John Petro
Measuring the Success of a New Transportation Policy
In New York, stretches of Broadway between Times Square and Herald Square have been closed to vehicular traffic and opened to pedestrians. Over the course of the summer, the NYC DOT will transform these stretches of asphalt into public plazas, replacing the hot blacktop, adding tables and chairs, and finally helping alleviate the pedestrian congestion that has always haunted this section of Midtown.
An editorial in today’s New York Daily News poses an interesting question about this plan:
So we again pose the question to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, whose brainchild the closure is: Will you please explain the scientific method by which you will determine success and failure?
If you continue reading, however, you find that the Daily News’ editorial board just doesn’t get it.
We would compare vehicular loads and speeds on all the avenues from Fifth Ave. to the Hudson before the closures and after the closures. And we would do the same for all the crosstown streets that could possibly be affected.
The Broadway improvements are not about vehicular loads and speeds. This is the type of thinking that the DOT, under the leadership of Sadik-Kahn, is moving away from. This is the type of thinking that led to the old arrangement in Times Square, where 89 percent of the space was designated for cars even though the vast majority of people in the area get around by foot or public transportation.
The new type of thinking, and the whole reason behind the Broadway improvements, is to facilitate all types of transportation, not just automobile transportation. Midtown is so amazingly compact and dense that the automobile is one of the least efficient modes of transportation possible – cars just take up too much room (see this link for a visual representation of the space requirements for different transportation modes). We will never be able to arrange our cities to completely accommodate automobile traffic, partially because of the amount of space that automobiles need, and partially because of the “tragedy of the commons.” Simply put, the tragedy of the commons suggests that more road capacity attracts more cars, leading to congestion. Until, that is, we add more lanes or more roads, which in turn attracts more cars, leading to congestion. And so on.
Let me be clear that I am not suggesting that we eliminate all cars from Midtown. We need to accommodate all modes of transportation (and we need to address the issue of deliveries to businesses). It’s just that we have been prioritizing automobile traffic above all else, and that is a mistake.
There are some things that we could be doing to address the automobile congestion on our city streets, namely congestion pricing. Congestion pricing would make it more expensive to operate a car, but the benefits for those who truly need to drive – in terms of reducing travel times and congestion – will outweigh the costs.
But back to the original question: how should we measure the success (or failure) of the changes to Broadway? We can measure pedestrian crowding, as was done in this study for the city’s DOT. However, many other aspects of the plan are difficult to measure. How do we measure the “pleasantness” of Broadway, now that the workers in that area can enjoy more open space in which to eat their lunch or finish their book?
What is clear, however, is if we continue to measure transportation success by the old metrics, by auto traffic volume and speeds, then we will never create the types of spaces that lead to an efficient transportation system and a pleasant environment.
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Posted at 10:37 AM, Jun 01, 2009 in
Transportation | Urban Affairs
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