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.
Yes, extend a divider past Clinton so traffic can’t turn off the bridge onto it.
ReplyDeleteEven better, make Clinton Street car-free; I know I was sorry and puzzled when they removed the traffic-calming feature from Avenue B recently.
ReplyDeleteThis wouldn't have happened if there was no big bike lines on Houston. C'mon never seen this much crash on Clinton ever since those bike lanes reducing space. I'm born and raised here and reducing driving space just creates bigger problems aka like this one.
DeleteWait, what traffic calming feature did they remove from B??
DeleteSure, no cars or trucks. How do you think merchandise gets to the small local shops or large retailers ?
DeleteClinton Street was a one-way going south when I moved here - that is probably how it should be again.
DeleteOf course then the corner of Essex & Delancey becomes even more of a nightmare. We need full-time traffic enforcement there now that there are 1000+ people living in Essex Crossing (with more on the way when they demolish the old Essex Market building).
ReplyDeleteYES, @ScubaDiva!
ReplyDeleteAlso NICE article title, Grieve!
Yeah that's because no local car obeyed that traffic calming feature, locals were roaming Ave B on 40MPH easily.
ReplyDeleteAnd kudos for the Sex Pistols reference...
ReplyDeleteSrsly best tagline of the past few years anywhere !!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI have seen several instances where the large trucks and buses do not have the room on the street to make the turns from Clinton Street onto Houston Street going east or west bound. It is very poor urban street planning by DOT and needs to be corrected.
ReplyDeleteWe have a Clinton Street neighbors WhatsApp group and are organizing around this issue. If anyone wants to join, send me an email and I can add you - liamrosen@gmail.com
ReplyDeletearen't trucks that size illegal in Manhattan?
ReplyDeleteI say add more dinning sheds!
ReplyDelete