CB1 Seeks to Put Brakes on City Plan for Lower Manhattan Slow Zone
As the City’s Department of Transportation begins to implement a regional slow zone that will reduce speed limits on all Lower Manhattan streets, Community Board 1 (CB1) is asking for more time to assess potential impacts.
At its September 24 meeting, the Board first voted down a proposed resolution that supported the creation of a slow zone south of Canal Street. Discussion of this policy continued, and CB1 chair Tammy Meltzer suggested a new resolution that asks DOT not to implement the Lower Manhattan slow zone until the State’s Department of Transportation can complete a planned “Route 9A Mobility and Safety Improvement Study.”
“We should ask that City DOT wait,” Ms. Meltzer said, “to see potential changes to [West Street] that include modal transportation and resiliency.” The reference to “modal transportation” highlighted the increasing prevalence of electric scooters and bicycles, which have transformed the character and usage of many Lower Manhattan streets. She noted that traffic enforcement of speed limits for electric bikes and scooters, along with enforcement of restrictions on where they are allowed to operate, remains virtually non-existent.
This discussion comes in the wake of Governor Hochul signing, in May, “Sammy’s Law,” named for 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was killed by a speeding driver when chasing a soccer ball into a Brooklyn street in 2013. That statute authorizes the City DOT to reduce the speed limits to 25 miles per hour on major streets and to as low as 10 miles per hour in special traffic-calming zones. For Lower Manhattan, this translates into the speed limit on West Street being reduced from its current 30 miles per hour to 25, while most other local streets will see their maximum legal speed reduced from 25 miles per hour to 20. The speed limit on so-called shared streets, where pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists share the right of way, will be reduced to 10 miles per hour.
The DOT plans to create one of these zones in each of the five boroughs. For Manhattan, the agency says, “the first location to be considered will be Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street and would be implemented by the end of this year or early next year.” The agency notified CB1 on August that it planned to implement this policy in Lower Manhattan by the end of October.
At the September 24 meeting, Ms. Meltzer’s suggestion led to the passage of a second resolution, which noted, “CB1 believes before any [regional slow zone] is implemented, to ensure maximum benefits are realized, a plan must be created to enforce the speed limit for all road users and ensure everyone complies with the law.” The same measure called upon the City DOT “to pause on implementing a slow zone in our district until the State DOT traffic study for 9A, which has been announced, is completed and implemented for all users. And State DOT, NYPD and City DOT create methods for tracking and enforcing speed and traffic laws for all road and Greenway users.”