1.
West Side Highway
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The West Side Highway is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A that runs from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. It replaced the West Side Elevated Highway, built between 1929 and 1951, which was shut down in 1973 due to neglect and lack of maintenance, and was dismantled by 1989. The term West Side Highway is often used, particularly by the news media traffic reporters. The current highway was complete by 2001, but required some reconstruction due to damage sustained in the 9/11 attacks and it uses the surface streets that existed before the elevated highway was built, West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. A short section of 12th Avenue still runs between 125th and 138th Streets, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct, Eleventh Avenue is a separate street north of 22nd Street. The portion between West 42nd Street and Canal Street is part of the Lincoln Highway, the highway is a six-to-eight lane urban boulevard, with the northernmost section, from 59th Street to 72nd Street, elevated above a former rail yard adjacent to tracks still used by Amtrak. Trucks and buses are allowed only on the surface section, the West Side Highways surface section takes three names, West Street from the Battery Park Underpass north to Tenth Avenue, then 11th Avenue to 22nd Street, and finally 12th Avenue to 59th Street. The highway begins from Battery Park close to the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel where it also accepts traffic from the terminus of the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive. From there, the route passes close to the site of the World Trade Center at Vesey Street, the route continues with this name passing by numerous piers along the Hudson River until Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District where it becomes Eleventh Avenue. Eleventh Avenue begins just north of the intersection with Tenth Avenue, the highway is concurrent with Eleventh Avenue north of this point, passing by the 14th Street Park at 14th Street. The highway continues with this name alongside the Chelsea Piers until it reaches 22nd Street where the branches off from Eleventh Avenue onto Twelfth Avenue. At 22nd Street, the highway continues as Twelfth Avenue passing by the Chelsea Waterside Park and it passes just west of the Javits Center from 34th Street to 38th Street and over the Lincoln Tunnel at 39th Street. The road continues past the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and Piers 84 to 92, at 54th Street, 12th Avenue attains a highway with service roads character, with the service roads running as far as 59th Street. From there, Twelfth Avenue becomes elevated and at 72nd Street, various proposals circulated in the 1920s to build an expressway on the west side. It would eliminate 106 grade crossings over 84 blocks and it ran into opposition because of fears that it would create a rail monopoly. The highway would run on top of the ten-story buildings, a similar alternative was offered by Benjamin Battin. The proposal immediately ran into stiff opposition, the City Club and New York City Mayor James J. Walker objected to the highway on the grounds that it would block waterfront-bound freight traffic. They believed that the plans should wait until the railroad tracks were removed in the area
2.
The Battery (Manhattan)
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Battery Park is a 25-acre public park located at the Battery, the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City, facing New York Harbor. The area and park are named for the batteries that were positioned there in the citys early years to protect the settlement behind them. The southern shoreline of Manhattan Island had long known as The Battery since the 17th century when the area was part of the Dutch Settlement of New Amsterdam. At the time, a battery there served to protect the seaward approaches to the town. The relatively modern park was created by landfill starting from 1855. Skyscrapers now occupy most of the land, stopping abruptly where the park begins. While the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and Battery Park Underpass were under construction from 1940–52, peter Minuit Plaza was built in 1955, the East Coast Memorial was dedicated in 1963. Battery Park was included within a group of historic waterfront sites designated Harbor Park, by the government of New York State, the Battery Park Conservancy, founded in 1994 by still-current President Warrie Price, has undertaken and funded the restoration and improvement of the once shop-worn park. In 2015, the New York City Department of Parks and the Battery Conservancy announced that the park would revert to its historic name, at the other end of the park is Battery Gardens restaurant, next to the United States Coast Guard Battery Building. Along the waterfront, Statue Cruises offers ferries to the Statue of Liberty, the park is also the site of the East Coast Memorial which commemorates U. S. servicemen who died in coastal waters of the western Atlantic Ocean during World War II, and several other memorials. Castle Clinton, named for mayor DeWitt Clinton, now lies within the park, originally called the West Battery, it was built as a fort just prior to the War of 1812. It became property of the city after the war and was renamed Castle Clinton, when Leased by the city, it became a popular promenade and beer garden. Later roofed over, it one of the premier theatrical venues in the United States. The people who gathered at Battery Park to see