Every day, thousands of motor vehicles traverse the average New York City residential street. Though the economic and public health costs of heavy traffic have been the subject of increasing study, there has been virtually no research of how traffic impacts peoples' daily lives. Beginning in June of 2005, twenty-one Transportation Alternatives researchers set out to ascertain the impact of vehicular traffic on New Yorkers' quality of life. Over a period of fourteen months, the researchers interviewed over 600 residents in four neighbourhoods: Astoria, Queens; Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn; Chinatown, Manhattan and High Bridge, the Bronx. In each neighbourhood, the researchers interviewed residents on three kinds of streets: "heavy" traffic streets with over 5,000 vehicles per day; "medium" traffic streets with 2,000-3,000 vehicles per day; and "light" traffic streets with 1,000 or fewer vehicles per day. Traffic's Human Toll reveals that high volume vehicular traffic has profoundly negative impacts on the lives and perceptions of residents who live near it. The results show that compared to their neighbourhood counterparts living on streets with low traffic volumes, residents living on higher volume streets: • harbour more negative perceptions of their block; • possess fewer relationships with their neighbours; • are more frequently interrupted during sleep, meals, and conversations; • spend less time walking, shopping and playing with their children. The study found that residents living on streets with lighter traffic have more positive environmental perceptions than residents that live on medium-traffic and heavy-traffic streets. On light-traffic streets, the ratio of overall positive to negative perceptions was 98:62. On the study's medium-traffic street, it was 74:63 and on the heavy traffic street it was 34:122 . (Author/publisher)
Abstract