Ten Things You Should Know About New York City Traffic
I’m back at home and my thoughts turn to local traffic. And so continuing in the “Ten Things” series of my utterly unscientific, sample-size-of-one observations and picked-up-pieces of trivia:
1. The nation’s worst bottleneck is in the Bronx. According to INRIX, the exit 4B segment (.30 miles) of the Cross-Bronx Expressway is congested 94 hours a week. The average speed when congested is 9 mph. (the average New Yorker walks 3.4 mph).
2. The clearance phase here is about 1.7 seconds (e.g., when one set of lights turn red, the others will go green approximately that much later).
3. Access-a-Ride drivers are the worst in the city — I’m not sure if this is because they’re put on a too-tight schedule or they’re just trying to increase their numbers of passengers. Empty school buses are a close second, followed by off-duty ambulance drivers.
4. Smokers, and people on cell-phones, walk more slowly than other New Yorkers (4.17 f/s and 4.20 f/s, respectively, versus an average of 4.28 f/s for all pedestrians).
5. Every third car in Brooklyn has North Carolina license plates (insurance fraud, anyone?)
6. New York is the only major U.S. city without residential parking permits (see item #5).
7. The only thing harder than trying to park a car in NYC is trying to park a bike.
8. Bloomberg deserves reelection for his Janette Sadik-Khan appointment alone.
9. After a decade of investigation I still do not know the fastest approach lane on the massive funnel-like, ten-lanes-to-two entrance to the Holland Tunnel (once you’re past the tolls, on the Jersey side). The outside lanes sometimes seem better to me; not sure if this correlates to say, rice moving through a funnel.
10. New York City is home to the world’s first traffic circle, Columbus Circle, designed by William Phelps Eno (note, however, there is a countering claim that the ‘carrefour a gyration’ in Paris, by Eugene Henard, deserves the prize). Also note this has nothing to do with the modern roundabout, of which NYC has none.
Your further suggestions are welcome.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Slashdot]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 8:05 am and is filed under Ten Things You Should Know, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
| 
April 16th, 2010 at 11:38 am
I believe there is a smaller version of the roundabout located in Rockaway (technically at Arverne by the Sea) on -I think- Shore Front Parkway…. if that qualifies
April 21st, 2010 at 8:39 am
I believe the Federick Douglas Circle on 110th Street qualifies as a roundabout as well.
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Frederick Douglas is not a roundabout. It’s correct that one had been designed in Arverne-by-the-Sea, but the design was halted halfway through and it may have been changed to a signal-controlled circle at this point.
Regarding your ranking of the worst drivers in the city, I’m amazed that you left out dollar van drivers (half of whom are operating legally, and half of whom are not – the latter being much worse, as you’d expect), plenty of which you can find in Downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica etc. They are far and away the most aggressive, aggravating, flagrantly law-breaking drivers in the city. Besides their constant honking as they troll for passengers, they routinely run red lights (not lights that just turned red, lights that have been red – they just decide to not wait), weave, turn into crosswalks full of pedestrians, etc.
July 30th, 2010 at 2:46 am
I noticed a new asphalt plant is greener, however, if it produces asphalt that permits water to permeate into groundwater that would be great to deter run-offs with soil that shouldn’t erode…what news about the city engineers at DOT, for one, understanding there is a future for truly green implementation.
see :http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/transit/119203/new-asphalt-plant-to-pave-wave-to-greener-future–mayor-says/