

And if Boulder, Baltimore, Sacramento, San Diego, Denver, Houston,
Dallas, Portland, Oregon and Bergen County in New Jersey can build light
rails, then why can't New York finally put one on 42nd Street? Times
Square could be the Crossroads of People instead of the Crossroads of
Car Congestion.

The NewYork Times Syndicate