On Saturday, over 50 people, including several local electeds and candidates, joined bereaved family members for a memorial march in honor of pedestrians killed on Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen.

In recent years, drivers have struck and killed six people on Ninth between 36th and 45th Streets. The victims were eulogized this weekend, with the circumstances of their deaths -- some of which received little or no mention in local media -- recounted. The march was sponsored by the Clinton Hell's Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety (CHEKPEDS), the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association and Transportation Alternatives.

Impatient motorists lay on their horns as the procession, with TA's Shin-pei Tsay bearing a memorial plaque, crosses 40th.

A New Orleans brass band played hymns along the route.

Anahi Vargas, sister of Fabiola Grande Coyotl, speaks. Coyotl was seven months pregnant when she was hit by a truck at 38th Street in November of 2008. Her death didn't make the news.

Berthet railed at the local press for ignoring the carnage on city streets, where on average a pedestrian is killed every 36 hours. The Daily News was the only paper to cover Saturday's march.

TA's Paul Steely White called for safer street conditions and prosecutions of deadly drivers.

Tsay and TA's Julia De Martini Day install a plaque at Ninth and 37th.

Photos: Brad Aaron

CHEKPEDS, the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association and Transportation Alternatives will hold a march tomorrow in honor of pedestrians killed on Ninth Avenue. The march will begin at 2:00 p.m. on the west side of Ninth at 45th Street and will proceed to 36th Street. Along the way, commemorative plaques will be installed for six pedestrians killed by cars in recent years: Randolph Walker, Nina Petrov, Douglas Dibble, Fabiola Grande-Coyotl, Sabina Paradi, and most recent victim Susanne M. Schnitzer.

Sabina Paradi, killed on Ninth Avenue in 2007

Reads a TA media release:

Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, with its many accesses to the Lincoln Tunnel, remains one of New York City's most dangerous streets for pedestrians. The community was once festering with crime, but in a recent survey 70% of the residents said they fear for their lives when they cross the street, while only 5% are scared of crime.

It is very encouraging that a potential future Manhattan DA is taking part in events like this, and we'd feel a lot better about Liu's involvement if he'd stop badmouthing measures to make pedestrians safer.

Expect calls tomorrow for passage of the Hayley Ng and Diego Martinez Law, which would mandate safety training and community service for New York State drivers who seriously injure or kill a pedestrian or cyclist. According to TA, the driver who killed Susanne Schnitzer left the scene. Though he was later located, he has not been charged for taking her life. In such cases, the Ng-Martinez bill would give DAs more options to pursue charges, adding a modicum of muscle to the state's weak laws against deadly driving.

Pedestrian refuges mean cyclists aren't the only beneficiaries of cycle tracks. Photo: wrkng/Flickr

The board's transportation committee signed off on the lane last month. Still, about a dozen speakers turned out to oppose the project, which has community advocates, including CHEKPEDS, calling for a strong showing tonight by all who support a safer Eighth Avenue.

WHAT: Manhattan Community Board 4 General Meeting

WHEN: Wednesday, December 3, 6:30 p.m.

WHERE: Roosevelt Hospital, 10th Avenue between 58th and 59th St.

As part of Mayor Bloomberg's vision for far West Side redevelopment, the streetscape between 10th and 11th Avenues from 33rd to 42nd Streets is to be transformed with four acres of park space, linking to new commercial and residential high rises. Five designs have been submitted, with the winner to be chosen in October. The Post reports that, according to the Hudson Yards Development Corporation, phase one of the project is scheduled to be completed in 2013.

CHEKPEDS wants to ensure that the finished product addresses neighborhood considerations, such as:

• Will it be mostly for cars or for people?
  
• Will it be mostly for workers or for residents and neighbors?
  
• Will it be mostly shaded and green or more like a plaza?
  
• Will it be open 24 hours a day?
  
• What should it bring that the neighborhood lacks?

Designs will be on display tonight at 6:30 at Hudson Guild in the Dan Carpenter Room, 441 West 26th St. between 9th & 10th Avenues.

