You may have noticed some new striping on stretches of Clinton Street. The city’s Department of Transportation is in the process of implementing safety changes announced this past spring.
In brief, they’re establishing a two-way bike lane on the west side of Clinton, changing parking configurations on some blocks and narrowing the roadway for vehicles. You can see the complete plan in the slide show posted below.
Overall a lot of good improvements. But I’m very concerned about Rutgers St becoming southbound instead of northbound. As stated in the presentation, this will eliminate “cut-through” traffic to the bridge on Rutgers. Which means that Clinton St becomes the primary access point to the bridge for vehicles — doesn’t Clinton St already have enough traffic jams as the go-to shortcut to the bridge?
Also, couldn’t help but notice that the slide on parking proposed “no change” to the number of spaces between East Broadway and Grand. Not the case anymore…saw a bunch of cars get tickets today for parking on the white lines that are now blocking off prior spaces near the Clinton/East Broadway intersection. Also some new No Standing signs up outside of the Seward Park coop maintenance ramp that used to be a popular place for residents to load and unload…
One of the things the DOT might do to “enhance pedestrian safety” would be to enforce the existing laws as they relate to ALL vehicles. Last night, we saw a car come flying up Clinton St., in order to make the light on Grand St. And what about all the vehicles that make the right turn onto Clinton from Grand; many of them make that right turn from the center lane, trying to avoid the back up from the right turn lane.
The in-process narrowing of the traffic lanes on Clinton between East Broadway and Grand (from 34′ between parked cars to only 22′) should slow down cars on that block.
But yes, it would also be good to have a traffic cop with one of those registration-scanning-ticket-issuing devices at peak times to get people running the red light or turning from the wrong lane.
Yes, it “should!” But we all know how well that works, when someone wants to speed or run a light or just drive like an ass. Every time I walk downstairs and outside, I see trucks double-parked or some vehicle stopped on the bridge bound side of Clinton St. This forces cars into the oncoming traffic lane – not necessarily what has been intended by the changes.
I think this is also a good street to set up video traffic cameras, for both speeding and red-light running at the Grand/Clinton intersection. A couple hundred of those tickets, and we might see some driver attention.
When we were traveling back and forth to DC for work, I became aware very quickly of where the speed cameras were installed. You know what? They work – everyone slows down on the stretches where the cameras are installed.