Needs taller buildings

Are you saying we should bulldoze the park? Or the buildings in the historic district that surround it?

I didn't say anything about bulldoze.

I see all the time in JC where they take an old building down, leave its facade, and build a much taller building using the same front of the old building.

We need lower housing prices, and for that we need more housing.

I just watched an SUV blow right though a red today (and I don't mean mistimed the yellow, it was red for a while and it ran through at full speed)

I don't know -- I'd be happy to be proven wrong by an appropriate study, but I think traffic lights would have the opposite effect, safety-wise. Green lights are interpreted by drivers as permission to speed as fast as they want, as long as they abide by the lights (and they'll often press on the gas to rush through a yellow light, anyway). But our neighborhood is full of pedestrians crossing mid-block, kids on scooters/bikes on the sidewalk with maybe not the best control... it's not enough for cars to stop at intersections, we also need them to drive slowly in-between intersections.

I'd rather we add a lot of speed bumps and further narrow the streets (like with protected bike lanes or another method), to basically make it practically difficult for drivers to go at unsafe speeds.

Yeah didn't think of that - speed bumps. Narrowing down sounds like a good idea but then you got to give the cars an alternative. I think the 6th Street has become a highway entry point or something. Overall poorly planned.

Not understanding the comment about people who were priced out of luxury apartments. Are you implying there were tons of empty apartments in Hamilton Park prior to Covid?

hell no. what do you consider a "busier intersection" in HP? any ones I can think of already have lights. you want lights at every corner?

I guess there an overall increase in demand to live in Jersey City, with people moving within the city, moving from NYC to here and moving from elsewhere in the US to here. Overall the city's appeal has gone up. That reflects immediately in good neighborhoods like this one.

I don't know the exact ones to be honest. But anything on 6th, 7th and 10th streets seems extra busy on weekends. Maybe do some weekend-only traffic rules?

Hey, I agree on the need for more housing!

There has already been some adaptive re-use of old buildings in that neighborhood to add density, and I’d love to see more of that.

The new developments north & west of HP seem to be more car-oriented than transit-oriented (close to 1 parking spot for each unit). I’m not keen on having all those additional cars & car-dependent people in the mix in JC. I’d rather keep seeing more development in places that people will walk to transit.

Everything you said is 100% spot on

Agreed but demand like that affects pricing of apartments it doesn’t mean there are suddenly more apartments for people to move to and increase the population

Tall, nasty, thoughtfully-placed speed bumps FTW.

We should get streets repaved with cobble stones, like around the Holland Tunnel in Tribeca. Ever seen anyone speed down Audrey Zapp Drive?

Yup.

All the streets used to be pavers too. Damn shame they paved over them.

Environmentally they’re way better, but less stress on the storm drains, more traction with less road salt, easier to repair streets back to original condition after utility work.

It’s also cheaper in the long run. You can go a century+ between replacement. Some streets in Europe still have scratches in pavers from tanks in wwii.

It’s clearly superior, and lots of European cities do exactly this for low speed roadways.

But asphalt is made with petroleum byproducts they’d otherwise need to properly dispose of, so lobbyists like asphalt to be used as often as possible. Selling it as a product is profitable rather than a cost.

It’s the traffic to and from the tunnel. This is a pretty well treaded topic, especially recently. Will be way down now that it’s heading into winter. And will spike again in summer. Nothing new.

I agree that drivers don't really stop at the stop signs. Plenty just kind of slow down and then plow through the intersection. Here's what will help, roughly in order of easy to impossible to imagine the city doing

• Better street markings - a lot of existing stop lines are worn away and stop signs are not as obvious as they need to be. Also solid color crosswalks would help

• Intersection daylighting - this is when you lose the last parking spot on a street to make it easier for pedestrians and drivers to see each other - Hoboken has done this all over the place and it works

• Narrower streets - protect the bike lanes and squeeze the parallel parking closer to the drivers, like has been done in lots of areas of Paulus Hook (although those streets are much much wider to start from). This has been proven to slow down drivers and we get better bike lanes

• Raised crosswalks - acts as a slight speed bump and stands out that the pedestrian has the right of way

• Enforcement - a few well positioned cops for a few days every month would pay for themselves in traffic summons, but unlikely to be a priority of JCPD until someone gets killed

• Speed bumps - I haven't seen any city really do this, but I suppose you could put these throughout the roads to slow everyone down. Unfortunately, many drivers just accelerate up to them - they don't exactly create calmer drivers

Here's what we shouldn't do:

• Add traffic lights - drivers see a green as an invitation to accelerate through it. This would improve traffic flow, but make walking more dangerous

Uhh…if the light is green and sign says do not walk you really shouldnt be crossing at that time even though you technically have the right of way as a pedestrian, because car vs human body, car always wins

What happened to everyone wetting their diaper about the devil's artery causing extra traffic.

There's a traffic light just for the cross-walk near the Harborside light rail stop that has exactly this effect, and it's annoying as hell. The light is by default green all the time unless a pedestrian hits the button, and cars take it as an excuse to blow through regardless of pedestrians.

I don't think I said that pedestrians should be crossing against the light, but to be clear, pedestrians should not be crossing against the light. Is that better?

Like how it was 100% true and that intersection is a nightmare?

People don’t understand anything without consequences. Unless there are traffic cameras or some type of traffic enforcement by police (yeah, right) behaviors won’t change.

Yes to that intersection, of course. Not so clear the rest of downtown is now overrun compared to before.

I disagree about the lights but info think consistency is key. Putting multi way stops is a great start and has definitely improved safety on jersey avenue. Just need to be consistent. The more people drove in the areas the more they will get used to it.

> Intersection daylighting - this is when you lose the last parking spot on a street to make it easier for pedestrians and drivers to see each other

Feel like they've been doing this around Hamilton Park too but only use yellow paint, so people still park there. Fourth and Jersey used to a those plastic sticks along those corners (Like 3rd and Jersey) but they've been taken down for just yellow paint.

Huh, TIL. Do you know of any articles I can read more about this?

Agreed. Though if you ever chill outside at Ed & Mary’s people hit the bump over there at top speed haha

Yes, it starts with something like yellow paint or those plastic bollards. That kind of stinks for implementation though.

Ideally you want curb bump outs like Hoboken has been doing. This also helps pedestrians with shorter crossings.