>Ride share apps

I didn’t know congestion was invented in the last decade or so.

The study seems like bullshit. It’s somewhat anecdotal. It could be correct, but i think there has to be more to validate it.

> Last fall, the NYU Stern adjunct professor shot more than 90 videos documenting daytime traffic at random Midtown intersections and found TLC plates made up 36.3 of all vehicles on the road.

> "They are three times more prevalent than taxis and by far the dominant vehicle in the streets, in Midtown, during the weekdays," Riccio said.

> He argues it was a big mistake allowing the city's 100,000 ride-share vehicles to flood the market with minimal fees compared to taxis a decade ago. He proposes for-hire vehicles should be targeted first under congestion pricing and for their drivers to pay a permit fee.

If you drive regularly throughout the tri-state area, you already knew this.

Edit:

I honestly believe the rideshare companies are behind the “fuckcars”, “carbrains”, “ban personal cars” blitz.

Lime is owned by Uber and CitiBike is owned by Lyft. I never seen or heard this much hate for personal car ownership from Native New Yorkers until recently.

Perfectly said

It's infuriating that our DOT doesn't seem able to figure out how traffic congestion works. It's really not that hard. There are 35 million people in the metro area, 8 million in the city itself and cars are relatively huge. There will ALWAYS be traffic congestion here to the "maximum tolerable level" by drivers.

During covid that maximum level of pain drivers are willing to suffer actually went up because people were avoiding the subway. So traffic actually got even worse. But it will always be at capacity because there is so much demand the only thing keeping even more people from driving and making more congestion is ironically the traffic itself. You could remove literally every single ride share car tomorrow and briefly traffic would be better, but by next week lots of people that don't drive now would go "oh wow look how easy and traffic free it is out there" and by next week we'd be right back to full capacity congestion again.

Because the demand vastly outweighs the amount the system can tolerate and any car you remove will be replaced by some other driver

The increase in criticism of personal car ownership is probably influenced by a couple of things.

One being how many people went out and got cars during the pandemic. While TLC plates make up a ton of cars on the road, the increase in personal car ownership has made parking a nightmare. Combine that with the fact that people have realized they’d rather use streets for literally anything other than personal cars and you get where we are now.

The second is there are just more options now. The subways always been there along with busses, but dedicated street space to bus lanes has likely improved service in some areas allowing people to ditch their cars. Combine that with the fact that there are significantly more bike lanes and a (flawed but fairly widespread) bike share system available and again, people are just realizing cars aren’t as necessary as they once were.

> Lime is owned by Uber and CitiBike is owned by Lyft. I never seen or heard this much hate for personal car ownership from Native New Yorkers until recently.

Are you sure it isn't just Reddit? Most people don't live their life thinking about urban planning

Traffic would be 20% less if people didn’t clog the intersections so opposing traffic can’t pass threw. It’s screw everyone else mentality I gotta be first. It’ll never change but it would help alot

Everything we see on this sub is curated by a small group of anonymous accounts with varying editorial agendas and no transparency.

I’m surprised TLC plates are only 36 percent of plates observed.

If that’s the case UBER and Lyft should be the cause of traffic for every major city in America. But we know that is bullshit because traffic was horrible before those 2 companies came into existence. My theory is that people are happier on the road than at home. Who wants to rush home to nagging wife and asshole kids??? Anybody???

Ok, Archie Bunker.

Any single solution to issues like this is incorrect. It's likely a cause of bad driving, people on their phones, rideshare apps, delivery drivers, accidents, bad road conditions, anything.

Traffic is a dynamic system - this means that a number of simple inputs are what cause these outcomes. It's so silly to me when anyone thinks they can use one rule to describe it.

Cars. Cars are the ultimate cause of congestion

> While TLC plates make up a ton of cars on the road, the increase in personal car ownership has made parking a nightmare.

Has personal car ownership actually increased?

I am asking because back like eight or so years I ago I foolishly took a friend's car (she had just moved from Woodside to Manhattan on that day) and drove it back to Astoria to park it there at like 1:30 AM. I wound up driving around for 45 minutes like an idiot until I finally found a spot where I could park it.

