PBS高端访谈:纽约的街道要如何才能变得更加行人友善?

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN: How is it possible that we're sitting in Times Square? What happened here that you made you think you could build this?

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: Well, Times Square had been a tangle¹ of traffic for almost 200 years, since it was first created and people had tried for years to fix it. They tried slip lanes and signal changes and nothing worked. And so I brought the idea to Mayor Bloomberg that we should try something bigger.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: In 2009, Janette Sadik-Khan proposed closing Broadway to cars from 42nd St. to 47th St. and turning it into a quarter-mile long pedestrian plaza².

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: And it started just with some traffic cones³ and some beach chairs, and it's really become a model for other cities to try things out. You can re-imagine them, test it, measure it.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: The permanent redesign cost $27 million, and the city measured the changing traffic flow through Times Square using GPS devices in 13,000 taxis.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: It was much safer for both pedestrians⁴ and motorists. The traffic worked just fine. And it became an economic blockbuster. It became one of the top ten retail⁵ locations on the planet.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: In her book "StreetFight," Sadik-Khan argues the nation needs to shift the focus of city streets away from cars.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: Our streets for so many years have been used to move cars as quickly as possible from point A to point B. And people have even forgotten that there are other uses for the streets. Whether to walk or to bike or to take the bus. It's not anti-car. It's really pro-choice. It's about providing options to make it easier for people to get around.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: By 2013, when Sadik-Khan's tenure⁶ in Mayor Bloomberg's administration ended, the city had re-purposed 220 acres of space — taking away lanes from cars and giving them to pedestrians, bikes, and buses.

　　Sadik-Khan says dedicated⁷ car turn lanes, restricted bus lanes, and adjusting traffic light signals based on real-time traffic conditions helped increase average driving speeds in central Manhattan by nearly 7 percent.

　　At the same time, traffic and pedestrian fatalities⁸ in the city have declined.

　　纽约的街道要如何才能变得更加行人友善?

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: Our streets have never been safer. In fact with more and more cyclists on our streets, we've seen a one-third reduction in cyclist injuries and fatalities, while we've seen a quadrupling of people biking around.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Much of the increase in biking is from Citi Bike, the bike share program funded in part by Citibank and Mastercard that's been used more than 26 million times since launching three years ago. The Citi Foundation is one of the underwriters of this program.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: It was the first new transportation system in New York City in 60 years and at almost no cost to taxpayers⁹. So I think it's a model, particularly in an era where we don't have a lot of federal funding and state funding and local funding is hard to come by.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Sadik-Khan says the huge number of riders actually makes biking safer.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: You're not going to ride the Tour de France on this bike… they're like heavy! Right?

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Right.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: And I think that also goes a long way to calm down the streets.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: New York City streets now have 400 miles of bike lanes, with more than 30 miles separated from vehicle traffic by a lane of parked cars, an idea Sadik-Khan copied after seeing it in Copenhagen, Denmark.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: But with the new lanes came a backlash, including from drivers who complained bike lanes caused more traffic congestion¹⁰. A 1.8 mile lane bordering Brooklyn's Prospect¹¹ Park is still mired¹² in litigation six years after being installed.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: What do you think it is that creates that initial resistance to change, whether it's city street design planning or almost anything else? People get pretty comfortable with how a space looks and how a space is used, until they try something else, right?

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: It's a really good question, because people are really attached to the status quo. And when you change the status quo, we find the status quo pushes back hard, right. And people have expectations that our streets are for cars. And they don't really have any other expectations that they can be anything else. So that was one of the innovations that we did in New York City. We moved fast to show that you could have change on your street, that it would be better. That you can build in other ways to get around just really by narrowing the traffic lanes and opening up that space for other uses.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: With more than half the world's population living in cities — expected to become two-thirds by 2050 — Sadik-Khan hopes New York sets an example for a more person-centric view of transportation.

　　JANETTE SADIK-KHAN: I think it's really critical that we build in really good choices for people to get around — Making it safe for people to bike, making it fast for people to ride the bus, making it easy for people to walk around. Those are the kind of really secret sauces for 21st century cities. And really we get what we design. And when we design our streets to make them wide and as runways for cars, you know, that's what we get. And when we design our streets for people, and make it easier to walk and bus and bike, we get a much different result.

1 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

2 plaza   

n.广场，市场

参考例句：

• They designated the new shopping centre York Plaza.他们给这个新购物中心定名为约克购物中心。
• The plaza is teeming with undercover policemen.这个广场上布满了便衣警察。

3 cones   

n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒

参考例句：

• In the pines squirrels commonly chew off and drop entire cones. 松树上的松鼠通常咬掉和弄落整个球果。 来自辞典例句
• Many children would rather eat ice cream from cones than from dishes. 许多小孩喜欢吃蛋卷冰淇淋胜过盘装冰淇淋。 来自辞典例句

4 pedestrians   

n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Several pedestrians had come to grief on the icy pavement. 几个行人在结冰的人行道上滑倒了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Pedestrians keep to the sidewalk [footpath]! 行人走便道。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

6 tenure   

n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期

参考例句：

• He remained popular throughout his tenure of the office of mayor.他在担任市长的整个任期内都深得民心。
• Land tenure is a leading political issue in many parts of the world.土地的保有权在世界很多地区是主要的政治问题。

7 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

8 fatalities   

n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运

参考例句：

• Several people were injured, but there were no fatalities. 有几个人受伤，但没有人死亡。
• The accident resulted in fatalities. 那宗意外道致多人死亡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 taxpayers   

纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Finance for education comes from taxpayers. 教育经费来自纳税人。
• She was declaiming against the waste of the taxpayers' money. 她慷慨陈词猛烈抨击对纳税人金钱的浪费。

10 congestion   

n.阻塞，消化不良

参考例句：

• The congestion in the city gets even worse during the summer.夏天城市交通阻塞尤为严重。
• Parking near the school causes severe traffic congestion.在学校附近泊车会引起严重的交通堵塞。

11 prospect   

n.前景，前途；景色，视野

参考例句：

• This state of things holds out a cheerful prospect.事态呈现出可喜的前景。
• The prospect became more evident.前景变得更加明朗了。

12 mired   

abbr.microreciprocal degree 迈尔德（色温单位）v.深陷( mire的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The country was mired in recession. 这个国家陷入了经济衰退的困境。
• The most brilliant leadership can be mired in detail. 最有才干的领导也会陷于拘泥琐事的困境中。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》