Wasn't overcrowding the reason why the manhattan and williamsburg bridges were created?

Take more lanes from cars.

> The new protected bike lane, which was intended to alleviate congestion for both cyclists and pedestrians, resulted in a classic case of induced demand: With more room for bikes and pedestrians, more bikes and pedestrians have come.

So the same argument used against widening streets and highways also applies to cyclists and foot traffic, got it!!

“abruptly swept vendors off the bridge — even if they had permits — and told them they could no longer do business there.”

Like how this sentence suggest that having a permit would make it OK to be on the bridge. Having a permit does not mean one can set up camp anywhere they want.

NYC has an overcrowding problem in general imo

It turns out, if you make useful things, people will use them.

> More recently, there are a few promising signs of increasing access. This month, the MTA released a strategic-action plan to improve multimodal transportation across its system, including building accessible ramps and pathways on the RFK Bridge (right now, there are only staircases along the way),

Oh? This is the first I heard of them lifting the bicycling ban on the Triboro. Cool

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Your post should say Let’s turn the Brooklyn bridge and Manhattan bridge into a parking lot.

The city did take a lane from cars on the Brooklyn bridge, for the new bike lane. The congestion just transferred from cars to foot traffic and bikes.

Wouldn't it mean the city failed to establish where those with permits are allowed to set up?

Remove the vendors for sure. It doesnt help when they take up space or a crowd forms around them. It may not solve the problem but it can help alleviate it. The other problem is people who want to do whole wedding shoots or tik tok videos, take entire areas and then get annoyed when people want to walk there. Make them get permits if they want to take more space than the average person taking a photo for their instagram. Fine them or jail them. I saw a video a few weeks ago where some people stopped car traffic on the bridge to do a tik tok. Shit like that needs to stop.

I don't know why induced demand is a bad thing. That means a lot more people are using something they did not do before because it was crowded. Even of its crowded today there are more people using it.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

I hadn't been on the bridge in years and happened to foolishly think I could add a jog across on my run.

360 degree selfie vendors, photographers, artists, folks selling license plates...vendors LINED the bridge. I don't remember this being the case pre-bike path removal.

I ended up walking 80% of the way it was so crowded with tourists and vendors. That was my fault. Sticking to the touristless Manhattan bridge from now on.

It's mentioned in the article but DOT is working on a rule change clarification explicitly calling out the bridge as a place that is not legal for any vending. Currently the rules for vending only call out streets and sidewalks. Is the bridge a street or a sidewalk? That clarification is being proposed to allow for clearer enforcement.

It's been in limbo for years as the previous administration didn't want to touch anything vending related due to politics.

Great, take more.

The only problem here is, the extra space isn’t attracting more New York residents. It’s attracting more tourist.

Which only solved a problem for a season, until next year when more tourist show up.

Bicyclists can do no wrong.

Yea, and half of them are like Times Square "vendors" trying to hussle tourists with photographs and selling their garbage. They're aggressive, annoying and give NYC a bad reputation.

Less of them the better.

You can only remove so many lanes - cars and trucks still need to get between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Giving one lane to bikes was a great decision but there is marginal benefit to adding even more space down below (and the marginal cost to car traffic would be substantial). It would be better to widen the existing pedestrian path on the upper level, though I’m not positive what that would look like or how much it would cost.

Widening streets and highways can cost billions and it is not a good goal to get more people in cars. Bike and bus lanes are cheap and more efficient, less pollution. Inducing demand into superior modal splits of walking, biking, and transit is great. Inducing demand into cars is a fool's errand.

Removal was good. Walkway was not a good spot for these carts and vendors, it was a shitshow. Ped flow should be prioritized on the actual bridge. There's a park right across the street that could serve as a better spot for permitted vendors.

I doubt removing the bike lane from the promenade is inducing that many more tourist trips. I think it's more that now that bikes are gone vendors see more space and expanded their operations, which limited the space for people walking and led to crowding.

Before the bike lane was moved there were times when the bridge became crazy crowded and was closed.

Trucks can't cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

And why do cars need to? This may surprise you, but the Brooklyn Bridge existed before cars. And cars were banned on the bridge between 1922 and 1950 or so.

Exactly. So we should be inducing more demand for the healthy options that are good for people and reduce demand for the options that destroy the environment and give kids asthma. Glad you agree.

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As long as they transfer proportionate maintenence costs over to the other commuters then all power to them.

It’s all good until there’s delays or service interruptions.

>I saw a video a few weeks ago where some people stopped car traffic on the bridge to do a tik tok.

That's illegal

TikTok’er: “And?”

Also, even if it isn't faster, more space allows more thoroughput. To use a car example (reeeeee) 4 lanes of traffic at 20mph is still moving more people than 3 lanes at 20mph. Same concept applies to any mode of transportation.

the ones on the bridge dont seem too bad tbh mostly paisas just chilling. i never had any trouble with them

The Brooklyn Bridge is the only one that allows a direct connection between the BQE and the FDR without going onto local streets (at least in the Manhattan-bound direction). Keeping cars off local streets is a good thing.

