Streetsblog New York City

Dana Rubinstein reports that City Council speaker and current mayoral front-runner Christine Quinn is bearish on congestion pricing’s political prospects:

“I don’t anticipate congestion pricing coming back around,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told an audience at New York Law School today, when asked about its near-term future. “It didn’t do well and I don’t expect that proposal to come back around in that way.”

Is this disappointing? Sure, it would be great news for New York City if a mayoral candidate ran in support of the single most transformative traffic and transit policy out there. And Quinn, who helped shepherd congestion pricing through the City Council in 2007 and 2008, is one of two contenders with a voting record in support of it. (The other is John Liu, who voted for congestion pricing when he was a City Council member representing Flushing, then turned around and opposed bridge tolls in 2009, when he had a citywide campaign to worry about. Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, voted against congestion pricing but is on the record supporting East River bridge tolls pegged to the subway fare.)

But is this significant? Well, I don’t think it means a whole lot.

Noted congestion pricing champion Michael Bloomberg, for instance, never campaigned on congestion pricing. He floated East River bridge tolls in 2002, a month after getting elected for the first time, but stopped pressing for them after then-governor George Pataki ruled out the idea. Running for re-election in 2005, Bloomberg again didn’t make congestion pricing a campaign issue, but it turned out to be his single biggest policy initiative in 2007 and 2008. Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer backed the idea, and if he wasn’t such a weak-willed dirtbag, who knows, he might have steamrolled congestion pricing through Albany.

So mayoral candidates aren’t going to campaign on road pricing, even if they believe in it, and in the end, the person who has the most power to make it happen is the governor. If the NYC region is going to get a rationally priced road network and a well-funded transit system, it’s up to Andrew Cuomo to get things started — from the looks of it, preferably sometime after the mayoral election.

Just hours before her final State of the City address today, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn released a report on the challenges facing middle-class New Yorkers. But her vision has a conspicuous blind spot: the transportation costs consuming more than one in ten dollars of the average NYC household budget.

Today, Christine Quinn talked about keeping New York affordable for the middle class without mentioning the cost of a MetroCard. Photo: David Shankbone

Quinn’s report talks a lot about housing policy, but if she is serious about making New York an affordable place, she can’t ignore the other half of the equation by failing to mention transit and the city’s role in ensuring that it remains affordable.

The average NYC household spends 12 percent of its income on transportation, according to the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index. That’s 5.5 percentage points lower than the regional average, due in large part to the city’s robust transit network.

But transit fares have gone up in four of the last five years, and the added costs hit New Yorkers who have no other options the hardest. And City Hall is still a powerful bully pulpit from which to tackle New York’s transit funding problems, even if the mayor doesn’t have direct control of the MTA.

Additionally, the mayoral candidates could land a one-two punch against household budget busters by linking housing and transportation policy. The Department of City Planning’s move to eliminate parking requirements for affordable housing developments, for instance, will help drive down the cost of some new housing. There’s an opportunity for the next mayor to extend these cost-saving measures to all apartments and houses.

Even if Quinn doesn’t have the stomach to talk parking policy in an election year, attention to bread-and-butter transit issues – like getting the buses to run on time — could go a long way with voters who put up with long commutes. So far, though, Quinn has stayed true to form and ignored the transportation concerns of transit-riding New Yorkers yet again.

When was the last time Chris Quinn or Bill de Blasio rode transit to work? Left photo: NYT/Redux. Right photo: NYT.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose entertaining quotes about Mike Bloomberg have been ricocheting around New York’s political circles today, could teach a thing or two to the candidates running for mayor here in NYC. Yesterday, “Boris from Islington” called in to a radio talk show with a recorded question for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg about Parliament’s profligate spending on cars for political leaders. It’s a question New Yorkers can appreciate.

“Get all those government ministers out of their posh limos and on to public transport like everybody else,” Johnson said. “How can we possibly expect government to vote for increases in infrastructure spending, which we need in this city in upgrading the Tube, which we all need, when they sit in their chauffer-driven limousines payed for by the taxpayers?”

Imagine, for a second, if any of New York’s crop of mayoral contenders stood up for transit riders like this. Instead, the NYC hopefuls are driving around the city, trying to convince New Yorkers, most of whom depend on transit to get around, that they feel their pain.