End of July of 2022 I bought I car myself as I am in the process of moving out of the city and I don't find the parking situation in Astoria to be any worse (nor better) than it was back then. I wouldn't have wanted to own a car back then and I still don't want to and subsequently don't use my car unless I absolutely have to.

It should get ticketed more. If you can’t clear the intersection, it’s illegal to enter the intersection, except for a single car turning left.

This is the biggest thing for me. It’s so rampant. Then nobody goes anywhere.

I only started driving recently and if I don't go and block the intersection the people behind me start honking because they can't also block the intersection with me as the light is changing. I guess it's a team sport.

FHVs are a big factor. Like taxis, they spend lots of time idle (meaning they are single occupant) and circling blocks for fares. It is similar how in some areas, the congestion is simply due to too many people circling for parking. It should be noted that if you, let's say, removed all 100k FHVs tomorrow, we would eventually yet again reach a new equilibrium where congestion will be as bad as it is today, as 100k private veh will simply replace the FHVs. Congestion will never go away and it cannot totally be solved. Instead, the effort should be on keeping the streets safe and usable by people.

It should be on google but I believe car registrations were up citywide during pandemic, check state dmv.

Your belief is a fact. TransAlt took lot of donations from uber and lyft and suddenly all city council clowns are singing ban cars while literally video conferencing from backseat of taxpayer funded chauffeured cars. They are also paying lot of influencers on social media and thinktanks to push this urbanism car free cities narrative on twitter. Lot of it also has to do with suburban transplants who grew up with car culture in ohio so they hate cars but most of us immigrants and city dwellers who grew up in poor countries and been traveling in trains and buses and riding bikes since childhood know that cars improve standard of living and take you places nothing else can in any part of the world.

The goal of lyft and modern luxury condominium developers is to eliminate car ownership to take away streets for building more luxury condos and increase lyft and citibike dependency. they have already increased citibike annual fee to over $200 which i think is ridiculous as you can own a bike for $200.

Tbh, if they made NYC Transit better from upgrading infrastructures such as updating the rails (instead of buying new trains) security, etc… there MIGHT be a good chance the congestion will be reduced as people will begin to trust the transit system more.

No, people who don't want cars because it's better to have cities designed like European cities with better public transportation and not depend on a car that is expensive and costly to maintain are behind the "fuckcars" thing. That philosophy includes saying fuck rideshare cars as well.

And this sub hated the former head of NYC DOT because he told the truth

Just because public transportation is used by poor people in America and the experience isn't that great doesn't mean that public transportation isn't used by everyone in other affluent countries. It's a pretty bad argument to just say that cars are better because poor people use public transportation or that cars are better because it's a socioeconomic upgrade for people on an individual level. None of that matters and frankly most of the things you mention don't even relate to eachother, like Lyft being in cahoots with luxury condo developers to to build more condos and increase citibike dependency? Lmao what? Like yeah man Citibank or Lyft or whatever is really trying to change the American fabric of transportation for its bike schemes, fuck banking or rideshares it's totally biking where the real profits are. I like not needing a car ever, the subway is the greatest thing and it only exists in NYC when it comes to America.

And miss me with that poor people shit because I grew up taking the bus in California, that shit sucks ass but I'm not dumb enough to think the problem is the bus when it's the fact that everything was A. designed for a car my family could not afford. and B. A lack of beefed up public transportation options.

Nah man, traffic in nyc only started in 2011 it’s definitely Uber /s

There was no nyc congestion before 2011, impressive

True but it's not just ride share cars. Someone in the comments pointed it out, it takes one simple mistake to create congestion, distracted driving, going too slow, breaking, looking for parking etc. That will slow down person number 2 and 3 and 4 and so forth

This happens a lot on THE LIE where traffic is bad before the cross island and than opens up and than slows down and than opens up. Usually behind every slow pileup there's miles of free space.

[deleted]

Hmmh, yeah, maybe. Should be said that I registered my car during that pandemic, too. But as explained, that wasn't because I consider it a viable conveyance in NYC and it was in preparation of a move away.

