Streetsblog New York City

Transportation Alternatives today delivered over 2,500 citizen letters to Ray Kelly demanding that NYPD crack down on dangerous driving, and announced a comprehensive probe into how the department handles traffic crash investigations.

Flanked by dozens of supporters and victims of traffic violence at 1 Police Plaza, TA executive director Paul Steely White excoriated NYPD for what he called a “cavalier attitude” toward lawless driving. While hundreds are killed and thousands are injured by reckless drivers in the city every year, enforcement of traffic laws is relatively rare, and drivers who cause suffering and death are routinely excused by police and prosecutors without as much as a summons.

“It’s the NYPD’s job to keep dangerous driving in check by holding reckless drivers accountable,” said White, “but they are simply not taking that job seriously.”

Calling for a zero tolerance approach to a “public safety crisis,” TA will have attorneys review NYPD reports on recent crashes that resulted in serious injury or death. Evaluations will focus on whether police followed proper post-crash procedure and if victims were “guaranteed a full and fair investigation.”

Erika Lefevre, whose son Mathieu was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in East Williamsburg in October, said that her family is still waiting for definitive information about the crash. Initially, police told reporters that Mathieu ran a red light at Morgan Avenue and Meserole Street and was struck by the driver of a flatbed truck making a right-hand turn. The NYPD report, however, indicates that Mathieu was hit from behind, and makes no mention of either Mathieu or the driver running a light.

The report identifies the driver who struck Lefevre as Leonardo Degianni of College Point. Degianni, 48, was driving a truck registered to Imperium Construction of Ridgewood. After hitting and dragging Lefevre, Degianni left the scene. Police found the truck a short distance from the crash site but did not locate Degianni for days. He was not charged.

Erika Lefevre said police have video of the crash along with other evidence, none of which her family has been allowed to see.

Read more…

"All we know is what we have read in the papers," said Erika Lefevre about the hit-and-run collision that killed her son Mathieu. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

The family of Mathieu Lefevre, the 30-year-old artist killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in East Williamsburg last week, was joined by dozens of supporters outside 1 Police Plaza today to demand that NYPD rein in deadly driving and end its policy of silence when it comes to fatal traffic crashes.

Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, began the rally by reading from a list of cyclists, pedestrians and drivers killed this year at the hands of motorists who faced no charges of any kind. While drivers continue “killing with impunity on a daily basis,” said White, NYPD has “consistently failed” to take action to stop the violence.

In 2010, White said, 269 people died in New York City traffic. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of preventable death for the city’s children, and from 2000 to 2009 more New Yorkers were killed by cars than guns. Addressing his remarks to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, White said: “You are failing to enforce a basic standard of due care.”

The devastation wrought by the city’s traffic fatality epidemic is made worse by NYPD’s practice of withholding crash information, even from family members of victims. Lefevre’s parents traveled from western Canada immediately upon hearing of their son’s death. Since then, said his mother Erika, they have learned little about the crash.

“All we know is what we have read in the papers,” said Lefevre. Last Friday, the Lefevres waited all day at NYPD headquarters, but were told nothing. No one was available to speak with them over weekend, said Lefevre, and since Monday they have been passed from desk to desk. NYPD revealed to the family that the truck that hit Mathieu, identifiable from visible damage, was found two blocks from the crash site, and that the driver was located through the company that owns the truck. The Lefevres were not given the name of the company or the driver. As for the crash itself, the only details they have been made privy to are time and location. Lefevre said the family was told today that “charges were dropped” against the driver, though she isn’t sure charges were filed in the first place.

Read more…

While recent improvements have made streets safer, from '95 to '09 more pedestrians were struck in Midtown than in any other district. Image: TA

On Monday Transportation Alternatives released a report tallying pedestrian-involved crashes in each of the city’s community board districts, based on numbers from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, between 1995 and 2009. Not surprisingly, the data reveal that the most collisions occurred in Midtown Manhattan, where high-density auto and foot traffic led to 8,604 crashes in District 5 alone.

