Lee on traffic calming request process for communities

Okay, so moving on to the process to obtain traffic calming measures, because I know that this is the case in my neighborhood as well, especially in the parts of Southeast Queens in my district where either around schools or,

you know, in certain intersections, there are very long...

Sort of like streets between the avenues because it's a very long distance and people speak by.

And so in the situation where community members would like four-way stop signs, it seems like

the process itself to want to have other traffic calming measures aside from the cameras, right?

Whether it's a speed bump or four-way stop signs, it seems like a very arduous process to go through that many community members are not understanding, especially if they have the signatures from the streets in their neighbors.

To want to get something like this done.

And I know that usually DOT comes out and does a study and observes, but I think oftentimes the frustration is it's not during the times where kids get let out or where there's a lot of parents in one area, right, especially around the schools.

And so just wondering if you could walk us through the process to obtaining other traffic calming measures and what factors does DOT consider in that?

Sure, I can start.

You know, I think we certainly don't want the processes to feel arduous.

I think we've tried to create good pages on our website that explain these, but always open to feedback about how we can make it easier for the community to let us know what issues they're facing.

The other point I would make is just that, you know, again, we do try to approach these things holistically.

So it's helpful for us to hear from the community what's the issue, what's the challenge, and then we can work with them to figure out what the right solutions might be.

It may be a speed hump.

It may be a stop sign.

It may be a traffic signal.

It could be something else.

But if they want to request like a specific tool, then we do have, you know, a process.

processes for each of those.

We can speak a little more.

Right, and the processes all work together.

If someone requests a stop sign and we think it's not appropriate for a stop sign, we don't say, well, sorry, nothing we can do here.

If we see speeding, then a speed hump might be appropriate or other traffic calming.

We do try to take the concern and find the right treatment.

And, you know, we definitely hear about the times of day and things.

You know, our signal engineers do go out and look at many times of day.

It's also helpful sometimes when we get feedback.

You know, there's a location where it turned out that, you know, summer Saturdays there was a big little league thing that goes on.

And so a weekday check, which is usually the busiest time of the city,

wasn't quite right, but because we heard about that traffic pattern, we could go out and look differently.

So the more information we get, the better we can be responsive to exactly what's going on there.

Okay.