I reckon the weird migration streams that the pandemic created (I have a new pair of neighbors in my house that moved here from South Carolina and so far own a car) are skewing the numbers a bit. Once everything settles down, I reckon the numbers will be roughly what they were before.

They need to improve our highways so much too though

You can definitely tax and penalize people into not owning cars. Look at the Netherlands. It wasn't always a nearly car-free paradise. That's what we should aim for.

I like how NYers make it 3 cars turning left tho, cuz it's all about meeeeeee.

This is the answer.

It’s the transplants that have the “fuck cars” mentality in the nyc subs. Many of us who grew up here know that many people in the outer boroughs NEED a car in order to get anything done because there’s no trains the further out you go and also the buses are sparse at night.

16 percent eh? Where’s this number coming from

So what are you proposing the DOT do? They aren't in charge of the subways. They can help with dedicate bus lanes but that's about it.

Protected bike lines. More of them.

100% just reddit. Even then, for most redditors here it's not really about urban planning. It's like pop science to them and they don't actually try to learn the nuances and the complexity of urban planning. So they really think it's just about hating on cars which is not the point. Nobody I know in real life especially my former professors that study urban planning express hatred of car as much as redditors.

Driving has become such a nightmare with how impatient everyone is. It’s a big problem throughout the city on the major roadways. Everybody rushing to merge causing huge congestion and jams.

You absolutely don't need to be an expert to figure this out. Common sense is more than enough to do it. You have a given space for traffic in which you have to fit the transport demand in. Now go figure what works better to fit more people into a given space. Public transit or cars. Shared cars aren't supposedly as bad, as there are usually more people riding than if each of them had a car. I'm speechless how noone appears to have figured out that improving public transit is the answer to congestion. "Hate on cars" is just a lame excuse for laziness and not wanting sensible change. It's doesn't need hate to see why more lanes and more cars are no solution to congestion. Really, it's not that hard to figure out.

Thank you for this. Native New Yorkers who are older know that cars help folks and the anti-car sentiment does nothing to help us.

That will provide alternative transit options but I don't believe it will make a meaningful dent in traffic congestion. But it's something the DOT should do regardless.

Yes and no, I remember hearing about another study that showed that instead of rideshares being a supplement to people using transit to get that last mile it actually was most often used by people who already owned cars and actually replaced public transit for a lot of people. So it did increase traffic. That being said I doubt it's the largest contribution to congestion, but it's not a non-factor.

Traffic congestion is a problem of induced demand. With more protected bike lanes more people will bike around the areas where they exist and mobility will improve. The remaining car lanes will be congested no matter how small or large the amount.

I lived in NYC for 10 years and all of them i used my bike(s), and all the conversations i had when i encouraged other people to do the same were encountered with fear of biking in the city due to traffic and bike lanes not being safe.

It wasn’t, but there’s no denying it’s gotten much worse in the past 5 or so years (the Covid slump aside).

The congestion charge is basically an attempt to make it more annoying to travel within an area while not actually making it gridlocked. Of course they are doing that as well.

Other than that they can push for more enforcement and more automated enforcement.

I like how many people here are like "my anecdotal personal experience and general sense of things doesn't jibe with actual research... the research must be wrong!"

Additionally, a sharp increase in injuries and deaths caused by drivers. People are becoming “anti-car” because cars are mowing people down more often.

Protected bike lanes and more bike lanes in general will lead to more biking. But will it lead to a meaningful decrease in traffic? I'm not talking about eliminating traffic altogether. And emphasis on "meaningful". It's possible that this is all that is within the purview of the DOT. But my point in my original comment that I was trying to illustrate is that the DOT isn't really going to be the department where we see meaningful impact on traffic congestion.

I do think reducing taxis of all sorts would definitely lead to less traffic. That would fall under TLC.

I think more and improved public transit options would lead to more people opting to use it. Increasing tolls into the city would also have an impact. Those would fall under the MTA which falls under the state. The NYC DOT can help here as it pertains to bus lanes.

There's the city ferry system that might also have some impact but I personally think it's a huge waste of money for the amount of people it can take and what we're spending but nonetheless it's a city controlled service.