It will help though

Yes, the subway and buses are only as good as the service reliability, but I think we got a better shot at improving those then say "fixing" congestion on the BQE or at the tunnels. If we are gonna spend billions I rather we make new subways in Queens then add a lane to the Belt Parkway that won't make a noticeable impact for example

If the weight of tourists and vendors stress the bridge, those stupid locks idiots keep putting them on will

Caveat is where is the capacity limitation? For example if your 4 lanes need to go down to 2 lanes (like our tunnels) you are in fact not moving anymore people per hour cause you still are trying to shove more people in a finite space that already has reached capacity. A lot of out bottlenecks are bridges and tunnels, or more specifically the merge downs. Adding more lanes upstream allows more drivers to wait, BUT they will be waiting longer as now you have more cars attempting to merge or go through the bottleneck.

I think once congestion charging starts we should honestly consider making the Brooklyn Bridge into something more like the High Line. Just an elevated park with maybe a few lanes saved for buses/bicycles and emergency vehicles.

Good it’s gotten bad lately - it’s far more than the couple guys with shitty hats and signs you see near city hall. It’s the whole length of the bridge and is nonsense

Cyclists kept the nonsense in check. Without them you are relying on the NYPD. Yes, the same NYPD parked in the three wheeler at the ends of the bridge doing nothing before.

Everything is an issue in nyc besides the real issues.

Yes people definitely weigh as much as cars and trains and horses

I think that you'd find it is way more crowded today than it was even a year ago.

It's sarcasm - Chill

I get this and is the exact argument I have against up-zoning a residential area with limited mass transit service.

But where am I going to get my $1 bottle of water in the summer.

It was definitely at least somewhat of a problem pre-bike path removal. I remember being annoyed at the annoyance of bikers because the pedestrian path was full of vendors and they HAD to use the bike path for large chunks of the bridge. You can’t be mad at pedestrians for walking where they can at that point.

Indeed. The generally accepted standards would be to go with the transit. I think it's usually 0.5-0.75 mile sweet spot around subway stations are the primary targets for upzoning. Queens still has a lot of untapped potential in that respect along the E for example, I mean there's detached 1-2 story housing one block away from some some stations on Queens Blvd. Hell even Astoria has much, much more potential. But, no I wouldn't support say a 25 story building in Whitestone that would be marketed solely on the basis of having a 5 story underground garage. We saw an issue like this were I think developers were expecting the ill-fated Queens Brooklyn LRT along Vernon Blvd, it did not materialize yet we have a bunch of new towers in that area.

I love running the bridge, but I’ll only go weekday mornings and usually before 8am because it’s so crowded otherwise! It’s got great sunrise views though :)

When the tourists come out - it’s not so worth it for me.

I think cause it was the city council that is forcing the MTA (finally) to study bikes on the bridges. I'd only say the ban on Triboro might actually have made sense cause it's a literal death trap with no suicide fencing on the midspan lol, but it was stupid you could be ticketed for this shit. The stairs on there are ridiculous too. The MTA has at least slowly been more bike friendly, for example they got rid of the equally ridiculous bike tickets for the LIRR in the past 1-2 years if I recall

I believe it was the FiDI BID that suggested something like this actually. There is rising belief that the bridge is itself a true pedestrian destination, and prioritizing foot and bike traffic would make the most sense in connecting these parts of Manhattan and BK.

I believe DOT is studying that right now. I don't think the bridge can support more structures on it is the issue, given its immense age. It would likely be simplest to close an entire side to traffic tbh, have dual-way bike lanes and pedestrian space, add a ton of river facing benches, could be sick.

How, the bridge is free right now? I suspect we'd all be dead before drivers actually paid for the decades of damage they did to this bridge or the other free bridges nearby lol. The BK especially given its age you'd probably save tons removing traffic entirely and reducing the strain and rolling forces applied to the road deck.

But it will help. It’s unnecessary.

>Yes people definitely weigh as much as cars and trains and horses

It's not intuitive, but a shoulder to shoulder crowd of people actually does weigh more than a bumper to bumper traffic jam

Pedestrian bridges are calculated for a loading of around 90 pounds per square foot, basically a person occupying 2 square feet (for comparison elevator capacity is typically 2.3 square feet per person). And having watched from a window high above as people crowded onto a bit of the FDR closed for the fireworks, people really will pack in like that at times.

A typical compact car might be 15 feet long, closest you're going to pack them is 16 feet each. The kicker is that they're still taking up the full lane width of 10 feet.

So basically a car occupies 10*16 = 160 square feet of roadway.

Using the pedestrian loading standard, 160 feet would be a load of 14400 pounds.

But a fully loaded compact car has a gross weight of no more than 4000-5000 pounds - well less than half as much, closer to a third. Some vehicles weigh more, but not as much per area as you might think, and the extreme cases have their own rules with regard to bridges.

Even if you ignore the lanes and pack the cars in side by side, they still have less weight than the load factors used when designing for people.

Trains you say? The trains that ran on the Brooklyn Bridge were lightweights compared to today.

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One of the vendors near the Manhattan side actually climbs into the car lane to plug in his stall for electricity.

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Just gotta make sure you have headphones that block out the clattering of the subway right next to your head on the MB