Never mind the bollards: Clinton Street has a traffic problem

Photos by Salim 

Early yesterday morning, a semi turning from Clinton Street onto westbound Houston Street rode over a bollard on the divider, blocking traffic — including buses — and sending some drivers into the new separated bike lane. (Vehicles are making a habit of turning onto bollards at Clinton and Houston.) 

No injuries were reported, though the mishap snarled traffic for much of the morning.

The scene offers a timely reason to revisit an opinion piece that Lower East Side resident and Community Board 3 member Tal Roded wrote for Streetsblog last month about Clinton Street's traffic problems. 

Roded notes that the stretch of Clinton between Delancey and Houston handles roughly 16,000 vehicles a day — four to six times the traffic of neighboring streets — much of it coming from the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp. More than 100 crashes have occurred along the corridor over the past decade. 

His proposed fix: Create a "Low Traffic Neighborhood" by eliminating the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp onto Clinton and directing uptown-bound drivers to Essex and Allen streets. Clinton would remain accessible to residents and delivery vehicles while eliminating much of the cut-through traffic. 

You can find the DOT's rules and regulations for commercial trucks here.