I think more bike lanes (regardless if they protect them all) will be minimal to the impact the other options will have on traffic congestion.

Again, the congestion is a problem of induced demand. You believe that less taxis will lead to less traffic. How so? And why more bike lanes, which means less people using cars, will not achieve the same results?

I thought the MTA was going to be responsible for the toll system and not the DOT.

There are a bunch of taxis that are often idle in the streets or just driving around looking for hails via apps. And they make up a substantial portion of car traffic. Even before the pandemic, there was complaining because the number of taxis increased and was impacting public transit ridership. The city froze the number of TLC licenses because it was actually causing less people to take public transit. This was all pre-pandemic. So yes I do believe that reducing taxis would force more people to take the subway and reduce traffic in the process in a much more meaningful way than bike lanes.

Or would encourage people to take their car because there will be "less traffic".

Without meaningful alternatives (more bike lanes, more MTA options) many studies tell us that removing taxis (or any other way of only reducing cars) is not a viable solution.

Ride share isn't the issue, blocking a lane to discharge is the issue. $10,000 fine for anyone caught parking in a lane. Park at the hydrant to load or unload. This includes everyone, not just ride share. Applies to Amazon, trucks, private cars. I am from Sunset Park, main traffic issue on 4th ave, cars double parked. 10k fine and that disappears.

And if you are thinking "But trucks are too big to park at a hydrant while they unload" NYC is a small city. Maybe we need small trucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daihatsu_Hijet#/media/File:Daihatsu_Hijet_Cargo_1101.jpg

1. Road diets
2. More car-free streets and plazas
3. Bus lanes + automated enforcement
4. Bike lanes + automated enforcement
5. Remove parking for loading zones, Citi Bike docks, trash zones, etc
6. Congestion charging and tolling

Basically anything to make driving less pleasant. This will reduce demand.

it is - and you are right ....

"Here’s where Uber and Lyft come in, and the local skirmish potentially takes a more broadly relevant twist. Meeker Ave Neighbors, the group behind the petition to halt the refurbishment, learned that Transportation Alternatives (TA), the muscular, decades-old bike lane advocacy group behind the plan, accepted a combined $125,000 from Uber and Lyft in 2020, along with donations from Revel, Bird, and Lime.

TA has undeniably facilitated otherwise-unavailable environmentally friendly transport throughout the city. It pushed the city to install the nation’s first protected bike lanes, lower the speed limit, and introduce Vision Zero, a plan to reduce traffic injuries (also a cornerstone of the de Blasio administration’s platform). It’s hard to argue with reducing traffic; the Brooklyn Queens Expressway running over the parking area is a backed-up exhaust vent that’s sickened nearby residents with some of the highest asthma rates in the city. Last year, New York City added the equivalent of 56.5 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We don’t have to reiterate that a case for cars over subways and bikes is a case for the end of life on Earth.

But it’s unclear why TA chooses to side with corporations whose tens of thousands of vehicles congest the streets and spend, on average, a third of their time idling and waiting for rides. It’s not the first transit group to do so; bike activists from national groups, Denver, San Francisco, and the UK have all taken money from rideshare companies. One former TA organizer who took a job at Lyft wrote, in self-defense, that the company “has pledged to support protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety infrastructure even when it does not benefit the bottom-line.”

https://gizmodo.com/a-small-war-over-bike-lanes-may-be-an-uber-and-lyft-con-1847795365

there are absolutely people paid to promote and spam threads here as part of the larger overall push for "bikes" and "congestion pricing " and leave the rest of the populace at the mercy of Uber and Lyft, to be the only alternative for people who cant use a bike and arent anywhere near (useful) transportation.

there is a poster here that REGULARLY spams this reddit and the other NYC reddit with a form letter to be sent to promote a bounty program for people to get paid for tickets written against cars.

it absolutely is organized.

but a lot of the street design for the last 10 years has been to create more congestion 1- as a part of generating revenue via a toll 2- to supposedly make things safer for pedestrians by slowing cars down and of course if you slow down the cars then you will have congestion

Every time I witness an unnecessary traffic jam in NYC, there’s an Uber driver sitting in his car, stopped in a traffic lane, forcing hundreds of cars to merge in, creating stop and go jams that can extend for a 1/4 mile.

