Transportation Alternatives, New York City’s advocates for street safety, today released a study and map of the borough of Manhattan showing where and how often pedestrians are killed or injured by motorists. A recently released Citizens for NYC/Baruch College survey put “dangerous intersections" at the top of citizen complaints in New York City, well ahead of traffic congestion and noise.

The maps can be accessed at www.crashstat.org. With a few simple clicks, residents can see the number of historical injuries and deaths at each intersection in their neighborhood, and the crash frequency trend at particular locations. The map is based on data from 1995 through 2001, the last year for which accurate data is available.

For the borough as a whole, there were 6,011 locations with reported crashes resulting in 304 pedestrians killed and 26,343 pedestrians injured between 1995 and 2001. During this period, East 33rd Street and Park Avenue was the most dangerous intersection in both the borough and the city.

To its credit, the City Department of Transportation has made pedestrian oriented safety improvements on Park Avenue between East 96th and East 132nd Streets, West 30th Street and 9th Avenue and the intersection of Riverside Drive and 96th Street. And, since 1998, the NYPD has significantly increased the number of summonses it issues for dangerous and illegal driving in Manhattan.

However, Manhattan streets can still be much safer. Even with vigorous police enforcement, studies have shown that the only way to create truly safe streets is for the City DOT to redesign them using modern traffic calming devices. Traffic calming, which encompasses a wide variety of inexpensive engineering measures like speed tables and pedestrian refuge islands, has successfully created safer streets around New York City, the United States and the world. Says Kit Hodge, Transportation Alternatives’ Campaign Coordinator,

“People choose to live in Manhattan because of the liveliness of its streets: the people, the stores, the sights. But dangerous and loud motorized traffic turns the lively streets into lousy streets; it literally drives people out of the borough. www.crashstat.org is a powerful new tool that concerned residents can use to fight for comprehensive traffic calming, which will create safer and quieter walking conditions around schools, senior centers and parks."

Local community groups can contact Transportation Alternatives at 212-629-8080 or info@transalt.org to request free copies of the study and a booklet on how to create safer streets using traffic calming in your neighborhood.

View the supplementary maps and data here.