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Comment by insickness | Hacker News Reader

Gridlock has gotten far worse in NYC. Cars constantly pull into and block intersections and crosswalks.

Hear, hear!

The issue is a total lack of enforcement. One can recognize the older NYC drivers by their refusal to enter an intersection if they cannot be sure to clear it on green. It is because in the late nineties in Manhattan blocking the box was equivalent of doing 90mph in a 55 zone in front of a state trooper ( the only time one could get away with it if the said state trooper was already busy writing a ticket to someone else ) -- you would get the a $100-$500 dollar ticket and you would get points on the license. Not it barely happens even on the streets with SBS lanes and traffic cops.

Let this sink in. $300 dollar and two points on a license for not clearing the box ( including crosswalks ) in 1996. It was when a spiffy dinner for two in NYC was about $80.

If NYC were to deploy a 1000 cops to write these tickets for a month today there would be no congestion in three months as no one would want to risk thousands of dollars in tickets for the $10 they could make by trying to squeeze the cars into the yellow light -- and the ones that would risk it are sure to lose the cars and licenses quite quick.

So there's a nice pool of ticket revenue that, maybe, a majority of citizens want to see enforced. Anyone have an idea why it's not enforced?

They do enforce it. My office is on one of the major feeders to the Holland Tunnel (Broome/Watts Street), so it gets extremely congested everyday from 4 to 6. Every light cycle, several cars block the box, and a small team of traffic cops sprints out from their hiding spot around the corner, ready to write tickets. I think it's just a matter of scaling that tactic out to other intersections where traffic comes to a complete stop for twenty seconds at a time, allowing cops to give and explain tickets in the intersection without disrupting the flow of traffic.

Please add honking to that list, it's out of control in lower Manhattan.

Not just in lower Manhattan. Also on nice leafy outer-borough side streets.

Not just Manhattan, everywhere in the City.

I had a car follow me laying on the horn non-stop for two straight blocks in Brooklyn, no exaggeration. I was going less than 45 miles per hour on a narrow residential street with cars parked on both sides, that was completely unacceptable. They eventually illegally passed me when it was clear I wasn't going to drive in a way to leave myself enough reaction time to be able to stop if an obstacle jutted out from between parked cars into the road.

That's just one example that sticks out in my head.

Given that those narrow residential streets are typically home to lots of kids, and that the speed limit on them is 25MPH, I hope you were driving not just under 45 but under 30.

I don't feel safer going over 20 on those sorts of streets.

I drove there once - someone honked at me, so I stopped to see what was wrong.

Turns out he wanted me to drive, not stop.

Chalk it up to Uber and their ilk, which not only discourages people from using public transport, but also significantly adds trips, which wouldn't have happened otherwise.

>"Chalk it up to Uber and their ilk, which not only discourages people from using public transport,"

The MTA actually does a pretty good job of discouraging people from taking the subway these days, probably more so than Uber. Maybe you haven't seen the news but the subway has been in throes of a crisis for more than a few years now [1].

While I would like to see less cars on the streets, its hard to make the argument that people shouldn't use car services when the alternative is regularly failing its'riders.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/nyregion/nyc-subway-delay...

This is particularly egregious as it forces pedestrians out into oncoming traffic to cross. Sadly this also seems to be the new normal.

I've lived here for 22 years and it seems about the same to me as a pedestrian.

As a pedestrian, am I allowed to yell at/curse cars that block the crosswalk?

That does not make you a pedestrian. That makes you a New Yorker.

That doesn’t apply to Queens boulevard that is being discuses in the Article.

It applies to general pedestrian safety in NYC. When cars block the crosswalk you often have to walk dangerously close to cars in the intersection to get around them. It didn't used to be this bad in NYC.

Of course it didn’t; there used to be less traffic! And the only solution is to reverse the trend of traffic growth—specifically, to reduce the average footprint of an individual traveler.

It's been this bad in NYC since at least when I moved here (1997).

It was way worse.

The the 80s NYC of my youth almost every aspect of traffic engineering was worse and more dangerous. You may not have observed cars blocking crosswalks because the crosswalks were missing.

Crosswalks are present at every intersection whether painted or not.

Modern crosswalks, especially on avenues, usually push back where the car is supposed to stop 3-6 feet. Usually without markings, drivers will target (and overshoot) the curb cut.

There's definately more "blocking the box" now, but IMO that's more about "smarter" traffic signals that are frequently broken or result in too short/long wait times.

Vision Zero is city-wide initiative for pedestrian safety in NYC not just Queens Blvd.[1]

And blocking cross-walks is very much an issue concerning pedestrian safety. So yes the OPs comment does very much apply to the article being discussed:

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/visionzero/index.page

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