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[mariethefoxy]

The problem was not so much that the CBX was built, but the cut-throat way it was designed and executed. The route could have been slightly different to have spared at least one neighborhood but that wasn't done because of politics. And the residents who were displaced by the road could and should have been treated much better than they were.
 
Had those things been done, the CBX might not have the bad reputation that it does today.

Some design features might have been a little different as well, but remember this was almost seventy years ago and the highway was typical of 1950's era design and six-lane highways in the NYC area were the norm at that time. Building it any wider was probably not possible anyway due to space constraints.


 

Interesting. I never realized it. NYC has no expressways wider than six lanes. Despite it being the largest city in the US, it don’t have the capacity  like other cities smaller than it has for roads. Even Atlanta has the super wide I-75 going through it.

the Grand Central has 8 in some sections, the Triboro bridge is 8, Trans-Manhattan Expressway I-95 from the GWB to the Washington Heights bridge is 8, so is the Whitestone Expressway part of I-678 from the Cross Island to the really long Exit 13 ramps. Bruckner is 8 from 695 to Pelham Parkway.

Atlanta also has no commuter rail to speak of and a metro system that barely covers the city. They were lucky that they had a lot of land to add in so many lanes. New York City is constrained due to a majority of it being on islands.

[roadman65]

https://goo.gl/maps/hJA6G5QEzcAQqXM66
I noticed here that over Dyckman Street, that both carriageways of NY 9A use different designed bridges to cross it.

[roadman65]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/nyregion/car-ban-14th-street-manhattan.html

This is crazy.  Closing a 21,000 a day ADT roadway.

Yes it’s been two years, but still a bad move on NYCDOTs part.

[mariethefoxy]

https://goo.gl/maps/PT9VcxNQwiCurFny5 Nassau County style mast arms in the middle of Queens by LaGuardia, (I know there's the sets on Jericho Tpke in Floral Park where there's NYCDOT streetlights but Nassau style mast arms since its on the border.)

[SignBridge]

https://goo.gl/maps/PT9VcxNQwiCurFny5 Nassau County style mast arms in the middle of Queens by LaGuardia, (I know there's the sets on Jericho Tpke in Floral Park where there's NYCDOT streetlights but Nassau style mast arms since its on the border.)

Is that a new installation? Is NYC maybe using those mast arms for new signals where they didn't exist before? And in the photo, is that the old Bulova Watch Co. building on the right?

[mariethefoxy]

Looks to be 2017-18 from the google street view. New installs have popped up elsewhere in the city and they use the regular nyc style mastarms. It’s extremely strange, out there with the span wire lights in Staten Island by the end of Korea vets parkway

[storm2k]

https://goo.gl/maps/PT9VcxNQwiCurFny5 Nassau County style mast arms in the middle of Queens by LaGuardia, (I know there's the sets on Jericho Tpke in Floral Park where there's NYCDOT streetlights but Nassau style mast arms since its on the border.)

Would not be opposed to NYC finally retiring the guy-wire mast arms in favor of something like this and also finally moving to full on 12 inch signal heads for every signal. It's wild to me that they're still using 8 inch ones in a lot of installs even in 2022.

[SignBridge]

NYC's not the only ones still using 8-inch signals. Outside the City on Long Island, Nassau County DPW is still installing a mix of 8 and 12 inch signals.

[Duke87]

Interesting. I never realized it. NYC has no expressways wider than six lanes. Despite it being the largest city in the US, it don’t have the capacity  like other cities smaller than it has for roads. Even Atlanta has the super wide I-75 going through it.

What the NYC metro does have in many cases though is a lot of freeways spaced relatively close together, even if they aren't that wide individually. If you look at lane miles per capita across the metro area, there are quite a few places with fewer than NYC does (0.396) including notably Miami (0.388), Tampa-St. Pete (0.380), New Orleans (0.371), Chicago (0.332), and Indio/Other Desert Cities (0.203).

