» Transportation News

March 21, 2013

NYC Parking Electric_Vehicle_Charging_Station_&_Car,_Beam_ChargingWe’ve been hearing about electric vehicles for a few years now. With huge gas savings, government tax credits for buying an electric vehicle, and free parking — these cars seem like a great option.

But lately the discussion has been questioning these subsidies, ie. if electric vehicles are so fantastic, why does there need to be so many incentives to encourage us to buy them? The Nissan Leaf starts at about $35,000.

At a parking conference last year, one session focused solely on parking demand and supply for electric vehicles:

  • If we make a car owner pay for the electricity, should we give him free parking?
  • What is someone parks in a garage for 8 hours and uses only 2 hours of a battery charge? That takes away the space for other people to park.
  • If you offer electric car charging stations at on-street parking, the space needs to be handicapped-accessible.
  • Can we give someone free electric charging and charge more for the parking?

In NYC, Edison Parking began offering electric vehicle charging stations in 21 NJ & NYC garages in February 2011. Edison offered free charging for the first six months. Read more…

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March 20, 2013

Big Brother in NYC is about to get bigger. According to The Huffington Post, on Tuesday March 19, 2013, NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced that NYC will be installing license plate reader cameras “in every lane of traffic on all of the bridges and tunnels that serve as entrances and exits to Manhattan.”

That means that no matter which NYC bridge or tunnel you use to access Manhattan, your vehicle will be recorded. The NYC Police Department is legally allowed to keep the data for five years.

NYC Police Department is already doing this, if you didn’t know. It has a way to record all vehicles crossing the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and the Holland Tunnel. Kelly said that the license plate readers will be ordered for other NYC bridges, which could include the Williamsburg Bridge and Queensboro Bridge.

All this intelligence data will become part of the $30-40 million comprehensive dashboard produced by Microsoft called the Domain Awareness System, which includes 3,000 cameras and 2,600 radiation detectors.

Filed under: NYC Bridges & Tunnels,Transportation News — Tags: , , — mtohn @ 9:03 am
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March 5, 2013

Yep, new fares for NYC buses, NYC subways, Metro-North Railroad, LIRR Railroad, and NYC bridges and tunnels.

Effective March 3, 2013:

NYC Subway & NYC Bus

  • Base Single Ride Fare: Increase from $2.25 to $2.50 → $.25 increase
  • Single Ticket Fare: Increase from $2.50 to $2.75 → $.25 increase (Sold at vending machines only. Must be used within 2 hours, no transfers included)
  • Monthly MetroCard/30-Day Unlimited: Increase from $104 to $112 → 7.7% or $8 increase
  • 7-Day Unlimited: $30.00
  • 7-Day Express Bus Plus: $55.00
  • Express Bus: $6.00
  • Fee to Purchase New MetroCard $1, so save those used or expired NYC MetroCards and exchange them for a new one! Fee applies to each new MetroCard purchased at station booth, vending machine or commuter rail station.
  • Pay Per Ride Bonus: An additional 5% is added to your MetroCard with the purchase or addition of $5 or more.

Effective March 1, 2013, fares and tolls are also increased for these NYC bridges and tunnels: Read more…

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February 21, 2013

NYC TrafficEvery day, 70,000 vehicles travel in and out of NYC’s Manhattan. Add pedestrians and bicyclists to all these regular cars, delivery trucks, and emergency vehicles, and you get quite a mess of NYC traffic.

So the NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) got together with Transcore and a few other companies to create an Active Traffic Management System to improve NYC traffic. Now dubbed ‘Midtown in Motion’, this is a broad network of 100 microwave sensors, 32 traffic video cameras and E-ZPass readers initially installed at 23 intersections in NYC midtown. These devices measure traffic speeds covering a 110-block area from 2nd – 6th Aves & 42nd – 57th Sts in an effort to get NYC traffic moving faster by adjusting Midtown traffic signal patterns, unplugging bottlenecks and smoothing the flow of traffic.

Phase I resulted in an overall 10% improvement in travel times on Read more…

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January 24, 2013

NYC DOT (NYC Department of Transportation) and Transcore have been awarded International Road Federation’s Global Road Achievement Award (GRAA) for deployment of a modernized citywide computerized traffic control system. This system monitors and controls 12,400 traffic signals throughout the five boroughs – creating the largest such system in North America. It also includes Manhattan’s Midtown in Motion program, which we’ve written about before.

