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Nosy Neighbor: What’s happening with Hudson Street?
M. wrote: “Do you happen to have any insight into what’s happening with Hudson Street? They ripped it up one night and it’s a mess. The dust from the street is blowing everywhere and into pedestrian’s faces as they walk by…”
It happened that A. sent the pic above on March 17, which was right after they started milling the roadway. The Department of Transportation confirmed that the milling was completed on March 21.
It is now scheduled for resurfacing early next week, weather permitting. Paving is expected to take about three nights and signs will be posted. You can check here for this week’s schedule for milling and repaving by scrolling down to Manhattan.
I highly recommend watching the video above, titled “Mill and Pave!” — an inside look at DOT’s street resurfacing process narrated by now-retired Deputy Commissioner Galileo Orlando, who managed the department’s roadway repair and maintenance division. It is 3 minutes you will not regret. I actually got a little teary at the end.
Orlando talks about asphaltic cement — what he calls petroleum-based gooey stuff; the stone that the city grinds itself in Brooklyn at a plant that runs around the clock and produces 500,000 tons a year; and the sheer scope of it all: 6000 miles of roadways that make up the city. They try to resurface 1000 lane miles a year.
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Would be an excellent time to add protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements (i.e., bulb outs, planters, etc.) to an absurdly wide and underutilized (by cars) street.
Underutilized?!?!? Seriously???? Have you never been on Hudson at rush hour?
It’s only clogged w tunnel traffic about 5-10% of the time in the short stretch just south of Canal (w the southern half empty nearly all day long), and is otherwise almost always devoid of automobiles.
We’ve become so accustomed to designing our roads primarily for cars that we’ve forgotten that many, many more people use our streets all day long for walking, cycling, to eat and drink outside at cafes and to lounge on benches; only in America do we have a poverty of imagination when it comes to multi-modal, and more more creative, use of urban space.
P.S. the traffic will never go away, no matter how many lanes we build for cars. We might as well let others share the space, and otherwise disincentivize suburban commuting via auto into the densest city in the country.
Actually, reducing car lanes will eventually reduce car traffic. So I’m all for reducing lanes, widening sidewalks, adding bike lanes, and where feasible in the city, replacing vehicle lanes with protected transit lanes, ideally for trolleys/streetcars, but at least for buses.
What’s the status of congestion pricing? When will it happen?
Yesterday we endured about 3 hours of continuous horn honking at Canal and Broadway at rush hour. Some drivers were actually just pressing their horn for minutes at a time. It was like a horrible dissonant symphony of “modern” music. From hell. Not to mention a rage incubator. Why no tickets for illegal horn honking? Why no enforcement?
Article link no how reducing lanes reduces congestion:
https://cal.streetsblog.org/2022/05/13/three-reasons-why-congestion-decreases-when-cities-delete-road-lanes/
I like that bike lane idea, as it is a bit hairy riding up Hudson once you get to the lane bollards by the Holland Tunnel exit, and have to share a lane with speeding vehicles until you can cross Canal street to hit the established bike path up there.
Cool video too! Just wish it wouldn’t take several weeks to redo the street, as it is somehow dangerous to walk across or ride on the street, between milling and final paving.
Thank you for looking into this!
The narrator of the DOT video sounds uncannily like Scott Stringer.
Paving starts tonight. Lots of equipment is parked on Hudson between Reade and Duane right now if you want a close up view.