THE REAL REASON

THE REAL REASON FOR NEW YORK CITY’S TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE

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[12/4/16]  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.

Source:  Government Slaves website

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