Come to the Volunteer Magazine Mailing Party, Wednesday, February 25th at 6 pm at the T.A. Office (115 West 30th, #1207)! Free beer, pizza, soda, snacks and scintillating conversation. 

2/23 Traffic deaths at lowest level in a century, Newsday

2/23 City traffic deaths driven way down, Daily News

2/19 AstraZeneca car pooling sets standard, The News Journal

2/14 Sorrow and Anger Linger as Brooklyn Buries Two Boys Killed by Truck, The New York Times

2/14 Double Tragedy: City warned a year ago of deadly corner where two youths were crushed by truck, The Brooklyn Heights Paper

2/12 Community Grieves For Brooklyn Boys Killed By Truck, NY1

2/12 City Studied Killer Crossing But Study Recommendations Were Never Followed, Newsday

2/12 DOT knew of flaws at fatal intersection, Daily News

2/11 Residents Chip In To Pay For Funeral For Boys Killed By Truck, NY1

2/11 Intersection Was Dangerous: Two Boys Killed at Intersection, WNBC

2/11 Consultant: Safety Devices Ignored, Newsday

2/11 Deadly blind spots: How trucker's view was blocked, Daily News

More Quotes...

Events and Membership Director Wanted
See transalt.org/jobs for more information.

Time on your hands? Eager to make a difference? T.A. needs folks who are retired, work part-time or between jobs to help our top-notch advocacy staff make the city a better place for bicyclists, pedestrians and transit riders.
Call 212-629-8080 or e-mail info@transalt.org.

Valet Bike Parking Volunteers Needed

Volunteer to provide valet bike parking at events throughout the year. Register online to express your interest in this opportunity.

T.A. still has two open internships: 

- Advocacy (work with T.A. program staff)
- Bicycle Advocacy

Please visit transalt.org/intern for more information.

Donations Wish List

Help cycling and walking and get a tax deduction. Donate to T.A. We need:

-Pentium II or better PCs
-Laptop computer (Pentium II or better)
-Digital Camera
-Good chairs for conf. table or desks
-Computer Projector

Contact Matt: info@transalt.org

Do Your Part for Safer Streets!  Report:

Potholes and Hazards:
212-CALLDOT (hit 0 to speak with a human) or report them online at transalt.org/
hazard  

Sidewalk obstructions: Mayor’s Quality of Life Hotline at 888-677-LIFE/
5433

Read more about T.A.'s work to reduce street hazards at transalt.org/haz

Report Dangerous Cabs: 212-221-TAXI or report them online.

Read more about T.A.'s work to make cabs safer for pedestrians and cyclists at transalt.org/cabs

The T.A. Bulletin is a bi-weekly publication of Transportation Alternatives. The Bulletin has 26,000 subscribers.

Transportation Alternatives is a 5,000-member NYC-area non-profit citizens group working for better bicycling, walking and public transit, and fewer cars. We work for safer, calmer neighborhood streets and car-free parks. Join T.A. today!

February 23, 2004

After Death of Boys
T.A. Asks Electeds to Champion
W. Bklyn Street Safety Changes

In the aftermath of the February 9th killings of eleven-year old Victor Flores and his ten-year old friend Juan Estrada by a turning truck driver at 3rd Avenue and 9th Street in Brooklyn, T.A. has asked local city councilmembers to do four things to prevent such tragedies:

1. Earmark $2.8 million in city capital funds in the upcoming budget to fast track the construction of the pedestrian safety improvements for 3rd and 4th Avenues recommended in the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Study.

2. Ask the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) to retain the recommendations made in the study, especially the installation of neckdowns at the Northeast and Southeast corners of the intersection of 3rd Avenue and 9th Street and elsewhere on 3rd and 4th Avenues.

3. Ask the DOT to immediately install Leading Pedestrian Intervals on 3rd Avenue from 9th Street to 15th Street and elsewhere on 3rd and 4th Avenues as promised in the DOT’s list of "Short Term Measures" for traffic calming the area that it issued on July 29, 2003 as part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Study.

4. Ask the DOT to move ahead with its excellent Safe Schools project, which looks at pedestrian safety around all 1,357 New York City schools. The DOT completed a $2.5 million planning study. But the agency has stalled on phase two of the project, which is building pedestrian safety engineering measures around the 35 most dangerous schools.

On February 9th, the truck driver rolled over the two boys while they were on their way home from school and legally crossing in a crosswalk with the WALK signal. The killings come at a time when overall pedestrian deaths and injuries in New York City are declining, but they dramatize how far we have to go and the kinds of pedestrian safety measures that the DOT needs to make. Despite much progress, New York City still has a pedestrian fatality rate 30% higher than London, which is very similar in population composition and transportation habits. Furthermore, looking beyond just fatality levels, motorists still injure nearly 12,000 New York City pedestrians and 4,000 cyclists every year.