The TA study, along with the relaunch of CrashStat and the (however convoluted) release of crash data from NYPD, have raised the profile of the city’s traffic violence epidemic. This is undoubtedly a positive development, and one that will hopefully continue to generate headlines as stats become more accessible. But as noted by Streetsblog readers, raw data accumulated over such an extended period of time can be misleading, and could potentially be used to undercut future efforts to improve safety.

So we ask you: How would you put to use the influx of city- and state-generated crash data? What would your criteria be for employing data to guide tangible street safety measures?

Share your ideas, from the pragmatic to the fantastical, in the comments.

Graph: Transportation Alternatives, based on data from New York State DMV

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the adoption of Hayley and Diego’s Law, which established the charge of “careless driving” in New York State and gave police and prosecutors a new tool to hold motorists who injure pedestrians and cyclists accountable. Unfortunately, says Transportation Alternatives, over the past 12 months the law has gone largely unenforced by NYPD.

Intended to demarcate a middle ground between moving violations and more serious criminal charges, Hayley and Diego’s law prescribes that drivers who caused injury “while failing to exercise due care” be required to take a drivers education course and be subject to fines of up to $750, jail time of up to 15 days, and a license suspension of up to six months. But a law is only as effective as those who enforce it, and TA has found that applications of VTL 1146, the statute that includes Hayley and Diego’s Law as well as Elle’s Law, are as rare as ever.

Diego Martinez and Hayley Ng were killed in January 2009 when an idling, unattended van jumped a curb in Chinatown. The driver was not charged.

T.A. filed a Freedom Of Information request in May with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles and found that the number of applications of VTL 1146 has remained more or less steady for the last few years. T.A. estimates that there will be approximately 77 citations of the statute in 2011 based on a total of 32 citations issued as of June this year, while 97 tickets were issued under 1146 in 2010, 87 in 2009, and 92 in 2008.  These statistics show that a year after these new penalties meant to protect New Yorkers went in effect, they are barely being applied.

“Our family worked hard for these laws to deter motorists from dangerous and lethal behavior,” said Wendy Cheung, Hayley Ng’s aunt. “Nothing can undo the crash that took Hayley away from us, but we can prevent tragedies like this from happening to other families. And we can hold someone who breaks the law and takes a life responsible for their actions. We hope the police will use all the tools at their disposal to bring justice to our streets and protect others from the pain of losing a loved one to traffic violence.”

It should be noted that, in the city, VTL 1146 is enforced by NYPD and the Department of Motor Vehicles and, while district attorneys may advise police to apply it in certain cases, it does not fall under DA purview except for repeat offenders.

Streetsblog has a message in with NYPD regarding TA’s findings.

In Harlem, 125th Street, 135th Street and Broadway are particularly dangerous for children and teenagers. Image: CrashStat

Transportation Alternatives launched an updated version of its CrashStat website today, providing a wealth of new data about street safety in New York City and where pedestrians and cyclists are most at risk. The upgrade adds four years of geo-coded data about traffic injuries and fatalities, a smoother interface, and a wealth of interactive features.

More than 13,000 pedestrians and cyclists are injured or killed by motor vehicles in the city every year, according to state DOT data, and CrashStat puts information about those crashes at New Yorkers’ fingertips. If you want to know which streets in your neighborhood are most in need of safety fixes, CrashStat lets you to locate the most dangerous intersections and corridors. Before this update, the most recent data on file in CrashStat was from 2005; the new version includes information up to and including 2009.

The new version also allows users to see who is affected by unsafe streets and what’s causing pedestrian and cyclist injuries. You can filter the crash information to see where children or seniors are particularly vulnerable, for instance, or to highlight the crashes caused by excessive motor vehicle speeds or distracted driving. Users can look at safety stats by legislative district, police precinct or neighborhood, helping activists marshal data specific to their area.

