![]() ![]() Once, however, when President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, both came to the city, Schwartz said the only way he could get around to make inspections was on a bike and people complained that all the attention to traffic problems was detracting from world affairs. traffic was heavy even in the 1980s, though it did not make his top gridlock days. “And to lower driver expectations to keep them calm.” “The intent was to reduce the total volume of traffic coming in,” Schwartz said. When asked what he planned to do with that information, Schwartz declared that the busiest days would thereafter be known as gridlock alert days. Schwartz, now a consultant, recalled that he had sought to impress a reporter with his grasp of city traffic by compiling daily vehicle counts from the city’s tolled bridges and tunnels. Schwartz shortly after he became the city’s traffic commissioner in 1982. The congestion warnings were the brainchild of Samuel I. A campaign to pass a comprehensive congestion pricing plan to charge drivers in the busiest areas of Manhattan failed in Albany earlier this year. There are many reasons: a fleet of Ubers and other for-hire cars, many of them circulating empty through the streets in search of riders a spike in delivery trucks as e-commerce has boomed and nonstop construction that has blocked or narrowed car lanes. But traffic has slowed to a crawl in recent years with vehicles in midtown Manhattan averaging 4.7 mph. The number of vehicles driving into Manhattan’s central business district on a typical fall weekday has actually dropped to about 718,000 in 2017, from about 815,000 in 2004, according to city traffic estimates. A gridlock alert day is essentially an advisory for drivers - who can choose to heed it, or not - but it often coincides with other city measures to keep traffic moving, including adding traffic agents and suspending most construction affecting streets during the U.N. New York City’s gridlock alert days are the most extensive congestion warning system in the country, though other cities and states also issue alerts when there are major delays expected from storms, construction or special events. If these gridlock warnings are not scary enough, they will be accompanied by new incentives to try other ways of getting around: a half-priced, three-day pass for Citi Bike discounts on shared car pool rides with Via and $5 flat-rate parking at Citi Field before noon in lots that are adjacent to the No. So this year, the paid ads will begin a week in advance of the gridlock days. City transportation officials said that after surveying drivers online, they learned that some drivers did not have enough time to change their plans. In the past, when gridlock days started in November on the Friday before Thanksgiving and ran to Christmas, the city publicized them with news releases, social media and articles that often appeared on the gridlock day itself. The message to drivers? “Your trip through midtown will take three times as long.” session, and at the end-of-the-year holidays. ![]() “If you are in the traffic, you are the traffic.”īeginning this week, the city will spend $500,000 on a new campaign to warn of gridlock days on the radio and in internet ads to try to get more drivers off the road on the six weekdays from Sept. week is the most challenging traffic time in New York City, and I’m not even sure people know that,” said Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner. By comparison, the mile-long drive took 14 minutes the day of the Rockefeller Center tree lighting. The only time it took longer - 20 minutes - was in a blizzard in March. session last year, up from an average of 10 minutes the rest of the year, according to city data. It took an average of 19 minutes to drive just 1 mile in midtown Manhattan on a Monday during the U.N. gridlock is now worse than holiday gridlock for the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center or the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square. He has been late getting to appointments in previous years because of the traffic jams. week, forget about it,” said Leo Lazarev, 68, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning technician who will have no choice but to drive his truck with equipment. The traffic jams and security-related street closures will turn Manhattan into a labyrinth, even for seasoned drivers. Thousands of world leaders and diplomats - including President Donald Trump - and their security details are expected to descend for a whirlwind of meetings, parties and shopping that is always an economic windfall for the city. But in another sign that the city is getting more crowded, the annual congestion warning will now expand to 16 days, up from 10 days last year, and will start earlier than ever before, on Sept. ![]()
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