Following sustained community advocacy in the 1990s, NYCDOT undertook a project seeking to reduce the impacts of spillover traffic on local streets and make all types of streets function better for all users of the public space. The Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project was an intensive multi-year effort that included significant public outreach, data collection, implementation of pilot measures and development of area-wide and corridor specific management plans. Up until this project, the department had been widely perceived as an agency primarily focused on traffic movement. Upon conclusion of the study in 2003, many stakeholders were disappointed that radical changes were not adopted. However, through the planning and implementation progress, a more strategic approach emerged at NYCDOT. This is most in evidence on Clinton Street, a narrow one and a half mile corridor epitomizing the competing demands placed on streets in the project's study area. The mechanisms used to create "a different place" on Clinton Street were those in the standard traffic engineering toolbox - curb regulations, street markings and signal timing plans -- not the more radical and capital intensive measures pushed by some advocates such as street closures and raised intersections. Clinton Street after the implementation of all measures does indeed function well for all users having become more comfortable to walk along and more popular to bike while retaining useful connectivity for autos.
Abstract