“By revealing where and why motor vehicle crashes occur, CrashStat gives all New Yorkers the information they need to demand better enforcement of our traffic laws,” said TA director Paul Steely White in an announcement about the upgrades. “This is critical to changing behavior on our streets.”

According to the new CrashStat data, the most dangerous intersection for pedestrians in the city is the corner of Park Avenue and 33rd Street, where 163 crashes injured pedestrians from 1995 through 2009. However, safety improvements at that intersection put into place in 2008 reduced total injuries at that intersection by 74 percent.

Crash data is also supposed to be provided monthly by the NYPD under a law passed by the City Council last winter. City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s “Saving Lives Through Better Information” bill required the police to provide regularly updated crash data searchable by intersection. The NYPD only put its first month’s worth of crash data online last night in response to questioning by the New York Daily News.

Transportation Alternatives and the New York Chapter of the American Association of Family Physicians today released a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, signed by 140 medical professionals from a broad spectrum of specialties, praising the city’s bike and pedestrian infrastructure as essential to the health of New Yorkers. It’s a solid counterweight to the hysteria surrounding the recent Hunter College bike-ped crash study:

Considering that streets and sidewalks make up 80 percent of New York City’s public space, the pedestrian plazas, car-free spaces, neighborhood bike networks and world-class bicycle lanes you have created are vital to the public health of our city. In piloting Safe Routes to School and Safe Streets for Seniors programs, reducing car hours in our largest parks and producing events like neighborhood play streets and Summer Streets, you are pioneering the redistribution of our public space for health’s sake.

While one can imagine a tsunami of ink engulfing the city if over a hundred doctors and other providers had joined up to condemn bike lanes and public plazas, with media types refusing to print a positive word about measures that are making streets safer, it will be quite a feat if this ringing endorsement pierces the news cycle.

Read the text of the letter after the jump; see the original with signatures here.

Read more…

The gender gap in American cycling is a thorny and persistent issue, and New York City performs relatively poorly on the measure. The percentage of female bike commuters has wavered between 20 and 25 percent of the total over the last two decades, but with a marked rise in the most recent years.

Transportation Alternatives counted cyclists at three locations: one with no bike lane, one with a painted bike lane, and one with a protected bike lane. More cyclists used the safer lanes, which also had a narrower gender gap. The count at Sixth Avenue was taken from 8 - 10 a.m. and the counts on Seventh and Second Avenues were taken from 5 - 7 p.m.

One of the best ways to narrow that gap, many experts agree, is to create space to bike separated from motor vehicle traffic. New bike counts from Transportation Alternatives provide a bit more support for that theory in the New York City context.

T.A. tracked the number and gender of cyclists at three Manhattan locations over two-hour spans. On Seventh Avenue at Charles Street, cyclists had to ride in mixed traffic; on Sixth Avenue at 26th Street, cyclists could ride in a painted bike lane; and on Second Avenue at 9th Street, cyclists enjoyed a protected lane separated from traffic by parked cars.

As the roads offered more separation for bikes, T.A. counted dramatically more cyclists using them. The effect was particularly dramatic for women: Only 15 percent of the cyclists on Seventh were women, compared to 32 percent on Second.

Those aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons — the share of female cyclists might vary based on the neighborhood in addition to the street design. More telling, perhaps, is a comparison of T.A.’s counts on Second Avenue to older data from the Department of City Planning.

DCP tracked the gender gap of cyclists on Second Avenue two blocks further south, at 7th Street, from 2000 to 2008. During those years, Second Avenue had a buffered bike lane, but not the physically separated one implemented by NYC DOT in 2010. Over the DCP study period, there were an average of 3.74 men riding the lane for every woman. In 2008, the ratio was 3.26:1.

T.A.’s count, in contrast, showed 2.17 men riding the protected Second Avenue lane for every woman, just three years later. That’s a fast, though obviously incomplete, closure of the gender gap, and it points the way forward.

