Proposed Slow Zone for the Inwood section of Manhattan (NYC DOT)

(New York, NY - WNYC) - Manhattan, where the standard rate of movement is an all-out manic sprint, is about to be told by the NY Department of Transportation to slow down. At least in part: a couple of dozen blocks at the island's northern tip in the neighborhood of Inwood are on track to become the borough's first traffic Slow Zone.

NYC DOT unveiled Slow Zones last year. The program calms traffic by lowering a neighborhood's speed limit to 20 miles per hour--the lowest in the city--and fitting it out with safety measures such as speed bumps, signs and street markings that either force or urge drivers to slow down. The city would also remove more than 20 parking spots in the neighborhood to open up sight lines at intersections.

Inwood's community board passed a resolution in February that unanimously supported the Slow Zone, which would cover the blocks west of Broadway from West 218th down to Riverside Drive near Dyckman Street. A vote by the full board will be held on June 26. Should the Slow Zone be approved, as expected, the NYC DOT is set to install it this summer.

Inwood is frequently used as a short-cut by northbound drivers who cut through it, especially during the evening rush hour, to avoid paying the toll on the Henry Hudson Bridge, which spans Manhattan and the Bronx. Drivers have also learned to avoid the traffic lights on Broadway by traveling on Seaman Avenue, a parallel street that is heavily residential.

In general, Inwood's streets are hilly, narrow and almost wholly disconnected from the street grid. For those reasons, the NYC DOT not only approved the neighborhood's Slow Zone application but doubled the size of the proposed area.

Resident Dave Thom, for one, is pleased. "Our neighborhood is packed with schools, churches and young children," he said. "I have a two year-old and three year-old myself and it can be nerve-wracking to see a car racing down our streets."

The city's first and only Slow Zone was installed in the Claremont section of the Bronx last year. NYC DOT is considering adding another 13 Slow Zones, including the one in Inwood, by the end of 2013.

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Distinctive blue signs have been installed at 14 locations to mark the entrance of the city's first Slow Zone. (Photo: NYC DOT)

New York City unveiled a new tactic to combat speeding on local streets Monday: the Slow Zone. The city has long been pushing an awareness campaign with billboards and even lighted skeleton signs to scare speeders into easing up on the gas pedal. The Claremont section of the Bronx became the first neighborhood in the city to get a new streetscape designed to slow drivers down.

NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said, "one in four traffic fatalities involved unsafe speed. A pedestrian struck by a car going 40 m.p.h. has a 70 percent chance of dying while a pedestrian stuck by a car going 20 m.p.h. has a 95 percent chance of surviving. Making neighborhoods safer can be as simple as reducing the speed on our residential streets.” As Streetsblog points, similar slow zones in London have proven effective at lowering accidents.

(NYC DOT Rendering)

The roughly 30-square-block residential neighborhood in an often overlooked section of the Bronx has fresh lane markers to make streets feel narrower to cars while making room for cyclists. The new 20 m.p.h. speed limit is painted across the width of streets at the entrance to the Zone and reinforced on highly visible stanchions (pictured above). According to a map of the zone released by the DOT, nine new speed bumps have been installed as well, making speed reductions somewhat of a requirement for cars passing through.

The DOT announcement says:

"Claremont was selected for its relatively high frequency of serious traffic crashes and for the area’s definable boundaries that could be easily marked for a zone. Between 2005 and 2009 there was one fatality in the largely residential area, which also houses six schools... Slow Zones are also expected to reduce cut-through traffic and traffic noise in residential neighborhoods."

The Slow Zone's were announced last year  as part of a broader plan to tackle speeding, including the installation of 1,500 speed bumps around the five boroughs.

The DOT has established a system for communities to nominate themselves as future Slow Zones as well.

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While the speed limit is actually 25 mph, decades-old signs wrongly posted that the speed limit is 15 mph.    Police said they had followed those old signs.

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Early Tuesday morning, police set up a radar speed trap in Central Park.  They snagged 10 cyclists for going over the posted speed limit for bicycles of 15 m.p.h. during the car free hours of the park. David Regen was one of them. He was surprised to get pulled over just after one of the park's biggest hills.

"I've been riding in Central Park probably for 25 years and I've never been stopped by a police officer for anything before," he said. What was more unusual though, was what happened 13 hours later around dinnertime when police showed up at his door and told him he was treated unfairly and withdrew the ticket.

"I thought it was extraordinary that they came, physically to my door, that two officers came to my door to tell me this," he said.

Listen to an interview with Regen:

NYPD took the proactive step of personally visiting the cited cyclists to withdraw the tickets after they realized the summonses were issued as motor vehicle violations under the Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL) when they should have been summonses for violating park regulations.

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(New York, NY -- Jim O'Grady, WNYC)  New York City's Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, was the keynoter at the Transportation Alternatives Speeding Summit today, pledging a major new public health emphasis on urban design.

"After quitting smoking, there's probably no behavior that promotes health more than regular physical activity," Farley said. "Okay, that's great. So what are we going to do about that? To me, the answer to that is thoughtful urban design and transportation infrastructure. "

Though the NYC Health Department last summer released a report saying 25 children's lives are saved a year because fewer New York City children ride in cars than in other cities, most of New York's traffic safety campaign has rested on the shoulders of NYC DOT, and its commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan.

It's Sadik-Khan who's taken fire from protesters, like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and more recently, some orthodox Jews in Brooklyn's Borough Park.  But Farley signaled that with a report coming out Monday on traffic injuries and urban design, he'll join Sadik-Khan in promoting public health benefits of slower driving speeds and more pedestrian-friendly environments.

Farley also said he would send staff to community board meetings to explain the safety benefits of bike lanes.

(Kate Hinds, Transportation Nation)  On a day with competing rallies about the controversial bike lane that the city installed on Prospect Park West in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, the city's Department of Transportation released some data that it says shows the two-way, protected bike lane is doing what it was meant to do--slow traffic and get bicyclists off the sidewalks.

A city DOT spokesperson said today that preliminary data shows that BEFORE the bike lane, three out of four cars on Prospect Park West were speeding.  The agency says that number has dropped to one in seven.  And the DOT says almost half of all cyclists used to ride on the sidewalk. That number has decreased to four percent.

The city notes that the lane was installed at the request of the local community board.

A PDF of the city's data can be found here:  Prospect Park West Bike Lane Preliminary Data