Image via New York Post

The garage, situated near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, will add more traffic to the already-congested streets of Hell's Kitchen, but its approval has strengthened calls to review similar permits more carefully in the future. "There are some positives," said Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) in an email message. "The Borough President's office, the City Planning Commission, and the council all have special permits on their radar, and the commission indicated they are ready to do 'something about parking.' The Speaker is also interested in a long term action."

As a 2005 re-zoning leads to a surge in development around the West Side railyards, adopting stricter standards for the approval of special permits could prevent a concurrent boom in parking. The leniency of the current approval process, said Berthet, flies in the face of the city's goals for air quality and traffic reduction, and approving a flurry of permits now would saddle the neighborhood with parking facilities for years. "The special permit is like radioactive material," she said. "It remains toxic for a very long time."

Photo of traffic on 10th Avenue: SarahNYC/Flickr

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

Case in point: In January, the developer Glenwood Management requested permission to build a 400-car parking garage attached to a new residential property in Hell's Kitchen. The application -- for 310-328 West 38th Street -- is the latest in a string of special permit requests to build parking in the area. It is currently pending before the City Planning Commission, which is scheduled to render a decision on June 6th. If the commission turns down the application, it could signal an important shift in the ongoing redevelopment of Hell’s Kitchen, which has seen a wave of new construction since a 2005 rezoning took effect.

The last time Streetsblog looked at the parking situation in Hell's Kitchen, local activists were fighting a provision in the new zoning that enabled substantially greater quantities of accessory parking -- spaces intended for building residents or commercial tenants. That battle is still playing out in court. The recent rash of permit requests represents another front in the effort to keep cars from overwhelming the neighborhood's streets.

A number of new buildings include plans for parking that exceed the amount allowed for residents. Glenwood Management, for instance, is only permitted to build 232 spaces for residents -- 114 under the pre-2005 zoning, according to local activists. The additional spaces will then be used by the developer as a public garage. At issue throughout Hell's Kitchen, in essence, is whether the city will allow developers to include public parking garages in new buildings without restriction.

"These regulations were put in place in 1973, more than a generation ago, and I don't think City Planning has ever denied any of those [requests]," says Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS). "As long as each public garage meets the guidelines, they approve it." What gets left out of the discussion is the total effect of those garages on traffic and air quality, she notes. "They never look at it as an aggregate."

In the case of Hell's Kitchen, that aggregate is poised to grow at a rapid clip. Already this year, developers have proposed building garages in the neighborhood totaling more than 500 parking spaces, Berthet estimates. With hundreds of new buildings planned on the West Side, she believes the trend will spiral out of control if left unchecked.

The effect on local streets could be considerable, in terms of both traffic generation and the pedestrian environment. "The Department of City Planning doesn't seem to take seriously the fact that parking generates traffic," says Nick Peterson, a vice president at planning firm Alex Garvin & Associates, "but if a new garage opens on a block that provides a net increase of 200 parking spaces, that's 200 cars that weren't there before. It's pretty obvious that new cars are on the road as a result." As for the pedestrian environment, he adds, "A parking garage is a dead space along the sidewalk -- there is no reason to go in and out of a parking garage except to park or pick up your car."

Traffic heads west on 37th Street towards the Lincoln Tunnel.

The garages in Hell’s Kitchen will be especially tempting to commuters exiting the Lincoln Tunnel. The neighborhood is already one of the most congested in the city and suffers the third highest asthma hospitalization rate among Manhattan's twelve community board districts. New parking facilities will only compound the problem by inducing more commuter traffic.

That is not the intent of the planning commission, which considers traffic volumes as well as demand for parking when it grants developers' requests, but observers say induced commuter driving will undoubtedly result. "There is often this disconnect between the planned condition and reality," says Peterson. "When you walk down a street and see a parking garage in a residential building, does the sign say, ‘Parking for Residents Only’? No. It says, simply, ‘Parking’ or ‘Public Parking.’"

