Truck Traffic To Go Up 50 Percent By 2020
by linda j. wilson

“As bad as truck traffic in Queens is now, there will be at least 50 percent more by 2020,” Teresa Toro, Tri-State Transportation Campaign New York City campaign coordinator, told the borough board at the board’s December meeting in Borough Hall last week. “Less than 50 percent of the city’s freight comes in by rail, the city and state are not managing truck traffic now and it can only get worse.”

The picture is not “totally doomsday,” Toro said. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is trying to help communities live “healthily and happily” with truck traffic, she added, and for that reason sought to talk to the borough board about the problem. “All community boards have truck problems, but they change from neighborhood to neighborhood. Community boards are the ‘go-to’ place for any issue on a citywide level.”

Some of the problems attendant upon trucks driving off designated routes include torn-up roads and bridges, property damage from truck vibrations, sleepless nights for residents, asthma and other respiratory conditions and pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Among the remedial measures suggested by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign are moving thru-truck routes out of neighborhoods, enforcing idling, emission and weight laws and redesigning streets to control truck access. “Traffic calming” devices and practices are among the best ways to control how traffic moves, Toro told the board. These include traffic lights, speed humps and sidewalks extended into traffic lanes with appropriate warning stripes and signs. Another is allowing trucks on all or part of limited-access routes; in 2004 the city Department of Transportation received high marks for its plan to permanently allow two and three-axle trucks on a stretch of the Grand Central Parkway between the Triborough Bridge and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, for example. Many Astoria residents living near the highway have expressed approval of the plan, as truck traffic on residential streets has been markedly reduced.

The success following easing the Grand Central Parkway restrictions brought calls from the Transportation Campaign and other individuals and groups to ease similar restrictions on other highways. “We urge you to examine the rules governing truck access to city parkways and other limited-access routes that impose truck restrictions,” the campaign and others wrote city Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall in May. “We believe many of these rules are based on antiquated notions of the roles of parkways in the city transportation system. Such a study should examine whether trucks can be accommodated on some of these routes, and whether explicit trade-offs can be made to reduce through-truck use of nearby city avenues and streets. Such an analysis should also note where structural factors constrain trucks’ use of limited-access routes and what it would take to remove such constraints.”

Borough President Helen Marshall noted that truck use of city streets is a problem in her own neighborhood. “I live near LaGuardia Airport, and many times I see trucks using Ditmars Boulevard, even though they shouldn’t,” she said. “Tractor-trailer trucks park on the street and detach their cabs, others violate the rule that says a truck can’t be parked for more than three hours. And since there’s been a dramatic cut in the number of officers in the Police Department, only when the truck enforcement squad shows up are the rules enforced.”

“We need to wake up the truck enforcement unit,” a representative of Community Board 5 commented. “There are only two truck enforcement units in all New York City,” Toro replied. “We want to do more with truck enforcement, but it’s a chronic, city-wide problem. The units should be rotated so the truckers never know when truck enforcement will show up.”

“If we’re informed of the trouble spots, we’ll set up a stakeout,” Marshall said. The Board 5 representative was not mollified. “Every time we recommend or request something, the DOT turns us down.” he said. “An elderly woman was struck by a truck operating on a street that wasn’t a truck route and died.”

“The city is dragging its feet with some of these things,” Toro said. “There’s a bill concerning trucks that’s languishing in the City Council right now.” City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo Jr. responded, “Anything that hasn’t been passed as of December 21 will be ‘dumped’ to January, so it will come up again. I’d like to see more enforcement officers hired—it creates jobs, for one thing.” He promised to follow up on the matter.