Today marks the retirement of Chief Michael Scagnelli, who pioneered NYPD's TrafficStat, a traffic analysis unit that deploys enforcement resources to efficiently move traffic and attempt to reduce crashes on New York City streets. Transportation Alternatives thanks Chief Scagnelli for the innovations he pursued in his tenure.

"Chief Scagnelli helped battle the notion that traffic fatalities are random and unpreventable. TrafficStat, while far from perfect, set the precedent of strategically using enforcement to bring crash rates down," says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. "It's incumbent upon his replacement to maintain and expand TrafficStat, and better use it to ensure the safety of our growing numbers of bicyclists and pedestrians."

Transportation Alternatives makes the following recommendations in an upcoming report on traffic enforcement, to which the Chief's replacement should adhere:

• Measure Incident Reduction, Not Summons Issued: TrafficStat currently measures traffic safety by the number of tickets issued, which can be completely unrelated to the underlying problem and rewards the writing of tickets rather than the reduction of traffic crime. Measuring the level of infraction and reduction in crashes is the only way to assess the effectiveness of enforcement.
• Reinstate Accident Prone Location Deployment: Target NYPD enforcement resources to intersections and streets with high levels of crashes.

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