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In This Issue:
– History Supports Establishing Merritt Trail
– Rolling With Or Against The Segway
– About Those Stoplights: Letters To The Editor
– Calendar
History Supports Establishing Merritt Trail
The Merritt Parkway truly is a national treasure. Its meandering lanes offer a pleasant alternative to the Interstate highways, and its treed canopy sooths even the angriest driver stuck in daily rush hour traffic jams. Its many bridges are varied and unique and are a visual pleasure even when commuting at high speed. It offers an even more intimate experience to the lucky few who live nearby and can walk its informal trail system.
In an effort to open the state-owned right-of-way to all walkers and bicyclists, RPA produced a trail feasibility study in the early 1990s. Using this as the starting point, in 2001 a section in Stamford was designated as a demonstration path. With this as an impetus, RPA led the effort that formed the Merritt Parkway Trail Alliance (www.merrittalliance.org) to support the trail initiative along the entire length of the Parkway.
While initially supportive of the effort, the Connecticut Department of Transportation
is now dragging its feet, saying it will delay even the demonstration project until it “polls” all stakeholders along the proposed trail route, and giving only a vague timeframe for such an action. At the heart of their action seems to be a belief that a trail is inconsistent with the Parkway’s continuing historic heritage, as recognized by the National Register of Historic Places.
According to research performed over the summer by RPA intern Kate Howe, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, when the Parkway was first designed and constructed an adjacent bridle path was planned. In the 1930’s and 1940’s a good deal of advocacy for a parallel trail route along the Merritt originated from local equestrian groups as well as the Fairfield Planning Association, an organization made up of local businessmen and professionals.
By 1940, according to an article by The Fairfield Planning Association, a bill was passed by the Connecticut State legislature authorizing the Highway Commissioner to construct bridle trails along the Merritt Road with funds raised through public subscription or private capital. In 1947, Earl A. Wood, chief engineer of the parkway, said in a Merritt Highway Commission publication that “old woods roads surveyors’ lines, footpaths and logging trails have been joined together to make a continuous bridle path throughout the length of the parkway. This trail is extensively used during all seasons.” That same year, the Merritt Highway Commission published the first official rulebook. Rule number eleven states “Equestrians are permitted on the bridle paths of the Merritt Parkway.”
“The current argument against the ‘historic accuracy’ of a proposed trail along the parkway does not account for the traditional equestrian usage of the area,” Howe states in her internal report . “Nor does it take into account that at one time horses and non-motorized transport were viable alternatives that had already fought and won their rightful place alongside the parkway.”
With history on its side and broad local support, there’s no reason the demonstration path should be further delayed. It’s the key first step toward a full-length trail that will be a crucial link in the East Coast Greenway, a planned urban trail that will run from Maine to Florida. This fall, 10 cyclists will ride the inaugural tour of the entire length of the Greenway. Between September 12th and November 3rd, participating cyclists will ride from Calais, Maine to Key West, Fla., averaging 60 miles daily for a total of 2,800 miles.
Organizers hope to use this tour to showcase the East Coast Greenway as a path for people of all ages and abilities. One of the tour’s more remarkable cyclists include a 74-year-old Arizona man who survived a nearly fatal bicycling accident just two years ago, breaking his neck, hip and back. “Undertaking a ride of this magnitude will be one of the greatest things I’ve ever done, mentally or physically,” says Jack Kurrle, accident survivor and the tour’s oldest cyclist.
Our plan is that one day he and others will be able to go through Fairfield County on a trail along the Merritt Parkway.
–Linda Hoza, Project Manager, Connecticut Office
The Shock of The New: Rolling With or Against The Segway
Given the rapid pace of technological change in recent years, it would seem obvious that a good invention is a kind of force in and of itself, likely to change the way we work and live solely through the weight of its own brilliance.
In fact, the historical record shows just the opposite. The automobile around 1900, for example, was a mere “hobbyist’s toy,” as urban historian Erik Monkkonen put it, before a concerted effort by state and local governments to build roads for it. The computer revolution rests upon a mountain of federal dollars, as well as a web of laws creating and easing the way for things like the Internet.
Conversely, government and society can kill even the most optimistic technological advancement if they decide to impede it or not to back it.
All this comes to mind when considering the Segway, that two-wheeled contraption that somehow runs silently and swiftly, mostly using the weight of one’s own body for power. Released by inventor Dean Kamen with great fanfare a few years ago, it has been fitfully making its way into public use, with mixed success. Campus police at some universities, for example, have adapted it, but users are still few among the general public. The devices cost some $4000 now, but if widely adapted the price could fall to a few hundred dollars.
In the long run, how Segway fares depends not just on the device’s merit or price, but whether we as a society make it more or less easy to use it. And this is why Harris Silver, a leader of Citystreets.org, “a pedestrian rights and advocacy group,” brought a Segway by the offices of RPA for myself and others to try out.
