Archive for September 2nd, 2008

In the ongoing series of local residents’ efforts to slow traffic in their neighborhoods, I bring you this fake speed camera, installed by a dentist in Hamburg.

Said the dentist: “This street leads to school and kindergarten. But it does not seem to interest the drivers. The limit is 60, but despite this they are always racing.”

The report notes the curious detail that because “Kaps’ fake speed radar does not emit a light which might endanger traffic, he has not broken the law.”

One of the hallmarks of sensationalist papers like the New York Post is that the purported thesis of a story, loudly trumpeted in a headline, often seems undermined by the story itself. The case in point here is “Anger at Mike the Road Hog; Pedestrian Islands Drive Motorists Nuts,” (below the jump) about the new pedestrian space on Broadway in Manhattan.

The paper cites precisely two people who claim the project is a disaster; an “office worker” and a 24-year-old “Jersey commuter.” Of course, the Post could have simply wandered up to cars stopped at lights and asked the opinions of other motorists. They predictably would have bemoaned traffic, questioned the idea of taking away road space, etc. — and basically said the opposite of what people sitting in the new plaza would have said (not that they polled any of those). But the newspaper seemed content with a couple of random miffed types.

And, of course, nowhere does the Post bring up the uncomfortable fact that drivers on Broadway are the minority of street users, despite taking up a majority of the space, or even raise the question of to what extent Manhattan should be designed to make the lives of Jersey car commuters easier.

The piece then goes on to cite two people who think the pedestrian plaza is just fine: A shopkeeper and the head of the local Business Improvement District, two people who presumably have a greater stake in the actual lifeblood of the neighborhood. Throw in the DOT commish who gave the go-ahead to the project and it seems like a majority of the people in the story actually support the project.

Not that you’d know that from the headline, which makes Mayor Mike out to be a traffic tyrant rather than civic hero, and paints the whole thing as a misguided folly. There’s also a few gratuitous mentions of “road-rage inducing” projects like the Ninth Avenue cycle lane, etc. This road rage would presumably not extend to the many numbers of new cyclists in the city who are taking advantage of these facilities.

And for what it’s worth, for the guy who thinks the plaza will be a waste of space during the winter (space which could be better given over to tourists in cars coming to look at the Christmas Tree), he should get himself to Copenhagen, where, thanks to outdoor heaters and the like, the city has an almost year-round outdoor cafe culture.

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Reading Stefan Klein’s hugely entertaining and informative Time: A User’s Guide yesterday, I came across this traffic-related tidbit:

“Where do you have a longer wait: At a red light, when you’ve just missed the green — or in your kitchen, waiting for an electric kettle to boil water for a cup of tea? If you think that boiling water takes more time, you’re mistaken: both require an average of ninety seconds.”

This comparison intrigued me for several reasons. The first is that one rarely sees “traffic time” compared to other moments of time from everyday life. What other mundane acts of life could theoretically be performed in the time stuck at the lights?

The second is that very fact that we wouldn’t think of the time we spend at a light as being equal to waiting for tea; this in itself reminded me of studies I had seen in which people underestimated the amount of time it would take to drive somewhere, and overestimated the amount of time it would take by another mode. Traffic is a very time-skewing activity in general. When we’re moving along at a good clip, we tend not to notice any time signals (except for “on the hour” announcements on radio and the like); when we’re stuck in heavy traffic, aware of every vehicle passing us, we’re more aware to minor moments of progress and change and thus, as Klein argues, these trivial things add up to “a perceived time that seems much longer than what our watches tell us.” Which is why watched kettles, of course, take longer to boil.