NYC High Line: Transformation of an Elevated Rail Line to a Park

The tracks were preserved throughout the corridor.

        The High Line is a fantastic story of NYC's neighborhood  and how an elevated rail line could be converted into a public park. I wasn't initially impressed upon arriving there because there was a lot of hype associated with this facility, but the more I saw of the corridor, the more it became clear that this is a feature that distinguishes this area and preserved the history of the district and making a destination that allows visitors to the see the City in a different way than is possible at the street level.

Portland Traffic Signal Challenges

The google machine is pretty impressive. I entered "Portland Traffic Signal" and quickly found this video. Please note that this isn't our standard clearance interval duration for the City. Lucky for the City, we have effective maintenance staff that are very good at responding to infrastructure failures such as this.

Designing Cities: National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) Conference

I have been fortunate to be asked to speak at this conference in New York City. The NYC Department of Transportation has done some impressive things to remake the streets; reclaiming them from people driving through the communities where people live, work, and play. Part of the reclamation is considering the needs of people on bicycles and pedestrians more holistically and there some great sessions on this topic today. 

The session where I presented was on Traffic Signals: Integrating Time & Space. We had four great speakers (Ryan Russo, NYCDOT, Jamie Parks, City of Oakland, Jeffrey Rosenblum, Cambridge, MA & myself). Ryan started out with some high level applications and mentioned that is is "just as important to think about signal timing as it is the geometry (pretty heady stuff from a planner). He cited the issues of a turn lane being on the "wrong side" (left side bike on left side of left turn lane) of a bike lane is illegal in MUTCD. He also described one of the elements they strive for us a 60-second cycle length combined with a double cycle length. They also use gating (he called it feathering to reduce the traffic hitting the bottleneck, arriving early). Good strategies that engineers have forgotten over time because we think a lot about actuated control and how it should work. 

Finally, he gave examples of leading pedestrian intervals, split LPIs where they hold just the turning movement red (exclusive turn signal movements only) and split phasing for the intersection. 

An example of a left side bike lane with a bike box for
right turns to cross in front of vehicle traffic.

NYC has creatively reclaimed public space from the auto by using
bollards (plastic wands, cones, etc) and potted trees/plants).
They have added paint with texture as well to provide a visual clue.

NYC Bus only often comes with red tint or paint to clearly delineate
the expectations for motorists. It worked well.  

Green bike lanes to provide clear direction for pedestrians and parking areas.

Bicycle Right Turn Lane with Advisory Bicycle Lanes

   Completing the series of posts of Dutch practice with right turn lanes is a very different application in a setting that is more rural or perhaps suburban (a vacation area) in nature. The street features advisory bike lanes which is a nice treatment where there is quite a bit of traffic. A treatment that made this particular location unique was that there were auxiliary bike lanes developed to allow people on bicycles to leave the main travelway to make their turn at a lower speed. This offered a certain level of comfort, because the turn was onto a separate path for cycling and walking that was fairly narrow at the intersection. The right turn lane may also increase the safety of the facility with the unintended consequence of potentially increasing the speeds on the main street. No data to substantiate that so I wouldn't develop Guidelines on this sort of treatment, but it is a nice option to consider when building new infrastructure.

Right Turn Fietsers Sign

 I came across this photo from my travels in the Netherlands and am not sure that I understand its meaning. I believe it indicates that cyclists are green and that motorists may be crossing the right turning cyclist path to travel on the right side of people on bikes.

The lane striping provides some clue, and it could be that cyclists are encouraged to transition to the 2-way cycletrack on the farside of the intersection which would indeed conflict with a right turning vehicle. The sign and the contrasting colors is a little hard to read and I don't know that I understood this the first time I rode through the intersection, although it was unique enough to take a picture of, but I am an outlier on these sorts of observations.

Right Turn Warning Sign - Traffic Safety for Pedestrians

The City has had some recent crash experience with a few of the bicycle boxes that were installed on approaches to intersections that feature a downhill grade. The local news station picked up the story tonight.  One approach to mitigating crashes is to apply an active warning sign like the one at NE Couch at Grand Avenue described here.  In the Netherlands, I never saw anything quite that obvious. There were the "Let Op" signs that are used somewhat frequently and then I recalled this auxiliary signal head which I believe communicates that there is a pedestrian crossing that the right turning movement either can't see and there is interest in warning of activity in the crosswalk, I am not sure, my recall of this intersection is that there was a bit of an offset, so if the pedestrian was crossing in the marked area furthest from the main road there could have been some sight distance limitations where this additional queue would have been helpful.   

The reason to share this is to consider how minimal the design is, whether it is effective or not, and given the anecdotal evidence that many Dutch drive their cars with the experience as a cyclist, perhaps these sorts of devices do not have to be as obvious.

NE Lloyd Bike Signal Markups

On the internet, there is a lot of information. Yet, I often find that engineering details on the net are very limited, so I am posting this bicycle signal markup to share with fellow practitioners that might be interested in more details. This markup shows how little that was done in this T - intersection to make the bicycle signal happen. The cost of the project was approximately $2,000 because the modifications were part of the existing design (the wiring was already in place as was an existing signal head) and it was relatively simple to make the change in the field.