The new command responds efficiently to changing traffic needs

Traffic, transit, and trucking make the streets and sidewalks of Lower Manhattan some of the city’s busiest. Now, with the opening of a new traffic command on Chambers Street, the Police Department has enhanced their downtown system of traffic safety and management.

The new office allows the NYPD to have an Intersection Control command in Lower Manhattan separate from the "T-110" office in downtown Brooklyn. From the new office at 49 Chambers Street, NYPD traffic supervisors and agents gather twice daily for roll call before Traffic Supervisor Rosalyn Smith, a 20-year NYPD veteran, or other supervisors dispatch them to their posts anywhere south of Canal Street.

The results, according to Inspector Patrick McCarthy, are all the benefits of a local squad -- faster Traffic Enforcement Agent (TEA) deployment, local traffic-movement knowledge, and overall community awareness.

“There’s a combination of demands in Lower Manhattan, including special community needs,” says McCarthy. “Locations often have multiple operations throughout the day -- there might be construction movements to consider, along with pedestrians, trucks, blind spots. Local TEAs manage them and get familiar with traffic patterns. They become part of the fabric of the neighborhood and keep traffic moving.”

McCarthy says that there are several intersections that consistently need TEAs to safely manage vehicles and pedestrians, such as Church at both Liberty and Vesey Streets, West at Albany Street, and all along Chambers Street. But TEAs often are dispatched or relocated to new posts as needed, based on constantly updated data fed to the command through officers in the field, agent feedback, community requests, and live traffic cameras.

Agents are deployed to various posts south of Canal Street

Funding for the command post was made possible by the city and works in conjunction with the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center’s (LMCCC) Permit Enforcement Taskforce. Part of the LMCCC’s City Operations program, the taskforce coordinates daily meetings with the NYPD, Department of Transportation, Department of Buildings, and other agencies to field requests and plan for ever-changing downtown events -- construction-related or otherwise.

The agents operating from the new downtown command agree that the location gives them the advantage of expediency -- and that being posted in Lower Manhattan has incidentally instilled a working knowledge of construction operations, as it has for most locals.

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