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When I lived in NYC many years ago I'd be walking, biking, driving, at a park, dining in an outdoor cafe, in my living room, etc and perpetually surrounded by t

• throwaway7ahgb 2y ago
  >> the leadership (and many voters) were more interested in coming up with ways to make it convenient for drivers to drive and/or park in every neighborhood in the city than making it a pleasant place to live. The ghost of Robert Moses influences everything there. Sorry but this statement is not true. Compare NYC today vs 1980s or earlier. There are more bike lanes, parks, walking paths than ever before. Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians. The west side highway is amazing for biking, I love it. Just because it is not Copenhagen or Amsterdam doesn't mean progress isn't made. source: Lived in Manhattan for 20+ years. Own a car, bike regularly and walk to work.
  • giraffe_lady 2y ago
    It can improve a lot and still be godawful.
  • CalRobert 2y ago
    It’s so far behind Amsterdam, Paris, etc it doesn’t deserve to consider itself in the same class.
    • enriquec 2y ago
      Behind in what? Amsterdam is 800k people vs 8.3 million in NYC which is close to half of the population of the entire Netherlands
      • CalRobert 2y ago
        In being a livable city
        • asdff 2y ago
          This appears like a subjective definition to me considering 8.3 million seem alright with what nyc has to offer
          • CalRobert 2y ago
            That’s a very bizarre metric to use. I guess Kinshasa is twice as nice as NYC then.
            • asdff 2y ago
              I'd assume its better than alternatives. People don't just decide to whip their back with a rope every day. They make choices that make sense to them and give them the best individual outcome.
          • asoneth 2y ago
            NYC is a fantastic city -- high paying jobs, ubiquitous transit, amazing food, support for the arts, beautiful parks, good people... But compared to other world-class cities they have (had?) this weird car-shaped blind spot where every neighborhood and park was filled with cars and most people don't care.
      • immibis 2y ago
        So a bit more than twice Berlin?
  • Bluecobra 2y ago
    Also I could be wrong here but I think Central Park was also closed off to normal traffic. I rode an e-bike there last year and it was so much fun.
    • asoneth 2y ago
      That's awesome! It was well after I left but I heard they finally closed off the loops to cars. It always boggled my mind that they even let drivers take over the nicest park in the city. Now all they need to do is calm traffic on the transverses...
  • asoneth 2y ago
    > Roads in Manhattan are narrowed frequently to allow more pedestrians. That's wonderful to hear! I lived in NYC for the better part of a decade and was a big supporter of orgs like Transportation Alternatives and their work with the DOT to advocate for road diets. At least when I lived there the painted bike lanes were a running joke and more dangerous than just taking a car lane because every block there was at least one taxi or truck blocking the bike lane. And in cases where there was physical separation you had to contend with moped drivers riding at unsafe speeds. The Queensboro Bridge bike path was dangerously overcrowded and every year they claimed they'd open another lane; it looks like that's still "just around the corner" https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/04/08/first-look-the-dot-finally-has-plans-for-its-queensboro-bridge-pedestrian-path https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/04/08/first-look-the-dot-fi... but I wouldn't hold my breath. The Queensbridge Greenway shared use path became a muddy parking lot soon after it opened and it seems like they're still struggling to keep cars off it. NYPD still seems more enthusiastic about ticketing cyclists than drivers who park illegally. I didn't mean to imply that the NYC bike/ped folks haven't notched some wins. And I used to tell myself that as bad as it was, other US cities were worse for cyclists and pedestrians. But that wasn't true and every time I go back to visit friends and family I'm still grateful when we leave.
• halfmatthalfcat 2y ago
  I lived on 2nd Ave for years in UES and biked to FiDi for work - cannot relate to what you're claiming here. Yes there's noise, it's NYC, but "gridlocked traffic and construction" was not something I'd normally run into.
  • xvedejas 2y ago
    At least visiting other parts of Manhattan -- I'm thinking for example LES -- there is definitely constant traffic and exhaust. Doesn't really matter if it's gridlock or not, moving cars emit more sound and fumes than idling cars do.
    • sokoloff 2y ago
      > moving cars emit more sound and fumes than idling cars do Per car, per minute? Sure. Per car, per trip? Not clear, but probably not. Per block, per day? Also not clear, but probably not.
      • xdavidliu 2y ago
        what does a trip mean for an idling car?
        • sokoloff 2y ago
          A trip where a car drives some distance without idling in gridlock vs that same distance trip where the car spends significant time idling in gridlock in addition to time spent moving is the obvious answer.