Although residents outside Manhattan struggle with long commutes on pokey buses, the candidates vying for votes in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have yet to mention Bus Rapid Transit on the campaign trail. At the same time, streets where you can walk or bike without fear of getting run over by a speeding driver have apparently become something to campaign against.

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The driver of a private dump truck accused of killing an elderly woman in Hell’s Kitchen Tuesday has been charged with leaving the scene.

Shu Ying Liu, 69, was crossing 41st Street at Ninth Avenue at around 10:00 a.m. yesterday when she was hit by Jack Montelbano, who was making a right turn from Ninth to 41st, according to reports. The Times reported that Montelbano, of Bayonne, was alerted to the collision by witnesses but continued driving. He was tracked down in New Jersey and brought back to the city by police, who questioned and arrested him.

Liu, who lived on West 54th St., was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.

If Montelbano were versed on New York traffic law, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. Minus the presence of intoxicants, deadly reckless driving is rarely prosecuted in New York, and assuming he possesses a valid license and was sober at the time of the crash, the odds that Montelbano would have been allowed on his way after a cursory NYPD investigation are close to 100 percent.

Even now, though indications are that Liu had a walk signal, at this point Montelbano reportedly faces no charges for killing her. (The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance was not ready to confirm charges at this writing.) If he pleads not guilty to leaving the scene, and goes to trial, there’s a chance he’ll walk away with nothing more than a bill for attorney fees.

This fatal crash occurred in the 10th Precinct. To voice your concerns about neighborhood traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Elisa Cokkinos, the commanding officer, go to the next precinct community council meeting. The 10th Precinct council meetings happen at 7 p.m. on the last Wednesday of the month at the precinct, 230 West 20th St. Call 212-741-8226 for information.

The City Council district where Shu Ying Liu was killed is represented by Speaker Christine Quinn, who has yet to take a position on NYPD crash investigation reforms. To encourage Quinn to take action to improve street safety in her district and citywide, contact her at 212-564-7757 or @ChrisCQuinn.

The bus driver who ran over and killed a woman in Canarsie last Friday broke no laws, according to NYPD.

Lorraine and Michael Ferguson. Photo via Daily News

Lorraine Ferguson was crossing at Avenue K and 105th Street at approximately 7:15 a.m. when the driver, operating a private bus carrying disabled adults, struck her while turning left. Michael Ferguson, the victim’s husband, witnessed the crash, and said the driver ran a stop sign before the collision.

Nonetheless, the Daily News reported on Friday that police have all but cleared the driver of responsibility:

He was not expected to be charged, police sources said. Contrary to Michael Ferguson’s assertion that the driver cruised through the stop sign, investigators found no immediate evidence the man had done anything wrong, the sources added.

No one disputes that the actions of the bus driver led to the death of Lorraine Ferguson. But in New York City, a lifeless body underneath a vehicle is not considered sufficient evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the motorist behind the wheel. That such a conclusion could be reached by police, and reported by the media without question, encapsulates the extreme dysfunction of our city and state traffic justice system.

As candidates for mayor and other citywide offices begin to shape their campaign platforms, no one is talking about the thousands of injuries and deaths that occur on city streets every year, or the fact that, in violation of state law, virtually none of them are investigated by Ray Kelly’s NYPD. This life and death issue continues to be ignored by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, two mayoral aspirants who are currently in a position to help make New Yorkers safer from reckless drivers like the one who killed Lorraine Ferguson.

Ignoring the 66 percent approval rating for bike lanes in the latest New York Times poll, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn dropped this whopper in an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer at a tourism industry event last Friday:

Christine Quinn. Photo: Wikimedia

“Bike lanes are clearly controversial,” Quinn said. “And one of the problems with bike lanes — and I’m generally a supporter of bike lanes — but one of the problems with bike lanes has been not the concept of them, which I support, but the way the Department of Transportation has implemented them without consultation with communities and community boards.”

Already Quinn is revising history the same way Bill Thompson did during the 2009 mayoral race, erasing the extensive public process NYC DOT has conducted for its street safety projects. Several miles of safer streets have been installed in Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, the West Village, and SoHo, so if anyone in the City Council knows that these projects go through the local community boards, it should be Quinn.

