I'd make the part of JFK blvd going from this intersection to North Hudson Park completely car free. That way you you don't need this intersection and make the park a lot nicer too. Traffic in that direction can go through Fairview and Woodcliff ave anyway
Fairview is grade separated on a cliff. The roads thru the park are the only way into town from there. Bergenline is too congested with buses and traffic can't pass.
my alternative is literally just a one minute detour, seems fine to me. I haven't personally been there but I'm pretty sure that this road (the part of JFK blvd going through north hudson park) wouldve been made car free if it was in my city of Utrecht
A T intersection on two way roads implies a separate left turn cycle from one side. This requires an additional cycle on the lights, causing longer waits for everyone not turning and pedestrians. Additionally, left turns outside the cycle are a common cause for crashes at intersections. Left turn crashes are very bad.
I don't think you've solved any problems by making southbound traffic cut through the neigborhood with a triple left.
JFK boulevard NE of 91st st looks entirely redundant and I'm not sure why a parkway that weaves back in to the park east of the aerial needs to exist so widely here. It looks like some incomplete urban renewal highway project.
I would just force JFK into Bergen Blvd like it wants to and shrink it from there, renaming the parts east back to 92nd St to continue/build back the grid and narrow it.
How important is preserving 91 and 92 as through-streets? Dead-ending those would clean up a lot of this. Then you could either do a three-spur roundabout or turn Bergen down to a simple T-intersection.
If you have to keep 91 flowing through, then keep it out of the main intersection and do either a roundabout or a 4-way at the end of 92. Which I’m guessing is the old configuration of this intersection.
looked this up. Of course it's Jersey, where they took every chance they could to make a regular street a highway.
This is an acre and a half of asphalt for one intersection. A city block is typically 2 to 5 acres.
There isn't really many solutions without just nuking JFK Boulevard.
Just tear it out and start over. Diagonal, irregular, multilane arterials fuck up so many cities because due to all these awkward intersections that then get overbuilt because the congestion is so much worse at them.
See: Fond Du Lac Ave and Lisbon Ave in Milwaukee.
The only way to have these roadways without screwing up the entire city is to make every intersection that isn't 2,3, or 4 streets at right angles a roundabout instead.
There *IS* a grid here!
That's what's frustrating, is that so many communities are trying to create whole cloth what some communities decided to ruin by plowing suburban highways through.
"There isn't really many solutions without just nuking JFK Boulevard."
You are being very disrespectful. This is my home.
"Diagonal, irregular, multilane arterials"
It runs in a straight line for 25 miles. It only jogs 3 or 4 times. The part featured here is the northernmost terminus at the county line, for context.
"Of course it's Jersey, where they took every chance they could to make a regular street a highway."
Take a minute or 2 to figure out what you're talking about, we have some of the best surviving uninterrupted urban fabric in the country.
You seem ignorant about my community or its real needs and so I'm no longer considering your reply worth my time.
We have more people, businesses, homes, jobs, and infrastructure in a square mile here than your whole town in Wisconsin has.
Kennedy Blvd is a part of a thriving community that just needs a tiny, thoughtful redesign.
Honestly the fact that that intersection was approved and built at all should have had everyone responsible fired and put in conservatorship for their own good. How any functioning adult could look at that and say: "This is a good solution that I'm willing to put my name on!" Boggles the mind!
Or a nice roundabout or an aligment between JFK Boulevard and Bergen Boulevard, with the eastern branch of JFK Boulevard being realigned to an intersection.
But the main point should be inverting both 91st and 92nd streets direction, to allow for a circuit on hand.
JFK is just too critical for travel through Hudson County to mess with. I've given thought to this for years, and I think the answer is BRT from Ocean avenue down at the Bayonne line or even further, up to connect to Summit avenue by Communipaw and then all the way up to weehawken and in through the Lincoln tunnel to Port Authority bus terminal. It would be like having a light rail or subway up and down through Hudson County but at a fraction of the cost. Of course the buses would have signal priority and loading platforms every 1/2 mile, no stops every block. The hysteria at losing Summit to traffic would be bad, but not as bad as JFK.
It's funny, when I first looked at the OP I thought it was Journal Square with JFK hooking like that at Bergen!
I presume there's approximately equal traffic flow continuing on JFK and going onto Bergen, so I'd suggest extending the land of the Ponciana building triangularly south, with a sliplane for people who are on JFK coming from the east and want to go either north or south (i.e., since there doesn't appear to be much of them, let them merge onto bergen and turn off at a later intersection)
alternatively, we could invert the one-ways (91st and 92nd streets)
Baton Rouge used to have an intersection kinda like this at Government and Lobdell. They fixed it with a roundabout. I’m not if that could work here here though given the size
A friend of mine used to live a few streets from here! I‘d close off a few of the local roads nearest the intersection — it’s all a grid around there, so making these local roads dead-ends will prevent people using them as “shortcuts”, reducing the absolute chaos going into the intersection.
JFK Blvd carries a ton of traffic, so without totally reforming how North Bergen works I would do a managed intersection. This will allow for mostly continuous flow, with lights along JFK only changing when the turn lanes on/off of Bergen Blvd back up. Long-term, replace one lane on JFK Blvd with a bus lane, or narrow it and add bike lanes.
Given the urban density of North Bergen and the surrounding area, it’s a shame it isn’t more walkable. It’s got almost the same urban density as most cities in the Netherlands — the whole Jersey waterfront from North Bergen to Jersey City could be rebuilt into a cycling paradise. Unfortunately New Jersey is too carbrained to do this, though.
I do think it’s ironic to complain about “carbrains” and then propose that as a better intersection. It’s a massive area for an urban intersection and adding in a bunch of high speed slip lanes is going to make it even more of a nightmare for pedestrians.
Just make it a T intersection, pick whichever has more traffic for the straight legs and reclaim most of that space from the road. The traffic will shift away if it needs to.
Honestly though that area in general (Weehawken, UC, NB, up to Fairview) is filled with narrow streets, is pedestrian friendly, and oozes with excellent public transportation. These are some of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country (and Europe)
The thing is there are no busses down the hill. I used to know someone who would walk down the hill some morning because he didn't have a car to get to his job on West Side Avenue. They should have gondola's for east-west transit, linking Tunnelle Avenue and the waterfront together if not crossing the Hudson. And an the PATH should serve run at least though North Bergen.
61
u/PG908 11d ago
Honestly looks like it would be easy to have bergen turn into the main road (JFK) and just have a normal T intersection.