Dear Editor:
Presently Christopher Columbus Drive in Jersey City is a 4 lane boulevard with parking on each side of the street. Since 2003 there has been an ongoing traffic study on how to deal with the traffic flow throughout downtown Jersey City. The recommendation for CC Drive was to alternate lanes in the morning and evening rush hours to 3 lanes in one direction and 1 lane in the opposite direction. Somewhere along the way the plan has been changed to a proposal to remove parking from Christopher Columbus Drive and turn the drive into a 6 lane highway, with 4 lanes and 2 lanes alternating according the morning and evening rush hours. This is a complete and dangerous mistake. The remarks I have heard from various officials is that parking is a problem for the flow of traffic and the only people who park on CC Drive during the day are people who shop on Newark Avenue. So the plan is to kill off parking which the retail on Newark Avenue needs to survive so commuters from outside of Jersey City can get to downtown, the Path stations and ferry slips faster.
The Jersey City downtown area was voted in 2009 the third most walk able downtown in America. Why would you want to put a highway smack in the middle of that? People feel much safer walking on streets with parking because of the barrier that parked cars gives them from moving traffic. Plus cars traveling down a street with parked cars tend to move slower than on major roads without parked cars. So the plan is to create a larger road and take all those people, who like to walk, off the streets so the commuters from outside Jersey City can get to downtown, the Path Stations and ferry slips faster.
Parking has been removed from Grand Street and what happened? Cars fly down to the waterfront making it dangerous to walk or cross Grand Street. This idea is bad urban planning that will not benefit Jersey City residents or merchants and should not be implemented.
Jeff Kaplowitz
Jersey City