[deleted]

a lot of this attitude is a result of the former DOT comissioner janette sadik-kahn

pretty much she was the incubator of the "ban cars" mentality that is so pervasive ( and IMO) so poisonous to any discourse - this is from a NYT article back in 2011 -

“She has an absolute certainty that she’s correct,” said Lewis A. Fidler, a council member from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, who has clashed with Ms.Sadik-Khan over bicycle lanes. “I guess it’s nice to go through life with that kind of certainty, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate in government.”

a lot of posters about this issue go on about Robert Moses and how much of an asshole he was with forcing his vision about how the city should be engineered- ironically those same people that curse his name ignore their own similar attitude about bikes and car ownership here in NYC because they know whats best for NYC ....just like he used to say.

Its far past time for the city to be out in force and ticketing people blocking the box, blocking sidewalks, running stop signs and otherwise being aggresive. To be fair, they can ticket the cyclists and jay walkers too.

Wow thanks for the NYT quote, hadn’t seen that. Totally agree with everything though

My 45 min commute would be 2.5-3 hours without a car. I’ve done it a few times when my car was in the shop and it’s such a waste of time

“Basically anything to make driving less pleasant”-And that’s why drivers say there is a war on cars.

reduce demand for people who think like this is more likely the result.....

Thats a lie. Its them fuckin Bus Lanes.

It got significantly worse. The MTA did a similar study showing that ride share apps were primarily responsible for buses hitting their slowest average speeds ever when Uber/Lyft first flooded the streets with cars.

Good. Cars are destroying the planet and drivers are killing and maiming bikers, pedestrians, and themselves.

And here I was half expecting him to say bicycles.

You can get by without cars if you live in wburg/greenpoint/LIC/most of manhattan/etc. But if you're out in Bayridge and need to go about your day (or heaven forbid, visit family elsewhere in the outer boroughs) then doing it without a car is a hard sell.

Thanks for offering a bunch of answers to my question. I can definitely see idea 6 being perhaps the most impactful followed by idea 3. But they’d all add up and would certainly fall under the purview of the DOT.

Except that there are users on reddit that legitimately hate the existence of cars and think vandalizing cars and blaming individuals for driving cars is part of the solution.

Cars aren’t going anywhere buddy, they’ve brought mankind pretty far along. We’ll have electric cars before you know it and those will harm the environment less than current ones but for the love of god get off your high horse

36% is huuuuge

Solution is simple, put cameras at each intersection and make it an auto $100 fine.

Won't solve the fake paper plates, but it's a start.

[deleted]

"Aliens"

Clearly fines in the past have solved congestion. Right?

I wouldn't be surprised if the city did it anyway to raise funds. Just like putting school limits into effect 24/7 for... what reason again?

I mean, I think the 14th st bus lane fine worked but I conceded I'm not an expert on the subject.

This is not true in outer boroughs.

The reason there is traffic on the belt, 10 times out of 10, is because of a car crash. There is a total of one (!) Highway and when a crash happens all outbound traffic is slowed to a standstill.

Not everyone lives in Manhattan.

Maybe DOT could design more than one highway for 2.2 million people? It would be a start.

Improve? Why not create a second one for Brooklyn lol.

Ocean Parkway is 25mph throughout, that doesn't count.

No one is trying to uninvent the car. It just needs to be used far less for jobs that it's bad at; that excessive use is what leads to inefficient spending, climate change, and needless traffic violence and deaths, not to mention congestion.

I can't imagine what needs to happen to a person to make car free living in Bay Ridge a hard sell.

Whose homes do you volunteer for demolition? Yours?

On the flip side there are users on reddit who can't comprehend a world where your can't drive to each and every residence/business and park directly out front. You see it every time a small street closure is proposed or parking is repurposed. All of sudden that small block or parking spot is the most essential in the whole neighborhood.

People have been screaming this same thing for years

A little over 1/3 cars has a TLC plate.