  • asoneth 2y ago
    My bike commute took me past a bridge entrance and a tunnel entrance in midtown which were both perpetually gridlocked, so I'll admit that probably colored my recollection a bit and it wasn't literally every street in NYC that was gridlocked. Still, when living in NYC I felt constantly surrounded by car traffic, far more than other cities I've lived in.
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• sidvit 2y ago
  I moved to the financial district a couple of years ago and I was very happy to find how anti car parts of it can be. I pretty much never hear any street traffic where I live. The narrow streets mean lots of places it isn’t covered in parked cars, there’s low to seemingly no traffic on the weekends, the closed streets around the exchange area is basically a big dog park after working hours. I’ve looked at a bunch of different apartments this summer with my lease coming up, but I don’t think I want to deal with the noisy other parts of lower manhattan
  • karanbhangui 2y ago
    Fidi is the most underrated neighborhood to live in NYC. Most MTA lines converge there, very secure due to post 9/11 security, not much traffic and quiet at night, and slightly cheaper than many other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods.
• joenot443 2y ago
  It's interesting you say that, coming from Toronto, I was floored at how _well_ NYC traffic moves in comparison. Obviously no city is perfect, but suggesting that NYC is "incompetently managed" is a little funny to me. Of the other cities I've lived in, Seattle, Vancouver, SF, and Toronto, I've found the NYC city services to be by far the most effective. What US city do you think does a better job?
  • asdff 2y ago
    To be fair only a handful of US metros are large enough to see a good amount of gridlock. A lot of american cities outside that top few are pretty much "mile a minute" metros where you can expect most trips you have the bulk of it done at 60mph from the ample highway access and lack of congestion on that network in general.
  • Scoundreller 2y ago
    My guess about NYC is the large proportion of 1 way streets.
  • asoneth 2y ago
    > I was floored at how _well_ NYC traffic moves in comparison My criticisms of NYC traffic aren't based on the throughput efficiency for drivers, but the impact on the people who live there. At least when I was in NYC, every attempt to charge market rates for parking, improve daylighting at intersections, get people to stop parking on the sidewalks, build protected bike lanes, stop making mountains of garbage bags on the sidewalk, etc were all met with fierce resistance. (Though I gather from this thread that things have improved in the last ten years or so.) While the pedestrian fatality counts in NYC are breaking records, just across the Hudson River you have Jersey City and Hoboken prioritizing safe, pleasant streets for residents and have achieved "Vision Zero" with no traffic deaths.
    • evanelias 2y ago
      Hoboken's "Vision Zero" commitment is a total joke. It was basically a long-running PR campaign by the sketchy mayor ahead of his (failed) US congressional run. I lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Hoboken each for multiple years, and Hoboken is by far the most hazardous place to be a pedestrian I've ever lived. If you don't believe me, search on Hoboken's subreddit and you'll see tons of people saying the exact same thing. Hoboken's traffic fatalities have always been low or zero, even long before all the daylighting, because Hoboken is only 1 square mile with only a handful of entry/exit points. Quite simply, it's difficult for a car to get to a sufficient speed to kill someone there. But they can certainly cause non-fatal injuries on a regular basis, and they do. I saw quite a few out my window at the intersection closest to my home, and it took over seven years for the town to even add an extra stop sign there. Part of the problem is Hoboken's weird fear of traffic lights. The busiest commercial street has them on every block, but the rest of the city only has a handful. Everywhere else, it's stop signs, usually only in one direction, which changes unpredictably between blocks. Compare this to NYC outer-borough neighborhoods of similar density and character, like Astoria or Park Slope, where they put traffic lights on nearly every intersection. Much safer to be a pedestrian in those places because you have a pedestrian traffic signal telling you when it's safe to cross. In Hoboken you just have crosswalks which may or may not have a stop sign, and drivers who may or may not stop for you, and complete lack of traffic enforcement by authorities who don't care when cars fail to yield to pedestrians. Oh, and about that busiest commercial street in Hoboken that actually has traffic lights: it didn't even have pedestrian signals until 2017, many decades later than pretty much every other busy place in the entire NYC metro area.
• grecy 2y ago
  Once you've been out of a city for a while the smell of car exhaust can be extremely strong. Every time I fly into LAX from northern Canada I get a punch in the lungs - it's horrible. There must be some severe long-term health impacts.
  • asdff 2y ago
    LAX is especially bad because of all the avgas burned. I've seen studies done where being directly downwind of lax relative to the other parts of southla not as downwind have marked increases in health issues. Port of LA is also a bad area. So is san bernardino and riverside county as the prevailing coastal breeze tends to push quite a bit of pollution off the la basin and into the san gabriel valley. You get up high to the highest reaches of hilly neighborhoods like bel air, you might actually be high enough to be totally above the usual inversion layer and have a dramatically different air quality than those maybe 10 minutes downhill on your street.
• AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Electrification really hasn't hit home in the US yet. EVs due to the simplicity of the drivetrain (which is already engineered for various electric motor sizes since we've been using them for 100+ years in 1000s of applications) can be adapted quickly and cost effectively to many different vehicle sizes and platforms: - electric hand scooter - maybe this has happened already, but the mini micro kids scooter design seems ideal to human application. more stable, turns well, better balanced. It folds up and is totally hand-portable when you get to your destination, so no locking up. Modern battery performance should be able to do dozens of miles at 10-15mph if necessary. These can be almost effortlessly carried into a subway car. - electric bike - as anyone who has been to the netherlands, this encompasses a wide range, from a simple bike to various cargo carrying versions and basic trailers. The downside of the electric bike is securing it at the destination, but theoretically secured parking should be a lot more compact for a bike. - electric vespa/moped - the big difference here is speed and danger. In a city, I argue this is right at the line of being too big and dangerous. It can't be adjacent to pedestrians or bicycles, needs to be in dedicated car lanes, but its kind of too small. These can go faster, carry more, and are more secure since they are harder to make off with. - electric motorcycles/trikes - like mopeds but bigger/faster still - electric K-cars/golf carts - this is where there is a big empty spot in US vehicles. You can see them starting to develop with side-by-sides, but an urban electric golf cart or similarly sized vehicle is tremendously useful and much more compact and cheap to make in theory. I would argue that outside of specifically permitted deliveries, nobody should have a vehicle larger than this in Manhattan. IMO these are the big three that cities need to start planning to adapt to, and big vehicles are strictly for special situations. A "golf cart on steroids" can really pull quite a lot given EV motors ability to produce torque. I lived in downtown Minneapolis for quite a while, it was amazing how much a bicycle shrunk the city once the snow melted. Anything under 4 miles of distance wasn't worth taking a car, because the parking delay and walk-to-destination removed any time advantage. e-bikes and e-hand scooters are like that, but expand the accessibility to a far bigger age range and fitness level. An e-handscooter that is portable takes a subway system and expands the radius/distance accessible from the base stations by a factor of 3 to 10. With a e-scooter you carry off the subway, you can easily go 1-2 miles from the station, weather permitting. Finally, e-scooters are QUIET and CLEAN. Which when people get used to them will really highlight how much ICEs stink and are loud, and will turn them into pariahs socially. When that happens tipping point wise who knows.
• Spooky23 2y ago
  The problem is other stakeholders live in the provinces. NYC transit advocates don’t represent them. NYC is a regional megalopolis. The commentary here is always focused on the strawman terrible people commuting to lower Manhattan, but there are a million reasons why convenient travel to or through Manhattan is needed. It’s also unfair to characterize the governor of New York as “some politican”. The MTA and most river crossings are owned by public authorities controlled by the state, and the entirety of the system is dependent on New Jersey Transit and the multi-state Port Authority. Congestion pricing was a state initiative all along.
  • asoneth 2y ago
    The drivers commuting into Manhattan aren't terrible, they're responding totally rationally to the relative monetary and time costs of driving into the city vs park & ride vs living closer. The terrible thing is that the incentives that have been established make driving the right choice for so many people. > The problem is other stakeholders live in the provinces. Exactly. People who live in New York City often end up being beholden to the preferences of people who live outside the city. There are downsides to the culture of localism in New England, but one nice thing is that cities and towns are typically able to prioritize the lives of their own residents which makes them nice places to live.
    • Spooky23 2y ago
      Maybe in some New England areas. Greater Boston is a suburban hellscape. If traffic is your Kryptonite, beantown is worse in some dimensions. NYC prospers today because it’s a regional hub. All of the business that required physical presence (shipping, industry, etc) is long gone. Also note “the provinces” include NYC itself. I grew up in Queens, and congestion pricing certainly didn’t align with the needs of my relatives who live in the old neighborhood.
      • asoneth 2y ago
        > congestion pricing certainly didn’t align with the needs of my relatives who live in the old neighborhood No doubt, but the question is to what degree the preferences of people who live in Queens should override the preferences of the people who live in Manhattan when it comes to deciding how to manage the streets of Manhattan. > Greater Boston is a suburban hellscape. If traffic is your Kryptonite, beantown is worse in some dimensions. For drivers, sure, it seems nearly as bad as NYC. I recall it being congested and confusing the few times I drove through Boston. Though it is nice that they buried some of the highways so you don't have to hear or see as much traffic downtown. But in general my concern is less about the impact on drivers than the impact on neighborhood residents, pedestrians, and cyclists. In some ways the Greater Boston area seems ahead of NYC in that regard.