There\u2019s one thing that the vast majority of Staten Islanders can likely agree on: driving here is hell on earth. <\/p>\n
And you may have some deluded notion that things will get better someday. <\/p>\n
Let me break it to you: they won\u2019t. <\/p>\n
In fact, it\u2019s only going to get exponentially worse. <\/p>\n
Think of that: no matter how old you are, you\u2019ve likely already lived through your own personal golden age of driving on Staten Island. <\/p>\n
It all gonna be downhill from here. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n
Amazon<\/p>\n
Getting stuff delivered to your doorstep sure is convenient. But those packages don\u2019t just drop out of the sky. At least not yet.<\/p>\n
No, we need trucks, vans and personal cars to bring all that good stuff to our homes. That\u2019s making the roads more and more clogged. <\/p>\n
That goes for all the supermarket deliveries and increasing takeout orders too. And we\u2019re only becoming a more closed-in, stay-at-home society. <\/p>\n
So, yeah, it\u2019s all our own faults. And, yeah, it\u2019s going to get worse. <\/p>\n
Cell phones<\/p>\n
People simply don\u2019t realize how much it slows them down when they\u2019re looking at or talking on their phones while driving. <\/p>\n
And they certainly don\u2019t notice how much they\u2019re also swerving all over the road while they\u2019re doing it. <\/p>\n
Or how they fail to move when traffic lights turn green because their eyes are glued to their phones. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s maddening to be behind one of those drivers. Or in front of a driver who\u2019s looking at their phone and quickly bearing down on you. <\/p>\n
All of that has made traffic slower. And more dangerous. <\/p>\n
Lyft and Uber<\/p>\n
Count how many of taxi license plates you see the next time you\u2019re out driving. For-hire cars literally everywhere. <\/p>\n
A lot of those Uber and Lyft drivers appear utterly unfamiliar with our roads. They probably don\u2019t live here. So they inch along as they look at the big map display on their dashboard. <\/p>\n
Or they\u2019re cruising around looking for their next fare, which also slows them down. <\/p>\n
Trucks<\/p>\n
This is kind of tied to Amazon. Because before those goods get to the home-delivery vehicles, they have to be shipped to the Amazon warehouse on the West Shore from somewhere else. <\/p>\n
That means trucks, and a lot of them. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not just Amazon that\u2019s to blame. There are all manner of trucks using our roads to get to various points in the city and beyond. <\/p>\n
The problem is particularly bad on the Staten Island Expressway, which is not just our main highway but is also a major shipping artery for the entire East Coast. <\/p>\n
Truck traffic is likely to get crazy bad when all those warehouses and various other trucking facilities on Arthur Kill Road in the deep South Shore come on line. <\/p>\n
Lousy roads<\/p>\n
What genius designed the HOV lane on the SIE that doesn\u2019t go all the way to the Goethals Bridge and gums up the whole works because it forces drivers to bull their way back into traffic?<\/p>\n
Who came up with the \u201cexit only\u201d SIE lane at Bradley Avenue that people use as a travel lane? They cause traffic to come to a standstill as they edge their way back into the flow. <\/p>\n
Never mind twisty, winding, skinny major thoroughfares like Amboy Road that simply can\u2019t handle the number of cars and trucks that use them. <\/p>\n
This is a major infrastructure problem that ain\u2019t getting better any time soon. <\/p>\n
Vision Zero<\/p>\n
I know, I know. Slamming Vision Zero is like shooting fish in a barrel. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a fact: bike lanes, speed bumps, speed and red-light cameras and insanely lowered speed limits slow have slowed traffic down. <\/p>\n
I know that\u2019s the goal of the program, but you can\u2019t get away from the restrictions anywhere. All of us are constantly driving under the shadow of Vision Zero, with one eye on the road and the other on our speedometers. <\/p>\n
Not only has Vision Zero slowed traffic to a crawl and made potential criminals out of us all, but it\u2019s also fueled road rage among frustrated drivers. <\/p>\n
City of Yes<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how this insane builder-friendly program will actually work out, but it\u2019s not hard to predict that as more and more houses, tiny and otherwise, are built here, more and more cars will choke our roads. <\/p>\n
After all, what\u2019s one of the main reasons that people move to Staten Island from other parts of the city? Because it\u2019s easier to have a car here than it is in the other boroughs. <\/p>\n
Well, at least Staten Island has great mass transit.<\/p>\n
Right. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s one thing that the vast majority of Staten Islanders can likely agree on: driving here is hell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-96457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}