a clipper ship get underway came partly to hear the sailors sing their sea songs, which originated early in the nineteenth century, with the Negro stevedores at Mobile and New Orleans. The migration of the citys elite uptown increased concurrently with the mass European emigration of the middle 19th century, as immigrants settled the Battery area, the location was less favorable to theater patrons and Castle Garden was closed. The structure was made into the worlds first immigration depot, processing millions of immigrants beginning in 1855, almost 40 years before its successor, Ellis Island. This period coincided with immigration waves resulting from Irelands Great Famine, the structure then housed the New York Aquarium from 1896 to 1941, when it was threatened with destruction under transportation planner Robert Mosess plans. Made a National Monument in 1946 and restored in 1975, it is known by its original name
3.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
4.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
FDR Drive
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The FDR Drive is a 9. 44-mile freeway-standard parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Kennedy Bridge / Willis Avenue Bridge interchange, where it becomes the Harlem River Drive, all of the FDR Drive is designated New York State Route 907L, an unsigned reference route. By law, the current weight limits on the FDR Drive from 23rd Street to the Harlem River Drive in both directions is posted 8,000 pounds, buses are not allowed to use the roadway north of 23rd Street, because of clearance and weight issues. The FDR Drive features a mix of below-grade, at-grade, and elevated sections, the first sections of this roadway, originally named the East River Drive, were constructed in 1934, having been designed by Robert Moses. It was later renamed after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and is called the FDR Drive. Moses faced the difficulties of building a parkway/boulevard combination along the East River while minimizing disruptions to residents, future reconstruction designs from 1948 to 1966 converted the FDR Drive into the full parkway that is in use today. The section of highway from 23rd Street to 34th Street was built on wartime rubble dumped by cargo ships returning from Bristol, England, the German Luftwaffe bombed Bristol heavily. After delivering war supplies to the British, the ships crews loaded rubble onto the ships for ballast, then sailed back to New York, where construction crews made use of it. Exit 6, at 15th Street, is located near a Con Edison substation, which handles most of the electricity for lower Manhattan, and has been closed since the September 11,2001 attacks. City and ConEd officials believed it was too risky to allow easy access to such a critical piece of infrastructure. All signage of exit 6 was removed in early 2016, the East River Greenway runs below, beside or above the motor road from South Street to 34th Street and 60th Street to 124th Street. A plaque dedicating the East River Drive is visible on the roadway before entering the Gracie Mansion tunnel at 90th Street. FDR Drive starts at the tip of Manhattan at South and Whitehall streets. This section is known as the South Street Viaduct. From here, the road is at-grade, except for when it uses an underpass to dive below the Houston Street interchange, the ramp passed through a ConEdison facility that was deemed a potential terrorist target. East 15th and East 14th Streets were also vacated east of Avenue C, allowing only Con Edison, once past the 18th Street curve, it becomes elevated briefly until 25th Street in order to serve the 23rd Street interchange. After passing Waterside Plaza near 30th Street, the roadway again becomes elevated and this section is often referred to as the United Nations Tunnel, even though the northbound roadway is barely under the structure. The United Nations Headquarters was constructed on a platform above the roadway from 42nd to 48th Streets, in this unique tunnel, the southbound roadway is raised and runs over the northbound roadway for northbound access to and from the Queensboro Bridge interchange
7.
Financial District, Manhattan
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The neighborhood roughly overlaps with the boundaries of the New Amsterdam settlement in the late 17th century. The Financial District has witnessed growth in its population to approximately 43,000 as of 2014, the Financial District encompasses roughly the area south of City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan but excludes Battery Park and Battery Park City. The former World Trade Center complex was located in the neighborhood until the September 11 attacks, the heart of the Financial District is often considered to be the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, both of which are contained entirely within the district. Until the late 20th and early 21st century, the neighborhood was considered to be primarily a destination for daytime traders and office workers from around New York City, the Financial District is part of Manhattan Community Board 1, which also includes five other neighborhoods. The Financial District has a number of tourist attractions such as the adjacent South Street Seaport Historic District, the New York City Police Museum, bowling Green is the starting point of traditional ticker-tape parades on Broadway, where here it is also known as the Canyon of Heroes. The Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Skyscraper Museum are both in adjacent Battery Park City which is home to the World Financial Center
8.