When reached for comment, a Department of City Planning spokesperson referred to a commission report (PDF) on a recent parking application, which states that new garages are needed to offset the loss of parking incurred by new development, and to accommodate the influx of new residents.

Berthet takes issue with this stance because it assumes that existing parking lots were intended to serve as parking in perpetuity. In fact, she notes, the lots that are about to get displaced were supposed to serve as placeholders until developers could assemble parcels to build on. "They were not intended to be permanent fixtures," she says.

Meanwhile, DOT has committed to the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Traffic Study, evaluating measures to, among other things, improve pedestrian safety in the neighborhood. The hesitation on the part of the planning commission to deny developers' parking requests seems at odds with DOT's efforts to tame traffic as well as Mayor Bloomberg's long-term sustainability agenda, but there are signs the commission may adopt a position more consistent with the goals of other agencies.

"In the last two hearings that we went to, we could see that the City Planning Commission is moving in its position," says Berthet. The commission has been more willing to place restrictions on new parking facilities, she notes. The report mentioned above, for example, required a development on 11th Avenue to provide monthly parking instead of the usual hourly parking -- a small step, but one that may signal more significant changes to come.

Before rendering its decision on the 11th Avenue garage, "the commission took into account the concerns about traffic, the decreasing supply of parking and the proposed use of the parking," said a department spokesperson in an email message. "The traffic analysis was based on a large share of the proposed parking spaces to be used by local residents. Accordingly, the commission required the garage to provide for monthly rather than largely hourly parking. This will serve local residents and businesses but reduce transient traffic."

In addition to weighing its priorities differently, the planning department should work more closely with other city agencies, Berthet says. Specifically, she’d like to see tighter coordination between the officials making transportation decisions and the ones making land use decisions. "Where you need parking is really a transportation issue," she says, especially when that parking will be used by commuters and other non-residents.

Making these long-term changes will not be easy. Peterson notes that the planning department is subject to pressures from community boards, which tend to favor more off-street parking. And some of the most effective ways to better manage parking supply, like raising the tax on spaces, lie outside the department’s control.

But for now, the planning commission has the authority to curb the quantity of parking being added to Hell’s Kitchen, if it so chooses. Without a swift change to current practice, developments winning permits today are likely to generate traffic far into the future. Even if the city zoning text is eventually amended to put a stop to the proliferation of public parking, dozens of garages in the neighborhood will get approved in the meantime. "We may have a nice law at the end, but what are we going to do with all this parking that gets built between now and then?" Berthet asks. "We will be stuck with it for the rest of our lives."

Photos: CHEKPEDS

DOT had sent the board a list of bike racks to install on our sidewalks. After an extensive review, it became apparent that in many locations there is not enough space to accommodate both large bike racks and pedestrians, while the many bike deliveries businesses definitely need a solution. This concept should sound familiar, since the community recommended this approach as part of the 9th Avenue Renaissance vision.

It's a concept that's also familiar to DOT, as last year the city swapped three car spaces for 30 bike spots in Williamsburg. CHEKPEDS is proposing that two car parking spots per intersection -- one on the east, one on the west -- along Ninth between 36th and 56th Streets be converted for bike parking.

Photo: musiquegirl/Flickr

Today, StreetFilms debuts Street Stars, the first of many planned vignettes for 2008 which will focus on the amazing organizers in our communities who are fighting constructively for livable streets. Hopefully, these Stars will provide a road map for change and inspire others to work to transform their neighborhoods.

Their first choice is Christine Berthet, co-founder of Chekpeds, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition. Together with Transportation Alternatives and the Project for Public Spaces, she was also instrumental in organizing the Ninth Avenue Renaissance, a movement to re-imagine neighborhood streets as a healthier place for people. She is an indefatigable advocate working hard for the community, organizing rallies, and is omnipresent at community hearings and testifying at City Hall.

According to surveys conducted in Hell's Kitchen: 75 percent said that they were afraid for their safety because of motor vehicle traffic, 5 percent because of crime.