In the days following the killing of the boys, T.A. learned that the DOT’s list of short term measures to traffic calm the area that it made as part of the July 29, 2003 Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming study included changing the traffic signals at 3rd Avenue and 9th Street to create a three second head start for pedestrians called a Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI). Of the 34 items on the DOT’s list of short term measures, 11 were free; this includes the LPI, which could have saved the boys’ lives [view list]. In fact, the DOT has already installed other recommended LPIs on the list, including one at the intersection of Hicks Street and Atlantic Avenue. Additionally, the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Study included a diagram and written recommendation for an extension of the sidewalk, called a neckdown, at the corner where the truck driver killed the boys. Neckdowns slow turning motorists. But cuts in the DOT’s capital budget have prevented the agency from building these neckdowns until 2009.

Thanks to the hundreds of you who sent e-mail to the mayor about this issue in response to our special appeal on February 10th.  A sampling of your letters is available here.

Good News: Big Decline in NYC Pedestrian Injuries over Decade

According to encouraging statistics compiled by the State Department of Motor Vehicles, pedestrian injuries in New York City declined significantly during the 1990s. The department’s records show that the number of pedestrians struck and injured by motorists on New York City streets declined from 15,589 in 1990 to 11,616 in 2000. When population growth is taken into account, this amounts to a 33% decline in pedestrian injuries over the decade. During the same period, the number of pedestrians killed dropped from 344 to 180 a year. While different government agencies report different crash statistics, all reflect the same downward trend in injuries. T.A. attributes the safety improvements to better focused police traffic enforcement, especially since the creation of TrafficStat in 1998, and efforts by the Department of Transportation to improve conditions at pedestrian "hot spots" including safety improvements at big, dangerous streets like the Grand Concourse, Queens Boulevard, Eastern Parkway and Herald Square.

Bicycle and Pedestrian Deaths
Per 100,000 People

Sources: Surface Transportation Policy Project and Transport for London

Note: These figures do not take into account different levels of bicycling, walking or public transit use. So whereas New York City and Philadelphia have a similar death rate, given New York City’s much higher levels of walking and transit usage, the actual risk to pedestrians here is probably lower. A better comparison is London and New York City, which have very similar transportation profiles.

Next T.A. E-Bulletin: Cycling Death and Injuries Remain Stubbornly High

North Jersey Officials Call for GWB to River Road Connector Path

In November 2003, the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders and the Borough of Fort Lee Council bolstered the calls of fellow New Jersey elected officials and civic groups by passing resolutions calling on the Port Authority and Palisades Interstate Park to build a half-mile greenway path between the George Washington Bridge bicycle and pedestrian path and "River Road" in Palisades Park, New Jersey. The Port Authority has studied the area and, with Palisade Park’s permission, could easily build the path as part of an $86.6 million George Washington Bridge ramp project. This would make the narrow streets, steep hills and frightening traffic safer for the 1,600 cyclists who ride there each weekend day.

Europe Eyes London Style Congestion Pricing

According to Britain’s Observer, cities in Britain and across the world are poised to introduce their own congestion charges after the success of the first year of the ground-breaking London scheme. Edinburgh and Cardiff in Britain are the furthest ahead; the cities have plans to introduce new charges on motorists to raise money for investment within the next two years. The Scottish and Welsh capitals are both advancing proposals to charge drivers to enter city centers. The cities intend to use the congestion pricing fees to support road and public transit improvements. Stockholm also plans to start a congestion pricing pilot program next year.

Back in London, Mayor Ken Livingstone intends to hold public hearings on a proposal to double the area of London included in the pricing scheme. Thanks to congestion pricing, motor vehicle congestion in the zone is down by 30%, average speeds are their highest since the 1960s, journey times are more reliable and businesses have benefited.

Elsewhere in Europe, studies by Deloitte consultants claim that 26 out of 34 cities in 15 European countries have shown "significant support" for some form of congestion charging. The World Bank is also reported to be pressing booming cities in developing countries to use congestion charging to curb exploding traffic growth, calling for cities in the developing countries to use congestion charges to reduce fast-growing car use, raise money for much-needed infrastructure and free up congested buses, which are traditionally the main form of mass transportation.

Read more about congestion pricing.

Big Subway Service Changes

The most significant reconfiguration of the subway map in decades went into effect this Sunday, changing the commutes of over 600,000 straphangers. The main difference is that four trains, not two, now travel over the Manhattan Bridge; this is the result of a rehabilitation project that has been in place since 1986. Service changes will also address shifts in where people work, with service focusing more on Midtown and the area between 28th Street and Canal Street, and less on lower Manhattan. See mta.info/nyct/man_bridge/man_bridge.htm.