Imagine if your commute could be 1/3 faster. 40 minutes vs an hour. It’s a considerable figure.

Reduce supply. The less space there is for cars, the fewer ppl will drive. Essentially, limit traffic to a few areas, and make most of the city (not just manhattan) traffic-free. That will reduce the number of cars (simple geometry) and alleviate traffic.

This is what they did in Amsterdam in the 70s, and now they barely have any traffic whatsoever. I visited recently, it was crazy. A lot of the city looks just as dense and lively as any random neighborhood in Manhattan or BK yet there's no honking or cars just stuck there not moving. There is traffic, and there are cars, but I never saw a car stuck in traffic.

True, there should be a real north-south highway and the interboro should be extended all the way to the gowanus expressway. That would never happen with the political climate the way it is today, but they could at least raise the ocean parkway speed back to 30 like it used to be

Fewer cars driving into manhattan on said highways would decrease the chances of crashes.

Also, tear down the beltway. Tear down every single urban highway. Watch all that traffic disappear.

That was a waste of an article. There's a saying: the simplest explanation is often the correct one.

Cars, the reason there's traffic is that there are a lot of cars in NYC. That's it. This isn't hard. Why is that car stuck? Cuz there's a car in front of it. Why is that one stuck? Cuz there's another one in front of it. Why is that one stuck? Cuz it's stuck at a light. Why do we need a light? Cuz cars are fast, take up a lot of space, have horrible blind spots, and you have to control their movement (we did not have traffic lights before cars).

So the answer should be pretty fucking simple, but ppl refuse to accept it: reduce the number of cars and physically limit their speed (narrow rows, car-free areas, bumps, chicanes, governors) and size (bigger cars take up more space and lead to more congestion).

EVERY OTHER REASON given is just someone trying, and failing, to come up with an explanation that isn't "cars". We've tried every single other fucking solution over the last 100 years. It's time we wake up and smell the roses.

Fines for bus lanes are fantastic, but don't solve car congestion, they solve bus congestion (which is worthy in its own right).

Ocean Parkway is one of the only outbound paths for Brooklyn, travels through over half of Brooklyn, and has a 25mph speed limit.

It's a 6 lane street (in addition to 2 service roads). There's a good amount of potential to turn that into a highway. Leave the service roads at the lower speed limit and have entry points into the the main 6 lanes (highway).

The infrastructure is already there.

Exactly my thoughts. Or at the very least turn the 6 main lanes into a highway, and have the service roads as entry/exit points.

The Belt doesn't even go into Manhattan.

So? There are likely many cars on the belt trying to get to Manhattan.

It's the central business center of the region. Reducing car demand to it will cause reduced congestion everywhere around it.

That's absolutely cute if you think that a major highway going directly through the Neighborhood of gods chosen people is going to happen.

I agree it should happen but we all know it isn't. There's a reason its 25 mph.

[deleted]

Enforceable fines absolutely work. This whole “fines wont stop people” is absolute nonsense. Slap a $300 ticket for blocking an intersection or running a stop sign and actually enforce it. In a couple months everybody is going to have some respect. Is it going to solve congestion ? No, but it’s a start towards wrangling this chaos. It works in LA, no reason it shouldn’t work here.

I don't like what you're suggesting. The Jewish people there would love to have an actual highway instead of a 25mph crawl.

It's not even Jewish until like Ave J.

I can't speak for other users but I'd be absolutely okay with primarily using public transit if it wasn't a steaming pile of crap. The metric i use is simple when the mta system can run an 8th as efficiently as Tokyo rails I'll sell my car.

So to reduce car demand you suggest... Eliminating roads?

That's the most backwards way to look at it that I can imagine. Why not knock down every residential building in manhattan to reduce rent if you're going down that route?

How is the MTA supposed to make buses reliable when there are too many cars on the road?

I agree, but the whole point is to stop congestion. This does little to help it.

There's already lines of cars 5 roads deep in transit deserts in Brooklyn. "Respect" isn't going to do anything to help.

Not only that, they enforce fines in ways that make them the most money. Just like that camera they put right off the ramp of Shore Parkway to catch everyone who was actually doing highway speed.

