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Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) was devoted entirely to a presentation about plans to reconfigure the streetscapes on South End Avenue and West Thames Street to enhance pedestrian safety, traffic flow, and aesthetic appeal.
The presentation was led by two staff members from the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA): vice president for real property Gwen Dawson and design director Joe Ganci, who were joined by representatives of the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT), and Stantec, a consulting firm hired to advise the Authority. In an indication of the urgent priority that community leaders attach to this effort, City Council member Margaret Chin took the unusual step of not only making an appearance at the session, but staying through several hours of discussion. In a further attestation to the project’s importance in the eyes of the community, more than 100 residents also turned out for the Tuesday meeting.
“We want to know how we can make South End Avenue safer for residents,” Ms. Chin said at the session’s start. “We need to see if there are things we can do right away to make the area better.” “There have been numerous changes to the community since 2013,” when the process of studying ways to improve South End Avenue began, Committee chair Tammy Meltzer said, “including the opening of Brookfield Place, changes on Liberty Street, and changes in the ways that consumers shop.” She added that the number of office workers and tourists who now walk along South End Avenue each day has jumped significantly. “But South End Avenue has not changed dramatically in those five years,” she observed, citing a handful of exceptions, such as the installation of stop signs at the corner of West Thames Street. She also noted in this context the creation cross walks on West Thames Street, as well as the construction of a small pedestrian island on that street. Ms. Meltzer also displayed a map showing the locations of more than half a dozen incidents (between 2006 and 2011) in which pedestrians were injured by moving cars on South End Avenue.
She then reviewed, with the help of DOT officials, the history of attempts to formulate a plan to revamp the streetscape. This narrative included an initial study by DOT in 2013, which was put on hold when the BPCA began a broader effort to redesign South End Avenue; a years-long delay caused by the need for temporary bike paths on South End Avenue, because the Hudson River Greenway was still under construction; and a series of proposals in 2016 by the BPCA, some aspects of which (such as the possibility of filling in arcades to create new retail space) proved controversial. Next, Ms. Dawson and Mr. Ganci began to present the Authority’s newest ideas. Among the highlights are an innovation that (according to DOT officials) appears not yet to have been used anywhere in the City of New York: “speed tables,” which the BPCA hopes to install on South End Avenue and Rector Place. These are raised sections of roadway that are also visually distinct from the surrounding pavement. The combination of a vehicle rising up several inches in an area where the driver perceives the texture and color of the pavement to have changed is designed to inspire caution and thus slow traffic.
Speed tables are a workable alternative to speed bumps, which cannot be installed on South End Avenue, because several local bus routes use this street, and any bus passing over one would be in danger of scraping the pavement. Speed bumps pose no danger to cars because their axles are so close together than one set of wheels is always raised as the vehicle passes over, meaning that the chassis never “bottoms out” on the raised portion of the bump. But a City bus has axles so far apart that both sets of wheels could be on the ground while the bus straddled the bump, and would thus be in danger of dragging its underside over the raised section of pavement. Speed tables, however are generally 20 feet long (or more), meaning that even the longest bus could never bestride both ends of it. The installation of a speed table will also make it possible to create crosswalks at Rector Place that traverse South End Avenue. Although pedestrians cross here hundreds of times each day, they are technically jaywalking, as there is no official place to walk from one side of South End Avenue to the other at Rector Place. The nearest “legal” crossings are one block north, at Albany Street (where there is a traffic light), and one block south, at West Thames Street (where there is a stop sign). While nobody has proposed increasing enforcement to curtail jaywalking at South End Avenue and Rector Place, it is nonetheless deemed a serious safety risk for pedestrians. The speed tables would be created in conjunction with other “traffic calming” design features at various locations, such as widened sidewalks, islands in the middle of the street, and curb “bulb outs” that shorten the distance pedestrians have to cross between curbs. Each of these would narrow the roadbed, inducing drivers to slow further.
The BPCA plan calls for concrete medians (topped by decorative plantings) to be installed at four locations on South End Avenue: between Liberty Street and the Gateway Plaza driveway; between Albany Street and Rector Place; between Rector Place and West Thames Street; and between West Thames Street and the cul-de-sac overlooking South Cove. The same proposal envisions widening the sidewalk on the west side of South End Avenue for its entire length, between Liberty Street and West Thames Street, as well as on the north side of West Thames Street. And the curb bulb outs would be installed at each intersection on South End Avenue. On West Thames Street, the plan calls for (in addition to widening one of the sidewalks), moving the Citi Bike docking station from the middle of the road (near the intersection with South End Avenue) to a location on the newly expanded sidewalk, closer to West Street. The plan presented Wednesday night also contained provisions for moving several bus stops from their current locations. Residents and Committee member expressed grave reservations about this aspect of the proposal, especially because of the impact it would have on tenants at Gateway Plaza, where many elderly and disabled residents are dependent on bus stops located outside their front door.
In a striking response, Mr. Ganci assured the audience that this aspect would be dropped from the plan, saying, “you won’t see it again.” He then added, “you folks live here, and we don’t, so please tell us what you think.” He went on to say, “we’re open to any ideas.” This appeared to mark another milestone in an ongoing shift in the Authority’s approach to consultation with the community it governs, which has become more collaborative and inclusive in recent months. Indeed, the BPCA’s new president, Benjamin Jones, assured residents (at an Open Community Meeting hosted by the Authority in March) that he intended, “to move things, like South End Avenue, along with the community as best and effectively as we could.” An extensive question-and-answer period followed the BPCA’s presentation. One query came from resident Pat Smith, who serves as president of the Battery Pointe condominium board at 300 Rector Place, and who has pushed for years to have traffic safety measures implemented on South End Avenue. He responded to the BPCA’s proposal for a speed table at the Rector Place intersection by saying, “someone has finally come up with an intelligent solution,” and then asked, “how fast can you make this happen?” Ms. Dawson replied that one major hurdle had already been overcome: “DOT has given us their preliminary approval for this plan,” she noted, while also acknowledging that the agency doesn’t have the funds to undertake any of the construction projects (such as traffic islands, widened sidewalks, and speed tables) envisioned in the proposal. “But the BPCA has access to capital that can pay for these improvements,” she added. “So we can implement this plan.” The next step appears to be further revisions to the BPCA’s proposal, based on the responses the Authority received from residents and CB1 members at Tuesday’s meeting. A modified set of plans is likely to be unveiled in the months ahead, but no timeline for beginning (or completing) the project has yet been announced. |
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