The New York City Council's Transportation and Technology in Government committees are conducting a joint hearing this afternoon on Council Member Vincent Gentile's accident reporting and review bill, Introduction 567 of 2007. The legislation would require long-sought changes in the way that the NYPD and DOT report and investigate pedestrian injuries and fatalities:

• The New York Police Department to forward all accident reports involving a pedestrian or a pattern of motor vehicle accidents to the Department of Transportation for analysis and overview within five days from the accident.
• The Department of Transportation would study the location and look to improve safety at that location. Study will be started within seven days from receipt of the report.
• The study result would be forwarded to Community Board and Elected Officials from the accident area within 5 days form completion.

While some of the details of the legislation will need to be improved before these rules can be implemented by city agencies, it is critical that these improvements move forward. Currently, pedestrian injury and fatality data is handled as if it were some sort of state secret and the way that the NYPD handles pedestrian injury and fatality investigations is a downright embarrassment to New York City.

Likewise, it is incredibly difficult to get the NYPD to cough up information about specific pedestrian crashes, even if you are the family members of a crash victim. Unlike crime statistics, which are openly published on every police precinct web site monthly, car crash data is nowhere to be found.

Advocacy organizations and civic groups have no way to know what the most dangerous intersections are in New York City neighborhoods, which means we often don't really know where to focus pedestrian safety resources. This is particularly troublesome since we know that somewhere around 50 percent of all crashes involving fatalities or serious injuries to pedestrians occur at ten percent of the city's intersections. It is long past time for the city to collect this data properly and then put it out there so that communities and city agencies can make rational policy and improvements where they are needed. 

There will be a rally on the steps of City Hall at 12:45pm today, just ahead of the Council hearing. Christine Berthet of CHEKPEDS is urging Livable Streets advocates to show up. She writes:

Only two weeks ago we held a memorial for Kumo, an eight year old who was hit by a speeding car. It was not an "accident." It is part of a deadly pattern. This bill is a crucial step in our fight to bring focus and urgency to the prevention of pedestrian casualties. Your presence and support are very important.

Spurred by the death of third-grader Prince Harris, Jr. (pictured), the fourth pedestrian to die this year along a notorious stretch of Ninth Avenue, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) is again urging the city to convene an interagency panel "to address this critical health issue."

On Friday, 8-year-old Harris was on his way to a park with his father and siblings when he reportedly "darted on W. 17th St." and was hit by a Toyota Scion, driven by an unidentified 44-year-old man. Harris's father said the Toyota and a taxi "were speeding down the block to make the light." The driver stayed at the scene and was not issued a ticket.

Today CHEKPEDS issued an e-mail bulletin offering condolences to the Harris family, and imploring the city to turn its attention to the pedestrian casualty epidemic.

The "new DOT" is moving fast and all problems cannot be tackled in one day. Priorities must be set, and in our book none is more important than pedestrian safety. 11,000 injuries and 163 deaths annually would qualify as a national disaster if they were all happening in one day. But they keep happening year after year.

In March, CHEKPEDS worked with Community Board 4 to draft a letter (PDF) to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer asking them to organize a citywide task force "bringing the various players to the table to address street and signal engineering, agencies jurisdiction, enforcement and traffic safety laws, reporting traffic problems and police procedures in accidents." But it hasn't happened.

Also over the weekend, a speeding taxicab jumped a curb and struck three members of the same family, killing 60-year-old TV helicopter pilot Paul Smith; no criminal charges have thus far been reported. On Staten Island, a 4-year-old is "fighting for her life" after being hit by a car yesterday while trying to cross the street with a group of other children; the unidentified driver was not ticketed. And yesterday morning in Coney Island, the driver of a charter bus making a U-turn hit an 60-year-old woman, knocking her down and running over her abdomen; the driver was not charged.

This weekend's carnage comes after last week's angry memorials to Hope Miller and Julia Thomson, who were run down five days apart at the end of September.

