Originally Posted by
SBinNYC
The article notes that average midtown speed is 8.2 mph is "vehicular hell." What should be the expected baseline speed for comparison purposes? Is such a baseline speed realistic?
The midtown speed limit is 25 mph. Let's assume with starts and stops a vehicle's average traveling speed is 20 mph or 3 min/mile or 180 sec/mile. There are traffic lights at every block with a 90 second cycle time. If the green cycle is 45 seconds, this means the average wait per traffic light to turn green is 10.25 seconds. There are 20 blocks per mile. So, the expected wait time for a mile is 20*10.25 or 225 seconds. This brings the time to traverse on mile to 405 seconds or a speed of 8.9 mph.
So, the Post's "vehicle hell" represents 92% of what a vehicle driver should expect.
Nice analysis... now tell it to the motorists that feel they should be able to "zoom zoom" everywhere.
Clearly the problem is not a transportation issue... peds, cyclists and those using mass transit are getting about just fine... the "issues" are largely single passenger automobiles, taking up the room of a half dozen cyclists or 20 or so peds, and being used to transport 1 or 2 people... while designed for 55MPH motorways.
That 8.9 MPH reminds me of the "human speeds" demonstrated in that classic San Francisco youtube video... where people, street cars, horse drawn carriages and automobiles all mix freely on the streets...