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This study was undertaken in 1940 as the result of a series of conferences of members of the undersigned committee with Mayor F.H. LaGuardia, Rexford G. Tugwell, then Chairman of the City Planning Commission, and with Stanley M. Isaacs, then President of the Borough of Manhattan.

It was agreed that although certain aspects of the central city’s traffic and parking problems had been “surveyed to death” in the past 10 years, little if any improvement had been effected. Traffic congestion in New York’s central business districts affects the prosperity of the entire Metropolitan Area and seriously reduces the benefits of express highways, parkways, and river crossings built at vast expense in the last 20 years. In transportation, time is money, yet traffic conditions delayed trucks and buses untold hours in hauling, loading, and unloading passengers and goods. Lack of convenient short-term parking facilities seriously handicapped the city’s merchants and business officers.

The need was apparent to assemble the mass of available facts and to then weld the scattered proposals of two decades into a comprehensive program to enable the Metropolitan Region’s central city to adapt itself more advantageously to the motor age. No city agency was at that time in a position to undertake this task. Accordingly, in the view of the importance of the problem to the metropolitan area as a whole, the Regional Plan Association, following the above-mentioned conferences with city officials, agreed to raise the necessary funds to carry out the required study.

It was agreed that the city departments and other agencies which must deal in a practical way with the traffic problem should take an active part in preparing a realistic and comprehensive program. Through Mayor LaGuardia this city cooperation was obtained. The U.S. Public Roads Administration (through the interest of Thomas H. McDonald, Commissioner of Public Roads), as the Port Authority of New York provided valuable assistance in the study. The participation in the study of 26 civic and business organizations listed on a following page has been of great value in representing different and important points of view. For the first time in New York City, the opinion of the man in the street was obtained on the important question of parking needs and habits through a series of questionnaires issued in 1940 and 1941.

The resulting report represents two years of work of the Association’s staff under the direction of Harold M. Lewis. While many conferences have been held, many points of view considered, the report is in no sense a compromise document. With important dissents on specific points, it does, however, represent the views of a large majority of the practical and competent officials, business men, and technicians who are concerned with the city’s transportation problems.

Without anticipating the findings and recommendations of this report which are summarized in the next few pages, we wish to point out that the solution of our central city traffic problem is more one of administration and organization of people than of a large-scale public building program. Enforcement of properly restricted curb parking, an amendment to the Zoning Resolution to bring the modern parking garage out of its present classification with horse stables as a tolerable nuisance, intelligent use of parking meters in limited areas - steps such as these are needed just as much as union bus terminals, new highway connections, and other physical developments to facilitate transportation by motor vehicle.

This report begins with an analysis of New York’s central business areas as they are today and points the way to a practical progression of better coordination and use of existing facilities as well as new roadways and motor terminals. The estimates and statistics presented here, representing the latest pre-war data, are indicative of the situation which will probably resume after the war. There is time now to revise our laws, to develop a traffic and parking administrative agency, and to prepare plans for the most essential new physical facilities, private as well as public, outline in this report. This effort will require leadership from both the city administration and private interests. The form such leadership could take ad the job it could do is the principle contribution of this report.