Driving lessons for Abu Dhabi, direct from New York

Pedestrian plazas might be the easiest amenity for the UAE to adopt from the Big Apple, writes Fran Hawthorne

Commuters walk through the Fulton Center train station in lower Manhattan. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images /AFP)

It’s well known that driving in New York City is a nightmare: narrow, jam-packed streets, traffic lights at every corner, taxis that dart in and out regardless of the rules and pedestrians who do likewise.

Then, to park a car, a driver confronts the city’s incomprehensible alternate-side regulations. This involves moving your car across the street once or twice a week for an hour and a half and then moving the car back to the same spot where it had previously been parked.

The reason: to clear the other side of the street for kerb-cleaning or risk receiving a parking ticket.

Could matters get any worse?

In fact, yes. Over the past six years, the city has significantly reduced the availability of parking spots and driving lanes. It has also lowered the speed limit.

However, there’s a more positive way to look at this situation: New York has become friendlier to cyclists, subway passengers and pedestrians. And these changes may offer some lessons for countries like the UAE.

“Our streets were out of balance,” explained Janette Sadik-Khan, transport commissioner under former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who initiated most of the changes.

Today, she pointed out, only one-third of New Yorkers drive, yet the city was still operating on “a 1950s view of our streets, that they were really to move cars as fast as possible from Point A to Point B”.

The road changes were part of a broader city effort to reduce air pollution and energy use while also encouraging commerce and easing traffic flow.

“If we’re going to grow and thrive,” Ms Sadik-Khan said, “we really need to take a hard look at our assets and improve the efficiency of our city and reduce greenhouse gases.”

Among the most important innovations: more than 480 kilometres of bike lanes were established. The newest lanes are between parking lanes and the pavement to protect cyclists from traffic. Riders can also rent one of 6,000 bicycles from 332 stations throughout the city, through a public-private bike-share programme. Nearly 16 hectares of streets have been closed to cars to create public plazas and construction began on two long-delayed subway lines.

Finally, the citywide speed limit was cut to 25 miles per hour (40 kph) after a 12-year-old boy was hit and killed by a driver.

Even with the recent plunge in petrol prices, there has been no talk of revoking any of these energy-saving actions.

Of course, driving conditions in Abu Dhabi are very different to those in New York. Streets are wider, traffic flows faster and more smoothly, petrol prices are usually lower, fewer mass transit options are available and drivers can actually find parking spots in most places.

Nevertheless, the two places share some serious driving- related concerns. Cheap oil won’t always be a certainty, while the potential long-term risks of climate change will not disappear so easily. Young professionals throughout the world are seeking walkable urban areas with a vibrant street life.

And careless drivers cause accidents in both the US and the UAE. Indeed, thanks in part to their efforts to discourage car usage, New York City officials say that traffic fatalities have plunged 61 per cent since 1990.

“Any city that wants to be competitive has to be thinking about urban space that people can enjoy,” said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York City advocacy group for mass transit, walking and cycling.

“The streets in New York that have plazas and bike lanes are the ones that are commanding the most attention and the most retail traffic.”

Pedestrian plazas might be the easiest amenity for Abu Dhabi to adopt, Mr White suggested, in part because this involves relatively little investment. Planters and mist-cooled benches could help counter the heat.

“It’s about establishing a new culture of the street,” Mr White said.

Fran Hawthorne is a US-based writer who covers business, finance and social policy