Photo of Prince Harris via New York Daily News

In order to foster ideas on how to reclaim 9th Avenue from Lincoln Tunnel traffic, the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) sponsored a six month community input process designed by Project for Public Spaces. The process began with a design workshop in January, and has evolved into an impressive final report (PDF). Some highlights from the report:

When asked to describe the issues facing Clinton/Hell's Kitchen, local residents and business owners identified safety, traffic congestion, and lawlessness as their top challenges. These problems hamper the access of many user groups and diminish the identity of 9th Avenue. Unchecked traffic and congestion are the root of each problem identified.

Resident survey questions asked users to indicate their primary means of mobility. Despite the fact that 25% of Community District 4 residents own a car, survey responses show that very few residents use private automobiles as their primary mode of transportation. 

Short-term improvements can be accomplished with little cost and within one year or less. Immediate action needs to be taken to improve public safety and reduce traffic congestion. Each short-term action should be treated as an learning opportunity that will inform future streetscape designs, public policies and the allocation of the public right of way.

Community Board 4 will hold a vote tonight on adopting report findings as "the official community vision." If that happens, the report will be incorporated as community input in the federally funded engineering study of entrances to the Lincoln Tunnel. The meeting is at Roosevelt Hospital, 10th Ave. and 58th St., at 6:30 p.m.

The Ninth Avenue Renaissance project continues to evolve into the most thorough and impressive community-driven Livable Streets effort currently underway in New York City (the Gansevoort Project runs a close second). Following up on a design workshop facilitated by Project for Public Spaces in January, Ninth Avenue Renaissance has launched a survey that allows you to choose and comment on three different redesign options for the avenue.

Click here to take the survey.

For example, the option below proposes reconfiguring the avenue to three lanes for travel and one for parking. It widens the sidewalks and installs dedicated bus and bike lanes and adds a number of pedestrian-friendly amenities:

Then there is this neighborhood-friendly vision for Hells Kitchen's side streets -- mid-block neckdowns and pedestrian crossings, little bump-outs for cafe tables, benches or bike parking, raised crosswalks, basically all of the great street design stuff that you see in European cities these days:

The Ninth Avenue Renaissance project was initiated by the Clinton Hell's Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety, a group of neighborhood stakeholders who want to reclaim Hell's Kitchen from "hellish" Lincoln Tunnel traffic. The goal of the project is to develop a shared vision of street design and traffic calming measures aimed at turning Ninth Avenue into a vibrant community Main Street.

You've got to think that this could be an ideal showcase for Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 vision. One thousand days is enough time to do something like this and it is entirely within city government's power to make it happen -- no begging or bribing up in Albany necessary. It strikes me that this sort of Livable Streets project could be a direct and tangible way to show New Yorkers how the PlaNYC process is making city life better right now.

Frankly, the redesign can't happen soon enough. Yet another elderly pedestrian was mowed down and killed crossing 23rd Street at Ninth Avenue on Friday afternoon -- the third such victim in three months.

Dear Neighbors

Seventy-five percent of our community members are concerned for their safety because of traffic, while only 6 percent are concerned about crime!

Just two weeks ago, another pedestrian was killed by a truck trurning from Ninth Avenue onto 16th Street. On Friday morning a 55 year old lady with a walker was killed by a bus turning west from Ninth Avenue on 45th Street and last night a young woman was critically injured by a truck turning into the Lincoln Tunnel lanes from 37th street at Ninth Avenue.

In all cases the pedestrians had the light, and the drivers walked away with summons.

We must obtain more enforcement at intersections, officers who care more about pedestrian safety than flow of cars and who are qualified to issue summons.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn and the Chair of the Public Safety committee are hosting town hall meetings to give community members the opportunity to voice concerns about and suggest improvements to current police operations in their neighborhoods.

Tuesday, February 27
Mc Burney YMCA
125 West 14th Street, btwn 6th - 7th Ave.
6:00pm-8:00pm

We must also change the laws so that the life of a pedestrian is worth more than a summons! Join the hundreds who will gather at City Hall to rally for Pedestrian Safety.

Citywide Rally
Sunday March 4 at 3 pm
City Hall

Please join us. These are critical times and we must speak up for our safety.

Best

Christine Berthet ,
Co founder
Chekpeds