The real reason for New York City's traffic nightmare
Time for some traffic problems in Manhattan!
City officials have intentionally ground Midtown to a halt with the hidden purpose of making drivers so miserable that they leave their cars at home and turn to mass transit or bicycles, high-level sources told The Post.
Today’s gridlock is the result of an effort by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations over more than a decade of redesigning streets and ramping up police efforts, the sources said.
“The traffic is being engineered,” a former top NYPD official told The Post, explaining a long-term plan that began under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and hasn’t slowed with Mayor de Blasio.
“The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion, to slow traffic down, to favor bikers and pedestrians,” the former official said.
“There’s a reduction in capacity through the introduction of bike lanes and streets and lanes being closed down.”
The concerted effort includes:
- Pedestrian plazas that have cut off entire lanes of traffic and created bottlenecks.
- Protected bike lanes on major avenues that eat up a traffic lane and force trucks to double park.
- Cross streets where turns are forbidden on nearly all avenues.
- Intersections where drivers must wait for green arrows to turn onto avenues.
- Ordering traffic agents to focus more on writing tickets and less on directing traffic.
The goal of the jammed traffic is to shift as many drivers as possible to public transit or bicycles.
An added benefit was supposed to be safer streets, but city officials have said that while 45,000 fewer cars and trucks now come into Midtown daily than in 2010, pedestrian deaths are on the uptick this year.
The driver headaches began under Bloomberg in 2003, with his THRU Streets program that prohibits drivers from turning onto most avenues from nine Midtown cross streets during weekday hours.
Bloomberg then tried to drastically cut vehicle traffic with a congestion-pricing program that would have charged drivers to enter Midtown.
Albany nixed that plan in 2007, and the next year, Bloomberg changed tactics.
He again targeted drivers with his ambitious Green Light for Midtown Project, which, starting in 2009, installed roadway-narrowing redesigns of Columbus Circle, Broadway, Times Square and Herald Square.
Green Light includes pedestrian plazas and protected bike lanes that are still being completed under de Blasio, who has further snarled traffic with reduced speed limits, redesigned intersections and aggressive summons-writing as part of his Vision Zero initiative.
“This all goes back to when Bloomberg wasn’t getting his congestion pricing, so they started doing others things,” a second source said.
“They’re not coming out and saying it, but they’re doing other things to cut down on traffic coming into city, things such as taking streets that had four lanes and making them three by creating bike lanes, or putting a plaza in, creating pedestrian islands,” the source said.
“They’re purposefully cutting down on the number of vehicles coming into the city by cutting down the space for vehicles.”
The source said de Blasio “doesn’t care about traffic” and noted that the mayor could now blame congestion on President-elect Donald Trump, whose Trump Tower in Midtown is now ringed with security.
“He really doesn’t care,” the source said. “Instead of working around it and helping it out, he’ll just blame everything on Trump.”
Adding to the gridlock, traffic agents are being ordered to focus more on writing tickets and less on keeping vehicles moving, a former NYPD traffic-safety officer said.
“Almost nobody’s doing traffic direction anymore. Everybody’s focused on enforcement of parking violations,” said the former officer, who was a liaison with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The NYPD declined to comment.
‘The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion, to slow traffic down, to favor bikers and pedestrians.’
De Blasio spokesman Austin Finan on Friday denied any effort by City Hall to slow down cars.
“The notion that we want or are somehow ‘engineering’ traffic congestion is absurd,” he said.
“Economic growth, record tourism, construction activity and a growing population means our streets are overburdened like never before.
“DOT and NYPD work extremely hard to keep New Yorkers moving on our streets safely and efficiently by foot, bus, car and bike.”
Still, Manhattan has become a vehicular hell where drivers suffer an average speed of 8.2 mph.
Among them was Braulio Cefea, who was stuck in a traffic jam on the Manhattan side of the Queens Midtown Tunnel Friday.
“This is a bad idea,” he said of Midtown’s intentional traffic snarls. “Bad, bad idea!”
Troy Johnson, 29, sitting in the same traffic jam, was furious at the insiders’ allegations of an effort by City Hall to clog traffic.
“If it’s true,” he said, “you are going to see some serious road rage!”
Additional reporting by Danielle Furfaro
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