Speed Measures the Change on New York City Streets

Winnie Hu reports:

Traffic at New York City’s busiest bridges and tunnels has plunged nearly 60 percent.

Rush-hour speeds have soared 288 percent on one of the city’s most clogged arteries — the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — to 52 miles per hour from 13 m.p.h.

According to Hu, the difference on New York City streets during coronavirus stay-at-home orders can also be measured in terms of bus speeds: "The average weekday bus speed rose 7 percent to 8.7 miles per hour from 8.1 miles per hour before the outbreak, according to the transportation authority."

While Hu applies the lessons of New York's current lack of traffic to inform the discussion about the congestion pricing plan proposed for parts of Manhattan, other media observers in the city are using the new conditions to raise awareness about traffic safety enforcement.

Gersh Kuntzman has been providing regular updates on the city's "speeding epidemic," including an article from April 5 reporting a 12 percent increase in speed violations issued by the city's speed cameras. "The 12-plus-percent increase in tickets come as the total number of vehicle miles traveled in the five boroughs is down by 71 percent from that same January baseline, according to data from StreetLight." Kuntzman documented some of the speeding in a video shared on Vimeo.

They're Speeding! from Gersh on Vimeo.

A follow up article by Kuntzman from April 8 notes that New York Police Department officers wrote fewer speeding tickets in March, even as the city's cameras catch more violators: "In March, NYPD officers wrote 346 speeding tickets per day, down 36 percent since January. By comparison, speed cameras caught 13,533 scofflaws on the average day in March, up 20 percent from the January average."