And similarly, putting school zone cameras in effect 24/7. There is no good reason why anyone needs to be going 15mph on Saturday at midnight.

Not disagreeing with you but just acknowledging the irony here. In 1956 the Highway Lobby (funded by the automobile industry) fought and won in DC to transition funds from building public transportation to building highways. The very same negative feeling you are having (big industry is funneling money to politicians to ultimately benefit big industry) already happened on this topic, just in the reverse order.

History is written by the Victors.

Ocean Parkway is like the Queensblvd of Brooklyn in terms of road fatalities, that is what alluding to regarding the 25 speed limit.

As for the Jewish slant a major throughfair would decimate land value on top of literally slicing the neighborhood in half.

If Ocean parkway becomes Ocean expressway you CANNOT have pedestrian crossings.

There becomes a point where you need a car in outer borough. But this article is specifically talking about midtown gridlock. Driving from Howard Beach to midtown for work 5 days a week and dealing with the headache of traffic? Id have to guess that there is a break even between car expenses and paying more to live closer to work.

Of course comes down to individual situation and preferences.

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Maybe not, but if there’s other illegal actions that are making congestion worse, then pull people over and fine them. Might be too logical for the bureaucrats though.

The problem is a lot of people just drive around doing nothing at all just wasting gas. Unemployed people . The Uber eats guys grocery delivery apps .

I agree with you. Paper plates are a big one though and not caught by cameras.

You can definitely have pedestrian crossings. Just have them go over the highway like every other highway out there.

"30 minutes drive into the city" is a powerful attractor. Every single building on Ocean Parkway is an apartment building, not a house.

I just ignore the honks and keep the intersection clear. This is a law that needs to be more strictly enforced.

We can't build an extension of the N/W to LaGuardia due to two blocks of homeowners screaming but you think people won't mind an elevated 6 lane highway down a landmarked roadway? Lol.

For bridge crossings to support trucks they would have to be at certain height and to preserve the current street there would need to be many thats expensive but doable ill admit.

However that 30 minutes to Manhattan pitch doesn't hold up to the reality that is the Hellish Fort Hamilton Gowan merge. Also immediate behind the apartments are mostly houses.

Agreed on both points. I'm just thinking that the bike lanes they have between the main lanes and service roads already solve half the battle.

It could also be spun as avoiding fatalities altogether. It would definitely need investment for the bridges (and restructuring the service road into a ramp) but honestly not much compared to other highways out there.

The 6 lanes are already in use. The only thing that would change are pedestrian crossings.

What people sometimes do if they live really far out there is to drive to an train stop in the outer borough and take that the rest of the way. It really depends on how far your bus route is and how much of a pain it is to take it. Obviously this varies based on where you live.

If someone lives near the LIRR, it makes sense to just take that to midtown instead of the subway too.

And the cross streets. And any bus routes that cross it.

And of course it's ONLY the pedestrian crossing. Who cares about those pesky poor people walking. Just add bridges and have them go up stairs to cross the freaking street.

That wouldn't reduce the rent. It would reduce housing supply, which would reduce how many ppl can live there. And that's a bad thing. This is why rent is so high in NYC: housing supply is artificially kept low.

Reducing road space reduces road supply, which reduces the amount of driving, which in term reduces traffic. Which is a good thing. This is the opposite of "induced demand", which is a well studied phenomena

They usually seem like 80 percent of the cars on the road.

Why would reduced road supply reduce the amount of driving? In transit deserts (there are plenty of them in NYC), you need to drive to get anywhere.

Yeah I don't jump into the intersection just to please them.

There are no bus routes on the entire stretch, per the city map.

There are significantly more people driving through Ocean Parkway than walking across it - which is serviced better? Those "pesky poor people" live in a multi-million dollar area, you cannot get a house there for under $2M, minimum.

Again, if you took a look at the road, you'd see that walking down and up Ocean Parkway would be completely preserved by the wide sidewalks between the main lanes and service roads. It's only crossing it that will be different.

I say that as someone who bikes and walks more than I ever use a car.

