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== Eli's Blog ==
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NYC Transit Opinions

Want to discuss? I’d love to hear your thoughts, find me on Twitter.

1. We overlook weight when evaluating a vehicle’s risk of causing injury, death, and damage

Heavier vehicles have greater momentum (weight x speed) which means longer stopping distances and more force when they hit things.

We should adjust fines and punishments based on vehicle weights [a]. NY assigns points for traffic violations. 11 points in 18 months, and your driver license may be suspended. We should assign x% more points (rounding up) for every ton of vehicle weight.

Increasing the probability of being punished appears to be an even better intervention. We should make it legal to expand the city’s red-light camera program [b], and actually include tickets from speed cameras in license-suspension calculations!!!

We could also reduce the number of heavier vehicles with weight adjusted rates for congestion pricing. A side benefit could be spending a bit less on unprofitable infrastructure for private vehicles, since lighter vehicles cause less road-wear.

Random:

  1. 5th Avenue should be closed to car traffic from 110th to at least Bryant Park. 5th Avenue is Museum Mile, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, MoMA. There’s no reason to have one lane of parking, one car-choked bus route, and 3 lanes of car traffic. It would benefit greatly from trees, more walking space, fast bus routes (or hell, a streetcar), and more sidewalk space for tourists walking 5 abreast.
  2. 5th, Madison, or Park Avenue need a double-wide bike lane. There’s no direct southbound route for bikes anywhere between Central Park West (which is now narrowed to one bike Northbound at 81st street!) and 2nd Ave.
  3. Streets around schools should be first priority for raised crosswalks, and I’d prefer if my future kids had a school street closed to vehicles entirely. Beyond distance from a leading cause of childhood deaths, they’d be breathing better air and enjoying more outdoor space.

Plus many of your other typical urbanist opinions.

Footnotes:

[a] This can just be manufacture’s weight. If a vehicle is impounded it could also be weighed. [b] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nyc-red-light-camera-program.pdf We have a red-light camera program. City officials argue that it works. It’s illegal to expand this program beyond 150 intersections. I’d like that to change. (I also need to read more about this)