Streetsblog New York City

Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer is no stranger to bicycling. Now he's joined Citi Bike. Will his colleagues join him? Photo: Transportation Alternatives

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced bike-share’s Memorial Day launch date at last week’s budget hearing, but Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer had some news of his own: He had joined thousands of New Yorkers in becoming a Citi Bike member.

“I want to say proudly I am one of the 8,000 people who have signed up for bike-share,” Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer said, joining Brooklyn Council Members Steve Levin and Brad Lander in becoming a bike-share member. Like Lander, Van Bramer’s district isn’t even located in Citi Bike’s initial service area. “We really want bike-share in western Queens,” Van Bramer said.

In the week since Van Bramer’s announcement, the program’s membership rolls have grown from 8,000 to more than 10,000. Are any other council members awaiting key fobs in the mail?

Streetsblog has inquired with other council members in the service area to see if they are Citi Bike members or plan to join. Letitia James told Streetsblog via e-mail that she plans on becoming a member.

We’re waiting on word from Gale Brewer, Margaret Chin, Dan Garodnick, Jessica Lappin, Rosie Mendez, Christine Quinn, and Albert Vann. We’ll let you know if we hear any updates.

Update: Council Member Chin’s office said that while she is “very supportive of bike-share,” she will not be joining because does not know how to ride a bike, although she plans to learn how to ride in the future.

Update 2: Council Member Garodnick is not a Citi Bike member and does not know if he will join in the future, according to a spokesperson.

Update 3: A spokesperson for Council Member Lappin said that she plans on joining bike-share.

It barely made news and we didn’t hear a peep about it from any elected, but at least three children were seriously injured by drivers in Brooklyn and the Bronx late last week.

At least three kids were put in the hospital by drivers last week. No press conferences were held. Photo: Post

On the morning of Thursday, May 2, a 12-year-old boy was hit by a motorist at Bath Avenue and 24th Street, near Bath Playground and Joseph B. Cavallaro Junior High School. According to the Post, the child suffered head trauma, and was “expected to survive.”

At around the same time, another 12-year-old boy was hit by a school bus driver while riding his bike on 12th Avenue at 40th Street in Borough Park. From the Post:

Witnesses said he was struck by the rear tire while the bus was making a wide turn.

She Rosenbaum, 38, said the child stopped in his store to buy a soda before the accident, and then got on the bicycle.

“I saw the kid’s leg under the bus. I called the Hatzollah ambulance,” said She Rosenabum, 38. “He was screaming and yelling in pain.”

Rosenbaum said the child’s mother came to see him, and was distraught. “She was definitely crying ‘what happened? What’s going to be? I want you to live’,” he said. “He comes here every morning.”

On Saturday, a 7-year-old boy was struck by a driver on East Gun Hill Road at Decatur Avenue in the Bronx. News 12 reported that the child exited a double-parked van before he was hit. He was hospitalized in stable condition.

Traffic crashes have for some time been the leading cause of injury-related death for children in New York City. According to the latest report on child injury deaths from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [PDF], 144 kids aged one through 12 were killed in crashes from 2001 to 2010. Of those victims, 93 — or 65 percent — were pedestrians.

Since January 2012, no fewer than 11 kids aged 14 and under have been killed by city motorists, according to crash data compiled by Streetsblog.

Read more…

From what we’ve seen, the scrum at yesterday’s City Council parking presser did a commendable job calling out Christine Quinn, James Vacca, and David Greenfield for their latest ploy to curry favor with motorists.

Basically, Quinn and company want muni-meters programmed to turn off when they run out of paper and during free parking hours, but when asked to quantify the extent of the problem, all they could offer was anecdotes and hearsay.

This is what passes for City Council transportation policy these days: Take a niggling motorist annoyance and play it up as a matter of major, if not historic, importance. But maybe the city press corps has seen this show one too many times. Here’s Dana Rubinstein at CapNY:

These are only the latest in a series of bills the speaker has championed that would lessen the parking meter burden on drivers.

Whether that burden is actually a very large one, or merely one that is extremely irritating to a vocal constituency of outer-borough drivers whose votes Quinn believes will be important in this year’s mayoral election, seems to be an open question.

Ticking off the list of parking bills passed by the council in recent years, many of which had the effect of making it easier for drivers to skirt the law, the NYT’s Matt Flegenheimer wrote: “In a fraught election season, there are quite likely few stances as uncontroversial as a populist knock against the city’s parking rules.”

This latest bill is the brainchild of David Greenfield. Asked about his obsession with parking legislation, Greenfield said: “I get people who criticize me on Twitter and say, ‘Why are you all about the cars?’ Because I drive a car. And my constituents drive cars.”

Read more…

Last week, the City Council passed a bill that should revolutionize the way New Yorkers access NYPD crime data. For the first time, crime stats will be mapped, and will be searchable by precinct, area code, and street address. The data will be filed with the city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which will update the map each month.