Bus routes across. Do they go up and over? Or do you still have to have the signals for cross traffic? If you need the signals for cross traffic what's the point of this?

And okay, we make Ocean Expressway a thing. It can process a lot more vehicles. Those vehicles get to the Prospect Expressway/Gowanus interchange. Now what? It's already congested. Now there's just more cars sitting around looking at each other in traffic. What an improvement!

If you are actually curious, there's a good amount of research on this. Here are some links from several different publications to get you started:

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/03/19/reduced-demand-just-important-induced-demand

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Induced_demand

https://cal.streetsblog.org/2022/05/13/three-reasons-why-congestion-decreases-when-cities-delete-road-lanes/

Definitely. I can support that. I’m a car owner and try to be limited in use myself. People concerned about the environment and contributing to congregation have the right idea at heart but it’s not always pragmatic for all. Fuck cars people are an overreaction.

Then make it so the first 2 or 3 violations get tossed out.

I admit I speed all the fucking time but I pay the fine if I get a ticket.

The lawlessness in the city just has to stop. If we need to start impounding cars, then so be it.

I believe it. It's also the dickheads who call a Uber and make them wait 5 minutes so all other cars have to go around, effectively making 2 lanes into 1.

They need to make the trains frequent and reliable so people don’t feel the need to get a car service.

When a TrainTime breaks down during rush hour now tens of thousands of people all suddenly need to come above ground and get Ubers and taxis to get to work.

I'm with you on all accounts, but I don't think it would be implemented in a reasonable way.

We have infrastructure issues way beyond lawlessness. Transforming Ocean Parkway like I mentioned in other comments would be a great start.

The only true solution would be determining a maximum number of cars we want in manhattan at any point in time and increasing the toll to enter towards infinity as the car count approaches the limit. When people start seeing $50, $100, $500, $1000 whatever tolls they’ll turn around.

It’s a fucking island controlling the number of cars present is very straightforward. Catalina does it to a smaller scale but the idea is the same. All entry points to the island have cameras already so counting the number of cars is easy.

> Bus routes across. Do they go up and over? Or do you still have to have the signals for cross traffic? If you need the signals for cross traffic what's the point of this?

These are all good questions, and I can't claim to know the perfect answers here, but it seem like ramps to get on/off the highway from the service roads would help. There would still need to be one to cross traffic travelling the other way, and I'm not sure what would be the best way to handle that.

If anything, reducing signals from every block to 3-4 intersections along half of Brooklyn would solve most of these issues too. Not to mention all the fatalities that plagued Ocean Parkway to begin with - now it can be a scenic walk/bike route, without having to worry about cars flying across on every street.

> Those vehicles get to the Prospect Expressway/Gowanus interchange. Now what?

Also a fantastic point. That stretch is congested, but nothing near the amount of time it takes to travel through southern Brooklyn. Getting to the Prospect Expressway takes upwards of 20 minutes alone.

I'm not exactly sure what could be done about that, but it seems like this would be a first step. There's a lot of traffic funneled through Exit 1/Fort Hamilton, and I wonder (as someone who's really not familiar with this stretch) if there's a better way to handle the bottlenecks. It seems lots of trucks go there, but not sure if truck-only hours would do the trick at all.

To me it's crazy how exits are congested . Look at BQE exit 31 to wythe / williamsburg st W.

Also too many Uber drivers.

You can me be my friend!

I do the same exact thing, and guess what? I see that people next to me sometimes do it too, probably because they see me doing it.

We need more people like you because I think that people’s mentality is like “if you are blocking, I’m blocking too. Everyone does it.” By not doing it, we can make some people follow suit, because they will then feel pressured and ashamed, they will not want to be the assholes.

Excessive traffic congestion is a function of three things: number of vehicles, amount of road space, and time.

Unless it’s realistic to build more roads (it’s not, at least in NYC) or to expand rush hours even further, the only solution is to reduce the number of vehicles. This can be achieved by giving people viable alternatives (a carrot) together with a stick (eg congestion prices).

If a taxi was swapped out for a person driving his own car, wouldnt that car likely need to take up a parking spot for 8 hours?

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