Manhattan Traffic Problem

Urban planners have long considered Manhattan traffic congestion as a 'historic mistake'. The problem does not lay with the number of vehicles but rather in the number and orientation of the streets. Addressing the Commissioners’ Plan in 1811, Gouverneur Morris wrote, “…a city is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.” Manhattan is mainly composed of a rectilinear street grid and it's grid system is composed of many east-west streets and relatively few north-south avenues. The problem is indeed with the dominance of the east-west streets. According to an article, “The connections between “uptown” and “midtown” and “downtown” — the widely-spaced north-south avenues — began to clog, and the side streets with them. Manhattan’s shrinking commercial waterfront was separated from the island’s interior by highways that attempted to help move traffic north and south but ultimately added congestion to a street grid not built to service longitudinal movement”. Simply put the east-west streets are no longer facilitating the city's new needs after a century after their construction.

Two years ago New York transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan was recruited by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revamp New York streets from Broadway to the Bronx; her main goal being to reclaim car space for pedestrians, cyclists and buses, as well as creating a renaissance for public plazas. In 1811 urban planners laid out Manhattan’s grid of north-south avenues met by east-west street forming an efficient system of right angles. However, planners left Broadway running diagonally through the city and that has caused immense traffic problems ever since. Building new road was proposed as an option but was subsequently scrapped as an alternative because the construction of new roads is an expensive endeavor and they generally become overwhelmed easily. Engineers acknowledged that building new roads usually makes traffic worse. “Congestion pricing” has been recommended as a better solution; in this instance there is a raised cost for driving in congested areas. The best-known example of this is the "congestion pricing" plan London implemented in 2003. Drivers now pay roughly $11 a day to drive in the central city. According to one study, the program has reduced traffic by 16 percent.

A traffic congestion study was conducted in 1998 and was commissioned by British transit engineer, Stephen Atkins. Researchers studied 60 cases of road reductions and found that when roads were closed down, drivers strive to avoid the area. Closing these roads ultimately deterred drivers and reduced demands. I found this research to be very interesting and considered it as a better solution than "congestion pricing". A proposal in early April unveiled the mayor's plan to close seven key blocks of the Great White Way. In this plan Broadway will be closed off one block above and below the intersection, coupled with a five-block no-drive-zone bordering Times Square it is predicted that congestion will reduce by 37 percent on sixth Avenue, 17 percent on Seventh and some 20 percent on Ninth. The result will hopefully yield simplified traffic patterns, longer green lights, and reduced travel time across Midtown. Other cities are also considering this type of plan. San Francisco has announced that it would study barring cars from a portion of Market Street in hopes of getting bicycles, buses, and pedestrians moving more quickly. I believe that this is the most plausible of options. Instead of building more roads to escalate the problem planners have taken a more simple approach by deconstructing roads. This particularly struck me as interesting because it goes to show that some times the best solutions are the simplest.