Here’s Streetsblog’s previous coverage of community board support for protected bike lanes in or near her district:

• Two community boards voted for the Eighth Avenue protected bike lane from Bank Street to 23rd Street
• Manhattan CB 4 voted for the Eighth Avenue bike lane extension to 34th Street
• Manhattan CB 4 also voted for the Ninth and Eighth Avenue extension to 59th Street
• Manhattan CB 2 voted for the Grand Street protected bike lane

The same public process preceded other major street redesigns all over the city, including the First and Second Avenue bike and bus improvements (no fewer than three Manhattan community boards voted on that one), the Columbus Avenue bike lane, and the Prospect Park West bike lane.

When pressed, Quinn admitted that the new bike lanes in her district are actually quite popular with the local community board. “The problem,” she concluded, is that no one contacted her office before the Ninth Avenue bike lane was installed in 2007. Remember, this was the first protected on-street bike lane in all of NYC, and after getting it in the ground, the city saw traffic injuries plummet 56 percent along that stretch of Ninth Avenue [PDF].

New York could really use mayoral contenders who state the facts about the safety effect of bike lanes, instead of making things up about public process.

Three pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes on consecutive days in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan this weekend.

When will Jessica Lappin and the City Council take action to stop the bloodshed on New York City streets?

At approximately 1:15 this morning, Andrew Schoonover, a 31-year-old from Florida, was struck by the driver of a city sanitation truck at the corner of Second Avenue and East 84th Street. NYPD told the Daily News and the Post that Schoonover tripped over trash bags and fell into the street. The driver was not charged.

Andrew Schoonover was at least the third pedestrian killed by a motorist in Jessica Lappin’s City Council district this year. In September, 65-year-old Pelagia Zingtapan was hit by a yellow cab driver, who was reportedly barreling through the intersection of 69th Street and First Avenue, horn blaring, at the time of the crash. In May, a 75-year-old man on crutches and wearing a reflective vest was run over by the driver of a box truck at First Avenue and 89th Street when he was caught in traffic as the signal changed.

In another serious crash, Elizabeth Brody, 28, suffered a brain injury in July when two yellow taxi drivers collided at Second Avenue and East 79th Street, sending one of the cabs spinning onto the sidewalk. No charges were reported filed in any of these crashes.

Lappin spoke at the City Council hearing on NYPD crash investigations in February. She was instrumental in opening up NYPD crash data, and has proposed a DOT office dedicated to road safety. But as of late, her agenda reflects a preoccupation with sidewalk bicycle riding and electric-assisted bikes, as reckless motorists continue to wreak havoc in her district and across the city. Twenty-nine pedestrians and six cyclists were killed by drivers in Lappin’s district between 1995 and 2009 (she was elected in 2005), while motorists injured 3,463 pedestrians and 974 cyclists during the same time span, according to DMV data compiled by Transportation Alternatives’ CrashStat.

The transportation committee of Manhattan Community Board 2 is looking for input on how to improve safety at Sixth Avenue and Houston Street, the intersection where Jessica Dworkin was killed by a truck driver two weeks ago.

“Everything’s open,” says committee chair Shirley Secunda, “from street geometry to police enforcement and investigation to current regulations as well as need for new regulations.”

Dworkin was riding a foot-propelled scooter west on Houston Street around 9 a.m. on August 27 when she was caught by the rear wheels of a flatbed semi as the driver turned right from Houston onto Sixth. The trucker was cited for careless driving.

“There has been a tremendous outpouring of grief from the community, in no small part because we have all had our own near-misses at that crossing,” says Ian Dutton, a former CB 2 member who was a neighbor of Dworkin’s. “I have adult, fully-abled friends who refuse to cross on that specific crosswalk because of aggressive, speeding drivers.”

Dworkin was the second person to die at Sixth and Houston in recent memory. Five years ago this month, 28-year-old Hope Miller was killed by a truck driver as she crossed Houston on her way to an acting class.

The committee may also address bridge tolls and truck size regulations, Secunda said. Since he was traveling east to west, there is speculation that the driver may have cut through the city to avoid the westbound toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The truck that killed Dworkin appeared to exceed 55 feet, the maximum length allowed on surface streets without a permit, and the cab was missing required front-mounted crossover mirrors.

