Crosstown Avenues

[GordonGecko]

Ok, so I've been saving this idea for when I bump into Michael Bloomberg one day and can bounce it off him, but that hasn't happened yet and his term is soon ending. So here it is in the open for the public to debate :)

We all know what the biggest traffic bottleneck is in Manhattan in terms of getting around town - CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC. The up/downtown avenues are wide and flow very well, but try to get from 1st avenue to the West side on crosstown streets and you can be in your car/on the bus for a very long time.

This is my solution:
Crosstown Avenues

Plan:
- Make 42nd Street One Way Westbound
- Make 34th Street One Way Eastbound

Benefits:
- No stalled traffic waiting behind cars turning left
- Easy access around standing cars in multiple lanes
- Possibility to synchronize with up/down avenues to get green lights all the way across


Wouldn't this be a great idea? I realize if you wanted to drive or take a bus in the opposite direction you would need to go 8 streets over to the next crosstown avenue, but isn't that a small price to pay for a smooth way to get to the other side....

Maybe this could possibly be done with 23rd and 14th. 57th would be a great candidate also, but there's not really a good wide street to pair it with. What do you think?

[GordonGecko]

Also, most signage would be pretty easy to change, and we wouldn't really have to rename "42nd Street" to "42nd Avenue", people would just know that it was a defacto crosstown avenue.

[ablarc]

if you wanted to drive or take a bus in the opposite direction you would need to go 8 streets over to the next crosstown avenue, but isn't that a small price to pay for a smooth way to get to the other side....
Maybe.

Requires some study.

[Ninjahedge]

What they need to do is eliminate the parking on some of these midtown thoroughfares.

If 41st, 43rd and 44th were 3 lane roads rather than one lane parking meccas you might get a bit more flow.

The key to reducing traffic in NYC is to be able to get the vehicles in and out as fast as possible, but also discourage them from STAYING here. The first depends a lot on the second, especially for things like commercial box trucks....

[GordonGecko]

...If 41st, 43rd and 44th were 3 lane roads rather than one lane parking meccas you might get a bit more flow.


The problem with that is the reality of the situation in NYC where there will always be cars that stand for whatever amount of time, whether it be 20 seconds to drop off a package or 15 minutes to go shopping or that need to park at a hydrant or legal spot to run into a building. You would really need some teeth to enforce that.

But stringing along those little streets wouldn't be very much more efficient, because then you couldn't synchronize the intersecting up/downtown avenues so that you drive crosstown without a red light. If you did, you'd have to reset the avenue lights to change all at once to red like on Park avenue which is a real pain to travel on for any real length.

The beauty of the single large avenues in each direction is the 6 lane width than can accomodate parking & standing, and it removes the problem of cars parked waiting to turn left against oncoming traffic, and it can be synchronized to let traffic flow crosstown without a red light

[ablarc]

What they need to do is eliminate the parking on some of these midtown thoroughfares.
Parked cars provide pedestrians with a welcome buffer against whizzing traffic.