The Columbus Highway in Pictures
While the city maintains that the Columbus expansion project is nothing more than a "streetscape improvement", the project requires removing existing curb extensions to make way for the minimum 9 foot wide travel lanes being added. What this means, explained in pictures:
Monmouth Street and Columbus Drive
Removing the curb extension at Monmouth street to convert parking into a travel lane also widens the distance between curbs-- making pedestrian crossings more treacherous.
Varick Street and Columbus
The Same thing is to happen at Varick Street.
Columbus Drive at Rush Hour.
Say goodbye to all that sweet residential parking.
Monmouth Street and Columbus DriveRemoving the curb extension at Monmouth street to convert parking into a travel lane also widens the distance between curbs-- making pedestrian crossings more treacherous.
Varick Street and ColumbusThe Same thing is to happen at Varick Street.
Columbus Drive at Rush Hour.
Say goodbye to all that sweet residential parking.
Labels: Transportation
10 Comments:
First, I thought the parking there was for businesses? You stated that the meters turned over spots. Now it's a bad plan because it loses residential spots. I thought you didn't like residential parking, encouraging people to get along on bikes or pogo sticks or whatever. Finally, I jaywalk with the best of them, but NOT on Columbus during a.m. or p.m. rush, doing so would be nuts. Cross with the light and you'll be fine.
Indeed, Eric, the plan does include the removal of metered parking, east of Barrow Street and also on Grove Street. This is a massive project that covers more than the two blocks shown.
Second, street parking is good for the community. It provides a barrier between vehicle traffic and the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Street parking is a public resource-- which is very different than private driveways.
So Eric, which city department do you work for?
Funny! I'm the one remaining person in JC employed in the private sector. I just don't hate cars. I don't know too much about this project, but I attended a planning session a year or so ago about downtown traffic and it was decided that one street had to take one for the team. Better this one than Grand or Montgomery. In my view, the bigger issue is that you can't get north easily due to mixed tunnel traffic and a narrow Marin and hideous lights on Washington, but this project is about east-west traffic. I'd like to see traffic put away from residences on elevated and underground routes, but moving people and stuff is too 1950s for our progressive polity so we're stuck with half measures like this.
Thanks for posting pictures Ian. I know some people have taken stabs at you as a journalist, but this is the only place I seem to be able to get info about this project. Keep up the real journalism. Eric the issue is not with cars or metered vs residential parking spots, but with changes to the neighborhood which seem only to benefit out-of-towners and potentially developers on the waterfront at the sake of downtown residents. Its the same old crap. Crappy planing, crappy solicitation of input from the community, crappy studies and a crappier environment for the majority of people in the area.
Eric,
The trouble here is that the city only ever considered one plan. That comes from the city's engineering department. Any planning session the city might have held about traffic must have been useless, since according to the city's engineering department, they don't have data on current traffic volumes on Columbus or projected volume. Its pretty hard to assess the need for an expanded roadway when you don't know how many cars are using it. Moreover, according to the city's engineering department, they don't have statistics on the point of origin of traffic, so there really is no way of knowing if the traffic is coming from other parts of the city or from outside the city or if Columbus was the best possible route for an expansion.
Furthermore, one road has already "taken the hit" as you put it; the city expanded Grand Street from two lanes to four. One day there was plenty of parking along Grand Street, the next day cars are flying by at 40 or 50 miles per hour.
I'm not against necessarily changing the alignment on Columbus Drive, but the proposal as it is now is not an improvement for the city. Maybe it would be beneficial to create an HOV-Bus Lane on Columbus, to facilitate mass transit ridership. Maybe Jersey City should have considered a progressive traffic management policy that reduces congestion through better lane management: dedicated turning and through lanes, rather than adding a whole new lane of traffic. But the point is, the city's engineering office didn't bother considering any other plan, nor do they have data to support the current, 7 year old plan.
The downtown circulation study I attended did have traffic count data. The point that the meeting people made was that additional capacity is necessary to handle current traffic, let alone future increases. But honestly, I just don't think adding a travel lane on Columbus is a very big deal. It doesn't add much capacity, it doesn't make crossing the street more dangerous. The upsides and the downsides are just not very significant. Columbus was tapped for the lane because it is quite clearly the least residential of the other alternatives, and the best choice for this type of thing. There's no contest there. As to whether this has been studied to death enough, really, I bet that there would be no convincing you that any street in JC should add a lane, that any travel by car or truck is justifiable, that any design or study could possibly be vetted enough.
Has Grand been expanded? I don't get that sense. There was one week there last year maybe, or was it earlier this year when street parking was allowed -- I'd assumed it was by accident. That struck me as nuts at the time, and I'm glad they got rid of it. My own view is that allowing all these new high rises to go up on Grand without doing a real widening, and adding a bike lane in the process, is a huge flaw for JC. The streets around here were designed for when this area was warehouses and brownstones, not office buildings and high rises. It's easier to drive on the upper east side of Manhattan than in JC and that's saying something.
This state and city do a lot of silly things in my view. The state is almost done with a highly intrusive rebuild of 139 that added NO capacity -- not even a shoulder. The Turnpike authority nixed it's own plan to third lane the Newark Bay extension. The state plans to revamp the Pulaski Skyway, and add no lanes to it. Y'all act like if you don't build it, they won't come -- a reverse field of dreams -- and then you sit in traffic and wonder what's wrong with people.
I'm a bicyclist and PATH rider on work days, a driver on weekends, I have family and friends who drive to work as well. If this city is going to be vibrant and growing it will inexorably see traffic increases. I just wish there was some common sense and real money and building applied to making this place work for everyone.
Every study of the consequences of adding or widening roadways I have ever read shows that all it does is increase traffic, it does not ameliorate traffic congestion. And increasing traffic also means decreasing air quality which is (or should be) a major concern in the area.
In addition, the changes to Columbus will cause the loss of yet more trees (has ANYONE noticed that all the trees have disappeared from Newark Avenue and none of them is being replaces). Another blow to air quality and quality of life in Jersey City.
Is that right? Someone better tell the Port Authority! They are working to expand trains from 7 cars to 10 in order to ameliorate congestion on the EWR-WTC line. We can save them a ton of money by telling them that adding the capacity will simply make the problem worse. Or maybe this logic applies only to self-propeeled vehicles? What do the "studies" say?
Comparing improvements to public transportation which benefits those of us who live downtown and which doesn't add to street traffic and pollution with increased commuter traffic through the neighborhood doesn't really make much sense.
http://static.nmpirg.org/nmp.asp?id2=6657&id3=NM
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.html
http://www.walkablestreets.com/wide.htm
http://www.assmotax.org/Releases/AMCT%20release:%20building%20more%20roads%20relieves%20your%20wallet,%20not%20congestion.php
The circulation study didn't do volume counts on Columbus. It also presumed that the Columbus Project as complete, as it was approved before the circulation study.
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