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Unblocking the Box

by Sandy Ikeda
Sat, 15 Dec 2007 at 1:08 AM

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To New Yorkers who drive, and there are actually quite a number of us, the arrival of the holidays seems to bring with it an exponential increase in the phenomenon known as "blocking the box."

This happens when a driver, usually one who has had to sit through multiple light changes at an intersection (the "box"), makes a dash when he sees his chance but doesn't make it because the cars ahead stop him before he can get through. So he winds up stuck in the box as the light (and his face) turns red. This in turn blocks cross-traffic, causing more congestion, greater consternation, and possible threats of reprisal.

The city government typically responds, or threatens to respond, by diverting more resources to policing and ticketing drivers who block the box, hoping to discourage all this. Indeed, if the mayor has his way there will be hundreds more cameras installed throughout Manhattan as part of his congestion-pricing scheme, so that at least monitoring and tracking violators (or whomever) will become easier. (This proposal happens to be on the defensive at the moment, but that's a blog for another day.)

The problem is that usually no single driver is to blame. Rather, there are typically a confluence of several factors, including floods of visitors and shoppers on foot and on wheels, so that hitting a hapless driver stuck in traffic with a fine may not do that much good, especially if it only shows up in his mailbox in Teaneck a week later. And if police ticket on the spot, pulling these guys over just adds to the congestion.

What else can be done? Well, perhaps a structural change might help. For instance, at some congested Midtown locations crosswalks have been moved from the intersection to mid-block so that cars making turns will not be slowed by endless streams of pedestrians.

But to see a much more radical approach, have a look at this short video posted on the CNN website that a colleague sent me called "Cars Gone Wild."

For those too busy to look, it describes how towns across northern Netherlands have solved their traffic-congestion problems, not by increasing regulations and policing, but by eliminating most traffic regulations, removing traffic signs, and making some design changes. The Dutch traffic engineer responsible for this radical policy (he's the guy who can be seen walking through the intersection with his eyes closed) says at the beginning of the video: "Chaos is an order we don't understand, yet." In other words, order does not have to be planned, and the absence of planning does not necessarily mean chaos.

It works there. Would this concept, which replaces busy intersections with traffic circles and, more important, shifts responsibility from the police to drivers and pedestrians, work in New York City? If it did, would we need congestion pricing to solve our traffic woes?

OK, you're skeptical. But creative problem-solving doesn't always involve trying to impose order on apparent chaos. Sometimes it means discovering and making use of the order that's already there. If you want to really unblock the box, maybe you've got to think outside of it.

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