Battery Park City
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Battery Park City is a mainly residential 92-acre planned community on the west side of the southern tip of the island of Manhattan in New York City. More than one-third of the development is parkland, the neighborhood, which is the site of Brookfield Place, along with numerous buildings designed for housing, commercial, and retail, is named for adjacent Battery Park. Battery Park City is bounded on the east by West Street, to the west, north, and south, the area is surrounded by the Hudson River. The development consists of five major sections. Other restaurants located in that hotel, as well as a DSW store, former undeveloped lots in the area have been developed into high-rise buildings, for example, Goldman Sachs built a new headquarters at 200 West Street. Nearby is Brookfield Place, a complex of commercial buildings formerly known as the World Financial Center. Current residential neighborhoods of Battery Park City are divided into northern and southern sections, the northern section consists entirely of large, 20–45-story buildings, all various shades of orange brick. These subsections contain most of the residential buildings, along with park space, supermarkets, restaurants. Construction of residential buildings began north of the World Financial Center in the late 1990s, additionally, a park restoration was completed in 2013. Throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, the area adjoining todays Battery Park City was known as Little Syria with Lebanese, Greeks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups. In 1929, the land was the site of a $50,000,000 residential development that would have served workers in the Wall Street area. The Battery Tower project was unfinished after workers digging the foundation ran into forty feet of old bulkheads, sunken docks. Construction was halted and never restarted, the initial proposal to reclaim this area through landfill was offered in the early 1960s by private firms and supported by the mayor. That plan became complicated when Governor Nelson Rockefeller announced his desire to redevelop a part of the area as a separate project, the various groups reached a compromise, and in 1966 the governor unveiled the proposal for what would become Battery Park City. The creation of architect Wallace K. Harrison, the called for a comprehensive community consisting of housing, social infrastructure. The landscaping of the space and later the Winter Garden was designed by M. Paul Friedberg. In 1968, the New York State Legislature created the Battery Park City Authority to oversee development, the New York State Urban Development Corporation and ten other public agencies were also involved in the development project. For the next years, the BPCA made slow progress
9.
Lane
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In the context of traffic control, a lane is part of a roadway that is designated for use by a single line of vehicles, to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads have at least two lanes, one for traffic in each direction, separated by lane markings, on multilane roadways and busier two-lane roads, lanes are designated with road surface markings. Major highways often have two multi-lane roadways separated by a median, some roads and bridges that carry very low volumes of traffic are less than 15 feet wide, and are only a single lane wide. Vehicles travelling in opposite directions must slow or stop to each other. In rural areas, these are often called country lanes, in urban areas, alleys are often only one lane wide. Urban and suburban one lane roads are designated for one-way traffic. A traffic lane or travel lane is a lane for the movement of vehicles traveling from one destination to another, a through lane or thru lane is a traffic lane for through traffic. At intersections, these may be indicated by arrows on the pavement pointing straight ahead, an express lane of a road is used for faster moving traffic and has less access to exits/off ramps. In other areas, an express lane may refer to a HOV lane, a reversible lane is a lane where the direction of traffic can be changed to match the peak flow. They are used to accommodate periods of traffic flow, especially rush hour where the flow is predominantly in one direction, on roads that cannot be easily widened such as over bridges. One or more lanes are removed from the flow and added to the peak flow. An auxiliary lane is an other than a through lane. An acceleration lane or merge lane allows traffic entering a highway to accelerate to the speed of traffic before merging with it. A turn lane is set aside for slowing down and making a turn, by removing turning traffic from the through lanes, motorist safety is improved and delay is removed, but crossing distances for pedestrians are lengthened, increasing their exposure to collisions. A two-way center turn lane is a lane in the center of a roadway to allow drivers traveling in either direction to pause before turning across oncoming traffic while waiting for a gap in traffic. A passing lane is provided on busy two-lane roads to allow drivers to pass slower vehicles without having to cross the center line. A climbing lane, truck lane, or crawler lane is provided on steep mountain grades. The lane is marked only on the stretch and usually a short distance afterward
FDR Drive