Silver, a fan of the Segway, was disappointed that RPA had signed onto an effort to ban them from being used on public sidewalks. While some pedestrian and cycling advocates saw Segways as threats, Silver wanted to convince us here that Segways were both more useful and less potentially harmful than one might think.
Silver came and to some degree, Silver conquered. After he left, people who had gotten a chance to ride it marveled at how easy and delightful it was to use. Soon, an email debate raged among the office computers as to whether Segways should be allowed or prohibited from using public sidewalks. Tellingly to me, most of the supporters were ones who had gotten a chance to see and ride it, while opponents were largely those who had been out of the office that day.
Opponents said that Segways were potentially dangerous to pedestrians and should be banned from sidewalks before they had a chance to establish themselves. Supporters countered that the technology should be given some breathing room before being restricted by legislation, and that any threat was mostly theoretical at this point. While Segway users might be a nuisance in the thick crowds around Rockefeller center at Christmas, they would pose to harm or nuisance on most sidewalks of the city.
I counted myself among those who wanted to give the device a chance. The technology is simply too amazing not to be given a chance. Using it felt a bit like riding on a magic carpet, powered more by whim than any actual force. I saw that the thing was not as threatening as it might appear, because I moved forward and then stopped on a dime with merely a shift of my weight. It was like an extension of my own body. I was enchanted with how it ran absolutely silently, with not even an audible hum. As I understood it, tiny silicon gyroscopes somehow keep the Segway balanced, allowing one’s own weight to provide most of the power to move it forward.
I saw more and more potential for its use. The elderly and disabled, who can no longer safely drive or bicycle, could use Segways to get around. Although I’m an avid urban cyclist, I found myself thinking of how nice it would be to roll on a Segway to my favorite supermarket, and roll back with a load of groceries. The device’s amazing gyroscopes allow you to equip it with a basket that will carry sixty or seventy pounds without destabilizing it.
But that doesn’t answer the question: should they be allowed or prohibited on public sidewalks, as well as bike paths and roads? It’s an interesting question, because valid arguments can be made on both sides. My own opinion is we shouldn’t give blanket permission, as the Segway industry would like, but neither should we prohibit them. I believe the device now exists in a kind of regulatory gray area. It should stay that way for awhile.
–Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
Letters to the Editor
The article earlier this month about the timing of traffic signal cycles and their effect on pedestrians prompted a flurry of letters from Brooklyn readers who had their own encounter with this ubiquitous device. Here we provide edited excerpts from two, one who cites a method for giving the pedestrian greater priority, and one who says we should not forget the interest of drivers.
Brooklyn Isn’t Manhattan: Drivers Need More Time And Attention
I am a resident of Brooklyn and I walk and take subways everywhere, but I also drive a car, albeit only out of necessity. A lot of my driving in Brooklyn is a cross-borough trip from where I live in the northwest corner of Brooklyn (Greenpoint) to Canarsie in the southern portion of the borough where I often visit friends. This area is not served at all by subways. Bus transit, after many transfers, would take close to a couple of hours. To get there, I drive my car and run a gauntlet of narrow streets, many heavily congested, most without any sequential lights. I face the ubiquitous and pervasive practice of people double-parking, especially near central business districts along Fulton Street, Nostrand Avenue and others. Violations for double parking are almost never controlled and enforced by the police. This of course further slows traffic and adds risk and danger to drivers and to pedestrians. With all the hassle driving, it is little wonder that drivers in Brooklyn are extremely aggressive. But that aggressiveness is its own danger. People run red lights, use right-side parking lanes as jump off points to get around other traffic stopped at lights (which is dangerous to pedestrians), operate at unsafe speeds to make lights, etc.
Brooklyn is very different than Manhattan. Although it has the highest population of all the boroughs, Brooklyn is much larger geographically than Manhattan and it is roughly round in shape (as opposed to Manhattan's long nearly rectangular shape). Manhattan is much less vehicle dependent than the other boroughs.
What is needed for cross-Brooklyn traffic is a system of routes with sequential lights that operate long enough to drain off traffic. This means that some lights will need to have longer signal intervals to do so. I am a little amused by your claim of [overly] long lights on Washington Avenue, which I traverse fairly frequently. You may be irritated standing on a corner (if you actually obey the pedestrian crossing lights, which would make you pretty unique in NYC), but the long lights are important in moving and draining traffic in a very tough traffic situation in Brooklyn. More attention needs to be paid towards moving vehicular traffic, rather than stalling it, which leads to further chaos on the streets.
–John Hummer
A Few Extra Moments Can Mean A Lot For Those On Foot
A recent pleasant surprise in my neighborhood of Cobble Hill West has been the arrival of the delayed green at intersections on Hicks Street. Pedestrians crossing northbound and southbound lanes of Hicks -- a high-speed "bypass" to the Gowanus/BQE -- are given an electronic walk signal of about six or seven seconds before cars get their green light. It may not sound like much, but to be allowed into the crosswalk before autos can make their left- and right-hand turns suggests to me that someone is paying attention to the needs (and safety) of walkers, at least where I live.
–Dominic Preziosi
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