Midtown in Motion is a series of 100 microwave sensors, 32 traffic video cameras and E-ZPass readers installed at 23 intersections in NYC midtown. These devices measure traffic speeds covering a 110-block area from 2nd – 6th Aves & 42nd – 57th Sts in an effort to get NYC traffic moving faster by adjusting Midtown traffic signal patterns, unplugging bottlenecks and smoothing the flow of traffic.

Phase I resulted in an overall 10% improvement in travel times on all the Aves (based on E-ZPass readers and taxi GPS data). Read more…

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January 6, 2013

Let’s say you’re driving NYC traffic. NYC taxis are speeding past you, trucks are double-parking, limos are cutting in to your lane, you see brake lights ahead, and you’re not sure if you can make a right turn at the next intersection.  Stressful, yes? But do you want to know your stress level? And would that help?

According to Edmunds, car company Ford is starting to install in-vehicle sensors that will measure a driver’s stress level and use that data to personalise ‘driver-assist’ technologies.

In the 2013 Ford Fusion, there are 74 biometric sensors that can ”can monitor the perimeter around the car and see into places that are not readily visible from the driver’s seat,” Ford said.

Both radar and cameras will gather data including traffic congestion and incoming phone calls. Ideally, this data will be used to both predict driver behaviour and manage the vehicle’s controls for results such as better energy management.

We’d need to know a lot more about this technology before signing up for it. After all, I drive in NYC traffic nearly every day and my stress level is definitely going to be different than someone’s who is driving in NYC traffic for the first time.

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August 18, 2012
NYC_Street_Signs

Source: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

It’s a subtle change, but change is coming. To NYC’s street signs, that is.

The New York Times has reported that our street signs are gradually being changed from all capitals to ‘sentence case’, which capitalises the first letter of each word and uses lower case letters elsewhere.

NYC’s five boroughs have about 250,000 street name signs, and 11,000 signs have already been changed.

Why the change? The Federal Highway Administration has established these new national standards for typography and surface reflectivity.

The New York Times indicates that Read more…

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March 12, 2012

Image,_Sam_SchwartzIf you haven’t heard of ‘Gridlock Sam’, columnist for the NY Daily News and national expert on transportation, you must read this NY Times article. I’ve known Sam Schwartz, aka ‘Gridlock Sam’, for nearly six years and he is the ‘go to’ person for anything concerning NYC transportation. A worldwide authority in traffic, highway, bridge, transit and parking systems, Sam was New York City’s traffic commissioner and the chief engineer for highways, bridges, ferries and other New York City infrastructure.

His firm, Sam Schwartz Engineering works internationally with small and large cities and public and private sector clients to handle the transportation logistics covering these areas: traffic plans, congestion, urban planning, bicycle planning, parking facilities, transit & rail services, community outreach, bridges, pedestrian traffic management, events and stadiums,

Remember Congestion Pricing a few years ago? Schwartz has been working on his own version of a plan, and he calculates that his system would bring an extra $1.2 billion a year to the M.T.A. — enough to raise the subways and buses back to first-world standards. The plan promises 35,000 permanent new jobs, a sharp drop in traffic, and for a majority of travelers an actual reduction in costs.

Schwartz even coined the term ‘Gridlock’ back in the 1970s.

 

 

Filed under: Driving & Traffic News,Transportation News — Tags: — mtohn @ 11:25 am
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November 2, 2011

Park Ave & E 33rd Street is the most dangerous intersection in all of NYC for pedestrians and bicyclists, according to Transportation Alternatives new site, www.crashstat.org.

NYC Intersections Accidents

Manhattan claims 8 of the top 10 intersections for NYC accidents between motor vehicles and either pedestrians or cyclists. Read more…

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The Annual Urban Mobility Report conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute is out. The news isn’t good.

  • Average commuters endured 34 hours of delay in 2010. This is 14 hours more than in 1982, nearly 30 years ago.
  • Congestion costs the US more than $100 million, or about $750 for every commuter in the U.S.
  • “Rush Hour” is six hours of not rushing anywhere.
  • Congestion isn’t happening only at Rush Hour. About 40% of delays are happening during midday and overnight.

What are the Most Congested Cities in the U.S.?

1)   Los Angeles is still the most congested U.S. city, with nearly 522,000 cumulative hours of travel delay.
2)   NYC, with 465,000 hours of travel delay. That’s a lot of horn honking and cranky drivers. Read more…

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