Photo: Sabrina Porter

The Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives have chosen the winners for their best and worst of New York City Transit photo contest. The top “Good Transit Scene” was “Break of Day ” by Sabrina Porter, while John Wehmeyer took the prize for best “Bad Transit Scene” with “”Reassuring? Not so much!”

Photo: John Wehmeyer

Porter and Wehmeyer will each receive a 30-day MetroCard. Check out honorable mentions here.

“These photos show our transit system at its best — and its worst,” said TA Executive Director Paul Steely White. “It’s time we had more of the former and less of the latter. The winning photos shine a spotlight on the real-world consequences of transit funding cuts and remind us what we stand to lose if nothing is done.”

Not to diminish Wehmeyer’s victory, but White reminds us of another transit tableau that is sure to go down in history as one of the most repulsive of all time:

Read more…

Traffic crash data, long a closely guarded secret of the NYPD, is now slowly being released online.

Pursuant to the Saving Lives Through Better Information Act, which took effect Wednesday, the department will begin posting monthly updates on summonses and crashes, differentiated by mode of travel and contributing factors and broken down by precinct and borough. Eventually, crash data will also be mapped.

The first data dump is limited to summonses, issued in May and in the year to date. At first look it appears that NYPD is concentrating on cell phones and seat belts — with 81,639 and roughly 82,000 summonses, respectively, handed out this year. Meanwhile, only 36,660 drivers have been ticketed for speeding citywide as of the end of May, and the vast majority of them were cited by the Transportation Bureau, which includes NYPD Highway Patrol. When you drill down to the neighborhood-level data on local streets, speeding enforcement is almost non-existent.

In Manhattan’s 34th Precinct, where I live, no speeding tickets were issued in May. The number of drivers cited for speeding so far in my precinct in 2011? Seven, or about as many as can be observed whipping down a neighborhood block every minute or two on any given day.

Officers with the 94th Precinct joined TA's bicycle ambassadors to hand out flyers at a dangerous intersection in Williamsburg. Photo: Transportation Alternatives

The value of this information can hardly be overstated, and we wouldn’t have it without Transportation Alternatives and Jessica Lappin, who shepherded this bill through City Council. There’s a reason advocates have for years pushed to make crash data available to the public. Says TA: “Formerly, traffic’s chaos was anecdotal; vocal citizens storytelling too many crashes and nary a summons in response. Now the NYPD is required to publish exactly what they do to curb dangerous traffic. New York City is a safer place than it was 20 years ago because of NYPD crime data: analyzed, transparent, published. Now, with traffic data published too, TA expects equivalent reduction in traffic’s danger.”

Another positive development is the collaboration between TA and NYPD to use traffic data to promote safety. Officers from the 94th Precinct in Brooklyn joined TA Wednesday in handing out flyers to pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers at North 6th Street and Kent Avenue, an intersection revealed by traffic stats to be particularly dangerous. TA will also be coordinating with neighborhood advocates to discuss data at precinct community council meetings this summer.

The transit photo contest held by the Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives has moved into the final round. Five finalists have been selected for the photo that most captures New York City’s transit system at its best, and five have been chosen to represent the system at its worst. You can vote for your favorite here.

The winning photographers will each receive a free monthly MetroCard, while the winning photographs will be used in an ad campaign making the case for better transit, so choose carefully.

Not to influence your vote or anything, but I voted for the two photographs above. In the “best of transit” category, I thought this shot of light streaming onto a subway was just beautifully composed, though the image of three boys showing off for the camera best represents my favorite moments on the train. In the “worst of,” I had to vote for the picture of sludge piled up at the Canal Street station; that station is right next to Streetsblog HQ, so that pick was personal. Let us know in comments which you voted for.

Be sure to check out the full photo galleries as well. Some of the best photos in each category didn’t make it into the final round at all, and they’re well worth a look.