NYPD transportation chief James Tuller thinks the public lacks the capacity to comprehend traffic crash data.

“The bill will enable elected officials, community organizations, and the general public to localize current high crime areas and use resources more strategically and efficiently,” said sponsor Fernando Cabrera, council member from the Bronx.

The interactive crime map will offer the same tools that City Council members and street safety advocates were aiming for with the Saving Lives Through Better Information Act. But two years after that bill passed the council, NYPD is still releasing traffic crash data as a series of PDF files. Meanwhile, council members seem to have stopped pushing the department to publish crash data in a format that would readily enable advocates and the public to target dangerous locations for improved engineering and enforcement.

Crime data maps are nothing new. As the New York World points out, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities have maps like the one ordered by the council. But NYPD is notoriously secretive, and guards traffic crash data even more closely than other violent crime data. While Cabrera says NYPD took no official position on the mapping bill, which was prompted by difficulties encountered by the Norwood News in obtaining Bronx precinct stats, the department fought the council tooth and nail to keep traffic crash data under wraps.

“This information is only valuable to those with the training, knowledge and experience to understand its context and interpret it correctly,” said NYPD Chief of Transportation James Tuller at a council hearing in 2010. “That is the role of the police commander.”

Though the council forced NYPD to release crash data, the department did its best to circumvent the law by publishing it in a way that renders it useless to all but the most tenacious advocates and citizens. Six months from now, when the crime data map is expected to go live, anyone with Internet access will be able to get an instant picture of where assaults and burglaries are happening in their neighborhood — by month, year, and year-to-date. That same resident would have to devote hours to get an in-depth look at where people were injured and killed by motorists on the streets where they walk or bike every day.

Read more…

While current and former City Council transportation chairs James Vacca and John Liu reacted to bike-share with paranoia and fear, at least one council member was breaking out the credit card: Brooklyn’s Brad Lander posted this tweet after signing up for a Citi Bike subscription yesterday.

Any of Lander’s colleagues have a lower membership number than he does? If not, who’s next?

It’s getting to be a task keeping up with pending City Council bills that deal with electric-assisted bikes. Legislation proposed by Council Members Jessica Lappin and Dan Garodnick would hike fines for riding an e-bike, and two new bills would reportedly shift fines away from delivery workers to their employers and grant enforcement power to DOT and Parks Department personnel, who, if the bill passes, would have the authority to confiscate bikes. Meanwhile, Council Member Brad Lander wants to establish an e-bike task force — a possible sign that lawmakers are looking to streamline the council’s seemingly haphazard e-bike offensive.

Under New York code, this man is an outlaw. Photo: NYT

One question that tends to come up when an e-bike bill surfaces, or resurfaces, is why they’re illegal in the first place. Restaurant workers do long shifts, in all weather and terrain conditions, for very little money. Not all of them are young. Why would the City Council expend so much effort to take away a tool that makes their jobs easier?

We called up Transportation Alternatives’ Juan Martinez for the lowdown on e-bikes in New York. About 10 years ago, Martinez says, the federal government passed a law that classified certain electric bikes as bicycles, exempting them from regulations that apply to street-legal motorcycles. But Albany never updated state code to reflect the change. Since electric bikes don’t come from the factory with vehicle identification numbers — because VIN plates aren’t required by federal regulations — they can’t be registered with the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Most e-bikes used by restaurant workers weigh about the same as conventional bikes and have a top speed of around 20 mph. Yet in the eyes of the law, they are unlicensed motorcycles driven by unlicensed operators.

Martinez says the Assembly routinely passes out a bill that would bring state code in line with federal law, but the Senate has yet to pass a companion bill — not because there is opposition, but mainly because, well, it’s Albany.

And why doesn’t the City Council simply adopt a home rule message urging state lawmakers to finally make e-bikes legal to ride, like conventional bicycles? “That’s a rhetorical question,” says Martinez.

Read more…

Via Dana Rubinstein at Capital New York, the City Council Progressive Caucus has come out with a 13-point platform heading into the 2013 election season [PDF], and it includes some good planks on transit and street safety policy. All 51 council seats are up for a vote this year, with most of the important action coming on primary day, September 10.

The Progressive Caucus formed in 2010, shortly after the last citywide election. It currently has 10 members and is looking to gain strength: The caucus has so far endorsed seven candidates seeking election to the City Council for the first time, a number that will probably grow in the next few months. Turnover in the City Council figures to be higher than after the last election, since 20 council members are term-limited.

Progressive Caucus candidates will be running on a platform that calls for prioritizing buses, biking, and pedestrian safety on city streets, as well as road pricing reform that resembles Gridlock Sam Schwartz’s “Fair Plan.” While the council can’t enact road pricing (that’s up to Albany) or directly control how the city allocates street space (that’s the mayor), we’ve seen several Progressive Caucus members use their influence to fight for surface transit improvements, protected bike lanes, and pedestrian plazas over the last few years. Progressive Caucus members were also instrumental in pushing the NYPD to improve its crash investigation protocol.