Committee recommendations would be presented as resolutions to the full board, and if approved would be directed to city agencies and electeds.

“I’m also going to ask that the board take a firm stand on the NYPD policy of immediately declaring ‘no criminality’ when the details are far from clear,” says Dutton, “that the board fully endorse the package of bills including the Crash Investigation Reform Act, and ask Chris Quinn’s rep why the speaker has yet to voice her opinion.”

Tonight’s meeting will be held at the Church of Our Lady of Pompei, 25 Carmine St., Father Demo Hall, at 6:30 p.m. The public is invited to attend and participate.

Photo via DNAinfo

The truck driver who killed Jessica Dworkin in the West Village Monday morning was summonsed for failure to yield and failure to exercise due care, according to NYPD, but was not cited for possible violations related to truck size and safety mirrors.

Dworkin, 58, was riding a foot-propelled scooter west on Houston Street just before 9 a.m. Monday when she was caught by the rear wheels of a flatbed semi whose driver, identified by the Post as Greg Smith, was turning right from Houston onto Sixth Avenue.

Dworkin was dragged by the truck for two blocks, until witnesses were able to get Smith’s attention. She died at the scene.

A DNAinfo profile described Dworkin as an artist and SoHo “stalwart” known for her volunteer work:

Dworkin, who also went by the name “Jessica Blue,” moved into 128 Thompson St. between West Houston and Prince streets from Massachusetts in the 1970s, said close friend Craig Walker, who knew her for more than 20 years.

Talkative and warm by nature, the self-described artist regaled him with tales of writing for Interview and Details magazines, and frequenting Studio 54 in her younger years, he said.

Photos from the scene seem to indicate that Smith’s truck exceeded 55 feet, the maximum length allowed on surface streets without a permit. The cab is also missing the required front-mounted crossover mirrors, which give truck drivers a view of what’s directly in front of them. An NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog that two citations were issued: one for failure to yield to a pedestrian and one for failure to exercise due care, a violation of state vulnerable user laws.

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If you’ve suffered a life-altering injury, or even lost a loved one, at the hands of a negligent New York City driver, there usually isn’t much the authorities can do for you. To hear NYPD tell it, the department barely has the resources to investigate traffic deaths, let alone the thousands of pedestrian and cyclist injuries that occur every year. District attorneys are so flummoxed by weak traffic laws that they can’t muster the wherewithal to push for new ones. And while some on the City Council would like to help, their influence is limited.

Chris Quinn has no opinion on traffic crash investigation reform, but identity theft gets the serious face, along with a state-of-the-art crime lab. Photo: Dana Rubinstein/Capital NY

On the other hand, if someone buys a plane ticket or an egg biscuit in your name, and the offense takes place within the jurisdiction of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, you’ll find the latest in crime-fighting techniques and technology at your disposal.

On Tuesday, Vance announced plans for a new facility that will, according to the Times, “centralize efforts to target crimes and criminals involving the use of technology.” The lab will be funded with a $4.2 million appropriation from the City Council. Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who hasn’t decided if uninvestigated road casualties are a problem, was on hand for the occasion.

New York City law enforcers should be on the cutting edge, and few would argue in favor of ignoring computer-based criminal activity. But for perspective’s sake, there are 25 or so assistant district attorneys assigned to the vehicular crimes unit part-time, according to Vance’s office, in addition to a full-time bureau chief. By contrast, reports Capital New York:

Right now, Manhattan has ten assistant district attorneys working full-time on international and large-scale cyber-crime cases, as well as more than 70 assistant D.A.s dealing with the more than 200 identity theft cases that come in per month via street arrests.

Meanwhile, according to NYPD, 1,957 Manhattan pedestrians and cyclists were injured in the first six months of 2012 — an average of 326 a month — and 20 were killed. Without knowing what constitutes a “part-time” assignment at the DA’s office, let’s call it half-time. That would equate to 13.5 ADAs assigned to vehicular crimes, including the full-time bureau chief. Plugging in the 1,977 injuries and fatality crashes (330 per month), that breaks down to a workload of 24.4 incidents per prosecutor per month.

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