Proposed changes to West 70th Street and West End Avenue.

Last week, the city’s Department of Transportation unveiled the long-awaited results of a comprehensive traffic study of the Upper West Side. Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione presented the DOT’s data and plans to the community at a forum hosted by City Council Member Gale Brewer and Community Board 7, who initially pushed for the study.

The DOT first began collecting data on the Upper West Side in 2006. The study aimed to primarily address pedestrian safety, double parking, congestion, enforcement and truck traffic. Within the study area (from West 55th to 86th streets, between Central Park West and the Henry Hudson Parkway), the DOT conducted pedestrian counts at 26 locations and manual turning movement counts at 42 locations, looked at automatic traffic recording information for 18 spots, clocked travel speeds along 12 corridors, analyzed accident data for a four-year period and conducted a parking survey. The end result is a slew of recommendations, some simple and some more complex, to improve both traffic flow and safety on the Upper West Side.

Many of the DOT’s recommendations focus on ways to slow traffic at intersections and allow pedestrians more time to cross the street at some notoriously dangerous spots in the neighborhood. At the intersection by P.S. 199, where the DOT earlier had installed two speed humps at the adamant request of parents concerned about their children crossing the street to get to school, the new proposal suggests doing even more to calm traffic at West 70th Street and West End Avenue. The plan would create three neckdowns on corners of the intersection, as well as putting striped channeling to visually narrow the road and slow vehicles before they approach.

“What we’d want to do is pick the items that have been the most concern to the community board, and also the items that are fairly easy to implement, and prioritize those at the transportation committee, so that we can try to have some quick successes,” Forgione said after the meeting.

The DOT will be collecting feedback on their report, and residents can write to DOT as well as to Community Board 7 to share their thoughts and weigh in on what the first priorities should be as far as making changes based on the study. Some things, like those that require only a day’s work and some paint, can be done right away.

Other proposals, like ones that involve changing traffic lanes, moving bus stops, installing curb extensions and creating pedestrian medians, will take more time and are not necessarily going to happen automatically. Some residents at the meeting expressed dismay over the suggestions that eliminate or limit parking spaces, for example, and others weren’t convinced that changing traffic patterns would have the desired effects.

“The more complex the solution, sometimes you need to be a little more deliberative about making a move, but there are some things in this study that I think you heard tonight that everybody agrees are both a priority and readily doable,” said Mark Diller, chair of Community Board 7. He said that he hopes to usher through some of the easiest and least controversial measures swiftly, but knows that other measures will require more time and feedback.

Council Member Brewer said that she’s happy that the community can move forward with an abundance of data to back up their concerns.

“To the credit of DOT, they now have some facts—who’s crossing, where the traffic issues are—and that was the first step,” Brewer said. “This has been a really collaborative process; this is like the sixth or seventh meeting I’ve been to on this process, so this is not done in isolation.”

The full presentation is available online at www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/westside.shtml.

The board’s support, though advisory, cleared a major hurdle for the city’s bicycle lane plan, reversing a vote earlier in May by the board’s transportation committee opposing the plan. Without any formal opposition, the Department of Transportation can now start creating the lane between West 77th and 96th streets.

A protected bike lane like this is coming to Columbus Avenue. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

The vote, which took place at the June 1 full board meeting, was 23 in favor of the protected lane and 19 opposed. Actor Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket, came to the meeting to speak about the health benefits of bicycling and how it helped his career.

“I used to bicycle to get to auditions,” he said. “I may not have a career if I didn’t have a bicycle.”

City officials, including the department’s Manhattan borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, got a rousing round of applause from bicyclists in the lobby of Fordham University, where the meeting was held.

Tila Duhaime, who organized support for the protected lanes, called the Columbus Avenue facilities a good start.

“Hopefully, this will expand north and south so this can be a destination for cyclists,” Duhaime said after the meeting. “There are hundreds of cyclists on that corridor and they have no help whatsoever right now.”

The bicycle lane would be added on the east side of Columbus Avenue, next to the curb. A painted buffer zone would be created on the other side, then a lane of parked cars, then traffic. The department has met with businesses that would have deliveries interrupted. While some stores will be able to use side streets as a delivery zone, businesses can continue to deliver goods by crossing the bike lane, similar to how deliveries are made across a sidewalk.

The plan also includes six pedestrian islands that will decrease crossing time for elderly or impaired pedestrians. Those will be installed at West 77th, 81st, 82nd, 86th, 91st and 96th streets.

Though the plan eliminates 55 parking spaces, the city will replace parking meters with muni-meters that allow more cars to park.

All but several of the dozens of people who testified to Board 7 supported the bicycle lane.

Robert Josman, a financial consultant who has often been the lone voice of opposition to bike lanes at Board 7’s meetings, called the bike lane vote an absurdity.

“The city just doesn’t have the money. If you’re going to spend it, spend it on pacing roads or hiring teachers,” said Josman, a financial consultant who works on Columbus Avenue and West 96th Street. “This is a goodie.”

Josman’s complaints about the bicycle lane mirrored that of the 19 community board members who voted against the plan. They worried that traffic would slow because lanes would have to be cut to 10 feet from 12. They also pointed to scofflaw bicyclists as a reason to oppose the lanes, though the department said similar protected lanes in Chelsea cut sidewalk riding dramatically.

“What looks good on paper doesn’t look good in practice,” said Andrew Albert, co-chair of Board 7’s transportation committee.

The other co-chair, Dan Zweig, downplayed the show of public support at the June 1 meeting.

“I’m sorry, I simply do not believe this is a cross section of the community,” he said to hisses from the packed audience.

Detta Ahl, who rides her bicycle everywhere, was excited for the new lane and hopes it will be expanded.
“I’m disappointed it was so close,” said Ahl, who studiously counted each vote from her seat. “If it was a true representation of the community it would have been 90 percent [in favor].”

Correction added. The bicycle lane is on the east side of Columbus Avenue.

Council Member Gale Brewer and Margaret Forgione, Manhattan Borough Commissioner for the Department of Transportation, led a panel that detailed the transportation issues between West 55th and 86th streets. The study is a continuation of a 2007 survey that culled pedestrian concerns from West Siders.

The most frequently mentioned complaints—aside from bicyclists—were intersections congested with pedestrians and high-speed automobile driving. The survey highlighted 27 problem intersections.

There were four intersections in the study area that averaged 10 or more accidents a year between 2006 and 2008. One intersection, West 56th Street and Eighth Avenue, had five pedestrian accidents in a year.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) increased pedestrian crossing time at five avenues, including West End and Amsterdam avenues between West 60th and 81st streets. The change was intended to allow the neighborhood’s senior citizens to safely navigate large intersections.

“The DOT sees some very challenging intersections,” Brewer said. “I think the main goal is to slow down the traffic and figure out the best signal and best traffic pattern for such a pedestrian-heavy neighborhood.”

This year, the department also surveyed 99 small businesses in the area and found that more than half of them don’t offer employees incentives to take mass transit, and 66 percent were unwilling to accept night deliveries to alleviate truck congestion.

During the question and answer portion of the evening, more than two dozen West Siders made comments and asked questions, mainly about police enforcement of unruly bicyclists and automobiles.

One resident asked police to crack down on trucks that back up into crosswalks along the West 82nd Street truck route. Residents also complained of illegal left-hand turns at the intersections of West 79th Street and Riverside Drive, and West 72nd Street and West End Avenue.