"Every day, New Yorkers confront the failure of our government to adapt to decades of accumulated change - and nowhere is that failure clearer than on the city's streets and sidewalks. The perpetual question is: Why does everything take so long? Busways, bus lanes, bike lanes, open streets, pedestrian plazas, day-lit intersections, red light cameras, speed cameras, outdoor dining sheds - why do all of these policies take far longer to implement than anyone ever anticipates?"
"As a longtime pedestrian safety advocate and founder of CHEKPEDS, I have a theory about the plodding apathy that seems to define transit policy in this city: transportation projects take so long, and become so expensive, because of the collective failure of our city and state's alphabet soup of agencies, beginning with the DOT. These departments and commissions don't grasp the full scope of their inconsistencies, and the effort and resources needed to overcome these silos create endlessly disjointed, confusing programs."
"This is not about a lack of money. Rather, laws written decades ago for a very different streetscape continue to dictate what our government can and cannot do. So-called "solutions" are fractured among numerous and inconsistent programs. For example: Sanitation and the Department of Transportation do not agree on how to clean pedestrian spaces. City lawyers don't agree with DOT on how to provide insurance to open streets and school streets. Agencies do not agree on the definition of a clear path for pedestrians."
New York's street and sidewalk improvements face chronic delays and escalating costs. Fragmented city and state agencies, beginning with the Department of Transportation, operate with inconsistent rules and enforcement, producing disjointed programs. Decades-old laws that assume a different streetscape limit what government can implement, so solutions become fractured across multiple incompatible programs. Examples include disagreements between Sanitation and DOT over cleaning pedestrian spaces, city lawyers and DOT over insurance for open and school streets, unclear definitions of a clear pedestrian path, limited Sanitation enforcement hours, and incoherent vendor rules. These contradictions strand residents and small businesses in regulatory confusion and slow implementation of safety measures.
Read at Streetsblog
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