This is part of the plank addressing climate change:

Invest in significant public transportation improvements that facilitate sustainable growth, preserve affordability, and improve access for underserved communities and people with disabilities.

• Create NYC’s next high-capacity public transit option through a city-wide network of bus rapid transit lines that connect the boroughs.
• Build an inclusive consensus for implementing fairer toll pricing that reduces car trips and environmental impacts on neighborhoods, makes driving between the outer boroughs less burdensome, and shores up funding for the city’s transit system.
• Support “livable streets” policies city-wide that proactively engage communities in the planning process to bring well-planned bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and traffic calming measures to all neighborhoods.

And this comes under the section on public safety and police accountability:

Improve the NYPD’s inadequate traffic safety enforcement and crash investigation, and expand neighborhood “slow zones” to save the lives of New Yorkers lost to dangerous driving.

This afternoon, the City Council passed a resolution asking Albany to move forward with legislation allowing New York City to install a speed camera demonstration program.

The driver who killed the Glauber family in Williamsburg was traveling at nearly 70 mph -- more than double the speed limit. Photo: Shimon Gifter via AP

Speed cameras are supported by the City Council, Mayor Bloomberg, NYC DOT, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and a majority of the city’s Assembly delegation.

The program is opposed by State Senator Marty Golden and the Police Benevolent Association, who say that speed cameras are not a substitute for officers with radar guns. Other elected officials have pointed out that cameras and officers are not mutually exclusive.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has included speed cameras in the Assembly budget. The program could be enacted through budget legislation, if it survives ongoing negotiations with Governor Cuomo and Senate leadership.

If not, separate legislation enabling the speed camera program must pass the Assembly and Senate before going to Cuomo.

More than 125 jurisdictions across the country use speed cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. New York City’s program would be limited to no more than 20 cameras in operation at any given time, with a cap of 40 cameras deployed citywide. Fines would not exceed $50 for driving 10-30 mph over the speed limit, and not more than $100 for speeding more than 30 mph over the limit.

Read more…

The City Council transportation committee has overwhelmingly passed a resolution in support of NYC’s first-ever speed camera program.

The vote was 10-1, with Vincent Ignizio voting against. Darlene Mealy and Eric Ulrich were absent.

Here’s the roll call:

James Vacca: Y
Gale Brewer: Y
Dan Garodnick: Y
David Greenfield: Y
Vincent Ignizio: N
Peter Koo: Y
Oliver Koppell: Y
Jessica Lappin: Y
Darlene Mealy: Absent
Ydanis Rodriguez: Y
Debi Rose: Y
Eric Ulrich: Absent
Jimmy Van Bramer: Y

The full council is expected to vote on the reso tomorrow. Speed cameras have the support of Council Speaker Christine Quinn. It seems as if State Senator Marty Golden is the one remaining major obstacle to this street safety measure.

This afternoon, the City Council’s transportation committee held a hearing on resolutions asking Albany to move forward on two street safety initiatives: legislation allowing New York City to start a speed camera demonstration program, and a bill to close a loophole in the state’s careless driving law. Votes on the resolutions are expected at the full City Council meeting on Wednesday.

Eric Ulrich: Speeding drivers "pose no threat to anybody else on the road." Photo: City Council

Most of the hearing today was consumed by heated rhetoric about speed cameras.

Two camps became instantly clear. On one side are council members who support automated enforcement, led by Jimmy Van Bramer of Queens and committee chair James Vacca of the Bronx, who had the backing of advocates including Transportation Alternatives and Tri-State Transportation Campaign. On the other side sat the considerably noisier opposition, led by council members Dan Halloran and Eric Ulrich, both of Queens, backed by AAA New York and related lobbyists.

Ulrich, in particular, used the hearing to dismiss the dangers of speeding, saying that people who drive 10 to 15 mph over the limit (that would be up to 45 mph on local NYC streets) “pose no threat to anybody else on the road.” In fact, the risk of killing a pedestrian skyrockets as vehicle speeds escalate over 20 mph, and speeding was a factor in 81 fatal crashes on NYC streets last year.

After stating that speeding is no big deal, Ulrich attacked the safety record of speed cams. “These are not proven to improve safety. The statistics are bogus. The numbers are fudged,” he claimed. Then Ulrich joined AAA in casting doubts on the city’s implementation of automated enforcement. ”I don’t believe them, and I don’t trust them,” he said of NYC DOT.

Ulrich and Halloran, like the police union and State Senator Marty Golden, say that the city should hire more officers for traffic enforcement instead of pursuing an automated enforcement program, because cameras cannot determine if a driver is drunk or has a suspended license.

Vacca and Van Bramer pushed back. “I am supporting this legislation,” Vacca said, “because these cameras can be another weapon in our arsenal.”

“It is not an either-or approach,” Van Bramer said. “It’s been done successfully in over 100 large cities across the country. There’s no reason to believe it can’t be done on the streets of New York City.”

Read more…