Letters

To the editor,

T.A.’s year-end fund-raising appeals report a two-thirds fall in New York City pedestrian fatalities over the past 30 years, and we are, it seems, claiming this as "an historic victory." A good thing, certainly, but an historic victory? Alas, probably not.

T.A. acknowledges that the rate at which pedestrians and cyclists are struck (if not always killed) by cars and trucks in New York City hasn’t fallen nearly as much. Moreover, bicyclist deaths have stayed more or less the same.

So how does it happen that pedestrians are still getting run down, but not dying quite so often? The most likely answer is simple: better emergency care. A U-Mass/Harvard Med School study, published in Homicide Studies in 2002, credited improved emergency care for the decline in the national homicide rate despite the proliferation of increasingly dangerous weapons and the rising incidence of criminal assault since 1960. As the New York Times summarized it, thanks to innovations such as the 911 telephone line and trauma units at hospitals, crime victims who formerly would have died and been counted as homicides are now surviving.

The same phenomenon applies to traffic casualties, and is probably why pedestrian fatalities plummeted while the overall number of flattened pedestrians fell much less.

It would be nice if we could declare victory, but the sad fact is that our efforts don’t seem to have made a huge dent in the underlying rate of endangerment by motor vehicles.

I point this out, not to disparage T.A., still less to discourage its members and staff. But we have a long way to go before we can fairly claim to have rewritten the "equation on our streets."

Charles Komanoff
The writer is a past president of T.A. and author of the Right Of Way report, Killed By Automobile.

Editor’s Note: We do think T.A. is "changing" the equation on the streets. More specifically, street safety is getting better, but is not nearly where it should be or could be. Pedestrian safety in New York City is improving. The number of pedestrians struck and injured declined from 15,589 in 1989 to 11,616 in 2000. This reduction is made more impressive by the fact that the city’s population has grown 10% in this time. Adjusted for population, this means that pedestrian injuries have fallen one third since 1989. This reduction is not attributable to improvements in medical care, though improved medical care, including better ambulance response times, may explain in part why pedestrian deaths have fallen faster than injuries. On the other hand, the decline of pedestrian fatalities may also be the result of the fact that the police department and the DOT expend more effort reducing fatalities than injuries. We agree that cycling injuries remain troubling high, but given the increases in cycling over the decade, it seems likely that cycling safety has improved. How much safer is hard to tell.

Mayor Says "Safety First on the SI Ferry"--How about City Streets?

Dear Reader,

In the last 90 years, 11 New Yorkers have been killed in a crash while riding the Staten Island ferry and at least 25,000 New Yorkers have been killed by motorists while walking or bicycling on city streets.

Yet, the City’s response to the crash of the Staten Island ferry may be the model for how it should treat cycling and walking safety.

Mayor Bloomberg and New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall moved decisively to implement ferry safety measures after last October’s ferry crash. The DOT hired professional safety investigators to "Thoroughly examine the ferry system, particularly with an eye towards policies and practices, particularly in the area of safety."

The Mayor rightly said that the City "Owed it to the people who take the ferry each year and the memory of the people we lost last October to make sure the ferry is a safe, world class 21st century operation."

But doesn’t the City owe the same level of attention to safety commitment to the millions of people who walk and bicycle city streets--especially given the magnitude of the City’s bicycling and pedestrian safety problems?

At a recent press conference about ferry safety improvements, Commissioner Weinshall spoke about the DOT’s ferry operations, saying "An old system and environment which relied on tradition and practice will be replaced ... its deficiencies are all too clear and its time has come and gone."

An external assessment of the DOT’s traffic engineering and traffic safety would likely reveal a similar need to introduce modern pedestrian and bicycling safety standards, policies and practices.

Sincerely,
John Kaehny
Executive Director

P.S. As we went to press the Daily News reported the good news that NYC traffic deaths are at historic lows. Indeed they are, but cycling and walking deaths in NYC are still 17% higher than in London, and 15,000 cyclists and pedestrians are struck and hurt every year. If 15,000 people were injured on the subway every year, it would be declared a public health threat and shut down.

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Call the Mayor's Quality of Life Action Line (real people 24 hrs a day): 888-677-5433 or 888-677-LIFE.

POTHOLES, STREET HAZARDS GOT YOU IN A RUT?

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RIDES AND WALKS

Tuesday, February 24, 10 am. Central Park Laps. The Loeb Boathouse. The Weekday Cyclists in NYC.