Cities at the top of the list meanwhile tend to be either relatively small cities that happen to be located at major freeway junctions (e.g.Cheyenne at 1.873) or cities that have lost population since the 1950s and have a freeway network that was built for more people than are there now (e.g. St Louis at 1.070).

[mariethefoxy]

Philly to me seems like it’s got very few freeways and lanes for the size of the city, how does it compare to NYC in that metric?

[TheDon102]

Does anyone have any detailed plans/drawings for Westway? Im curious to see how it would have connected to the brooklyn battery tunnel.

[ixnay]

How close is Manhattan south of Central Park to the activation of congestion pricing?  (Reading another article [about the decline of transit ridership] that mentioned NYC congestion pricing spurred me to ask)

[Mergingtraffic]

Drove the Bruckner West to the Deegan North. The lane drops are atrocious. The ramp connector starts as two and drops mid curve.
I was hoping they’d make it a full two lane ramp.

 Then they’re doing road work just before the Cross Bronx Expwy exit. One of the lanes detours to the service road. It’s brutal. I know they have to replace it but my god.

[MultiMillionMiler]

Drove the Bruckner West to the Deegan North. The lane drops are atrocious. The ramp connector starts as two and drops mid curve.
I was hoping they’d make it a full two lane ramp.

 Then they’re doing road work just before the Cross Bronx Expwy exit. One of the lanes detours to the service road. It’s brutal. I know they have to replace it but my god.

Tell me about it, and the drop down to 2 lanes on I-278 in Brooklyn, that just ruined the traffic. It's taken me over a half hour to traverse that stretch, thankfully I don't have to drive that stretch too often.

[ixnay]

Drove the Bruckner West to the Deegan North. The lane drops are atrocious. The ramp connector starts as two and drops mid curve.
I was hoping they’d make it a full two lane ramp.

 Then they’re doing road work just before the Cross Bronx Expwy exit. One of the lanes detours to the service road. It’s brutal. I know they have to replace it but my god.

Do you mean Sedgwick Ave.?

[vdeane]

I guess it was only a matter of time before this came up.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/01/26/highways-to-hell-now-mayor-adams-needs-to-advocate-for-speed-cameras-on-expressways/

[MultiMillionMiler]

I guess it was only a matter of time before this came up.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/01/26/highways-to-hell-now-mayor-adams-needs-to-advocate-for-speed-cameras-on-expressways/

Well there are some benefits to that. Camera tickets are cheaper and don't carry points on your license. The negative is that you could never get away with low level speeding, ever, if they were always on, or the fact that you would always get a ticket for 11 or 12 over whereas a cop may decide conditions are good and not give you a ticket until 70+ (or 20 over on NYC highways). So whereas the fine might be the same whether you were going 12 over or 40 over, you would also always be guaranteed to get a ticket in the mail for 12 over. I never had any speeding tickets yet but did get a warning once for going 73 mph on the belt parkway near the Nassau County line, doubt you could get lucky with a speed camera that way.

[NoGoodNamesAvailable]

I obviously am very against the speeding cameras, but NYC is bringing it upon themselves by the lack of reckless driving enforcement. Roads like the Belt Parkway are terrifying with cars speeding and weaving between lanes. People going a few miles over shouldn't be punished but people don't see anything being done about the serious reckless driving problem so this is one of the ways to counter it.

[MultiMillionMiler]

I obviously am very against the speeding cameras, but NYC is bringing it upon themselves by the lack of reckless driving enforcement. Roads like the Belt Parkway are terrifying with cars speeding and weaving between lanes. People going a few miles over shouldn't be punished but people don't see anything being done about the serious reckless driving problem so this is one of the ways to counter it.

Most of the time it would be a miracle if you could actually go the speed limit on that road. If it's open I'll usually just go 60-70 mph, but never weave between lanes. The real issue with that road is the potholes that will eat your car regardless of how fast you're going. West side highway speed cameras are a revenue scam though. I never got a camera ticket of any sort in my life, but when they lowered the limit from 35 to 30, within the same year I got a fine in the mail for hitting 43 mph, if it was still 35 it probably wouldn't have triggered at 40 LOL

[vdeane]

NYC freeway speed limits are also quite low.  While there are a lot of busy/dense sections where 50 or even lower is appropriate, there's also stuff like this, which looks like a typical rural freeway aside from the lights and the NYC-spec speed limit sign.  The bridges are also stuck at 40, which feels like crawling.

Honestly, I'd love to be able to go exactly the speed limit, but there are way too many freeways in this part of the country (and adjacent parts of Canada) with artificially low limits to do so.

[MultiMillionMiler]

I think there's some city statute that forbids speed limits higher than 50 mph. That's why on roads like I-495, which is mostly straight in queens, goes up to 55 mph at exit 33 right where it becomes curvier, because you left NYC! That's why they should base speed limits off of road design and not geographical location. I don't even agree with setting based on traffic levels, because then you are punishing people for going faster in lighter traffic, which makes no sense. During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, NYC roads were just as empty as eastern Long Island, and one could easily go 75-80 mph just like in long island.

[SignBridge]

NYC freeway speed limits are also quite low.  While there are a lot of busy/dense sections where 50 or even lower is appropriate, there's also stuff like this, which looks like a typical rural freeway aside from the lights and the NYC-spec speed limit sign.  The bridges are also stuck at 40, which feels like crawling.

Honestly, I'd love to be able to go exactly the speed limit, but there are way too many freeways in this part of the country (and adjacent parts of Canada) with artificially low limits to do so.

In that photo of Staten Island's West Shore Expwy, notice the one good thing about all NYC highways: excellent street lighting.

[SignBridge]

I think there's some city statute that forbids speed limits higher than 50 mph. That's why on roads like I-495, which is mostly straight in queens, goes up to 55 mph at exit 33 right where it becomes curvier, because you left NYC! That's why they should base speed limits off of road design and not geographical location. I don't even agree with setting based on traffic levels, because then you are punishing people for going faster in lighter traffic, which makes no sense. During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, NYC roads were just as empty as eastern Long Island, and one could easily go 75-80 mph just like in long island.

Most traffic engineers will tell you the correct way to design speed limits is to do a study of actual traffic speeds on the road and set the limit at what is called the Eighty-fifth percentile speed. That's the average speed of 85% of the traffic on the road. This is the way to do it; an engineering approach, not local government politics or neighborhood hysteria.

[MultiMillionMiler]

I think there's some city statute that forbids speed limits higher than 50 mph. That's why on roads like I-495, which is mostly straight in queens, goes up to 55 mph at exit 33 right where it becomes curvier, because you left NYC! That's why they should base speed limits off of road design and not geographical location. I don't even agree with setting based on traffic levels, because then you are punishing people for going faster in lighter traffic, which makes no sense. During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, NYC roads were just as empty as eastern Long Island, and one could easily go 75-80 mph just like in long island.

Most traffic engineers will tell you the correct way to design speed limits is to do a study of actual traffic speeds on the road and set the limit at what is called the Eighty-fifth percentile speed. That's the average speed of 85% of the traffic on the road. This is the way to do it; an engineering approach, not local government politics or neighborhood hysteria.

That's only applicable in free flowing conditions. If everyone is already clustering around a certain speed because a speed limit is already in place, that wouldn't be accurate, it's almost circular reasoning. You'd have to have a no speed limit trial on a road and measure the 80th percentile or whatever then. Also in areas where there is already moderate traffic, that would taint the results as well. Free flowing conditions on a road with a temporary no-speed-limit in light traffic conditions would be required for that to work.

[vdeane]

In addition to wanting to reduce the speed limit in NYC to 20 (10 for designated school zones, which can be placed most anywhere), Hochul now wants speed cameras on the MTA bridges and tunnels as well.

https://www.silive.com/news/2023/02/budget-proposal-would-allow-speed-cameras-on-mta-crossings-including-verrazzano-narrows-bridge.html