Streetsblog New York City

Editor’s note: With yesterday’s appellate ruling prolonging the Prospect Park West case, Streetsblog is running a refresher on the how the well-connected gang of bike lane opponents waged their assault against a popular and effective street safety project. This is the fourth installment from the six-part NBBL Files.

This piece originally ran on October 11, 2011.

This is the fourth post in a series examining the tactics employed by opponents of the Prospect Park West redesign. Read the first, second, and third installments.

The primary objective of most members of “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” was clearly to remove the bike lane from Prospect Park West. They didn’t particularly care about bike lanes elsewhere, though they privately cheered every defeat of a sustainable transportation project as a sign that they might wipe out the bike lane in front of their homes. But because the NBBL strategy relied so heavily on impeding NYC DOT bike planning and tarnishing the reputation of transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, their parochial crusade ended up empowering opponents of street safety across the city.

Former deputy mayor Norman Steisel and City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca.

Nowhere is NBBL’s citywide influence more apparent than in the receptive audience they found with City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca. As we reported earlier this year, NBBL leaders including former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall met with Vacca in the run-up to his December, 2010 hearing on bike policy — a harbinger of the bikelash that peaked later that winter. Communications obtained by Streetsblog indicate that NBBL not only influenced Vacca’s oversight hearings, they also managed to insert their ideas into his legislation.

Messages from bike lane opponent Norman Steisel reveal a close link between his crusade to thwart bike projects with red tape and two bills introduced in the City Council this June by Vacca.

In mid-February, Steisel, a former sanitation commissioner and first deputy mayor under David Dinkins, wrote a lengthy letter to Vacca and City Council Member James Oddo on the topic of bike planning. The letter was triggered by Oddo’s proposal to subject all bike lanes to environmental review, a suggestion that environmental law experts called a waste of taxpayer money. Some of Steisel’s suggestions ended up in two bills Vacca introduced this summer, which are still under consideration in his committee.

“Iris and Norman have been meeting with City Council people privately, particularly Jimmy Vacca who doesn’t like the lanes.”

- PPW bike lane opponent Louise Hainline, December 2010

In the February letter, Steisel put forward a number of recommendations to impede the city’s bike planning process, many of which were gleaned from his personal campaign to remove the Prospect Park West bike lane. For instance, Steisel wrote that bike lanes should be planned with the “historic character” of the surrounding neighborhood in mind (the appearance of the bike lane on PPW chafed at NBBL members’ aesthetic sensibilities). At the same time, he argued that the traffic-calming effect of bike lanes should not be taken into consideration (it irked bike lane opponents to hear that the PPW redesign was implemented to reduce speeding).

Steisel’s knowledge of New York City government runs deep, and his letter reads like the wish list of someone who wants to see bike projects mired in bureaucracy for years.

Read more…

Hate to break it to Jimmy Vacca, but the City Council's parking bills aren't making New York City any safer. Image: @TransportNation

The City Council transportation committee met today, and if you thought the council was due for a break from dreaming up motorist entitlements, think again: this afternoon’s agenda was all about parking.

On the docket were three bills: one to require DOT to provide notice before changing street signs that affect parking; one to allow residents with vehicles to block their own driveways; and a third to relax rules against double parking near schools and day care centers.

Judging by the Transportation Nation Twitter feed, today’s discussion was full of gems like this one from committee chair James Vacca.

It has been nearly 10 months since the City Council held its last hearing on traffic safety. In the four months since council members introduced the Crash Investigation Reform Act, some 5,000 pedestrians and cyclists have been injured in crashes that were not investigated by police, and at least 48 people have died after being struck by drivers.

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 City Council Transportation Committee is on a mission to bring bike delivery workers into compliance with traffic laws, but council members appear unsure as to how to go about it.

Image: CBS2

Concern over sidewalk riding, red-light running and other behaviors by restaurant workers led to the creation of a DOT commercial cycling unit, which is charged with educating businesses and delivery cyclists on the rules of the road. The six-person crew is also tasked with making sure tens of thousands of delivery cyclists use safety equipment, including bells, lights and reflective vests.

Though the cycling unit was “deputized” to issue citations to businesses that are out of compliance with those measures, DOT employees do not enforce traffic laws, a point that seemed lost on members of the council transportation committee, which met for a hearing with DOT and NYPD officials on Thursday.

“The extent of the problem I see is tremendous,” said committee chair James Vacca. Addressing DOT staff, Vacca repeatedly cited problems with behaviors such as wrong-way riding, and the proliferation of electric bikes, which he called “frightening.”

A package of council bills would create civil penalties for violations of existing laws relating to safety equipment and delivery cyclist identification, and would empower DOT to conduct inspections of businesses and impose fines, which would be adjudicated by the Environmental Control Board. Kate Slevin, DOT assistant commissioner for intergovernmental and community affairs, and Leon Heyward, deputy commissioner for sidewalks and inspection management, explained several times that traffic violations are the purview of police. But in an odd display that would be hard to imagine if the subject were truck driving or cabbie conduct, Vacca peppered DOT with questions about commercial cyclist enforcement.

“There has to be a two-pronged approach, which we can take immediately,” said Vacca. “The police department can let it be known that they will mean business when it comes to these characters who do these types of things. I mean business, and the council means business, and I hope action is truly taken this time.”

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A young Bronx man was killed by the driver of a BMW SUV just after 7 p.m. last Wednesday evening. The driver was traveling northbound on Williamsbridge Road when he struck cyclist David Oliveras, who was pronounced dead at Jacobi Hospital.

Photo: NBC New York

Press accounts of the crash have been wildly inconsistent, and now City Council Member James Vacca is calling on NYPD to thoroughly investigate.

According to the first published account of the crash, reported by NBC, witnesses said Oliveras was mounting his bicycle, close to curb, when he was struck near the intersection of Mace Avenue.

Later accounts said that Oliveras “rode suddenly from the sidewalk onto Williamsbridge Road” (the Post), and that the crash happened closer to Waring Avenue (DNAinfo).

The unifying element in the different stories is that the driver was traveling fast and hit Oliveras with tremendous force. A witness told the Post that the impact sent the victim “flying out of his sneakers,” and witness Marilyn Portis told NBC that the driver “was going too fast, to hit him that hard.”

Police and the Bronx DA have not filed charges, and an officer in NYPD’s public information office told Streetsblog today that because “no criminality is suspected,” it suggests “driver speed was not a factor.”

The methods NYPD used to deduce that speeding didn’t contribute to the crash are unknown, and they will remain shielded from public scrutiny until the crash report can be unearthed. Pursuing the release of crash reports can be an agonizingly lengthy experience for victims’ families. For the general public, police won’t divulge the report absent a freedom of information request, followed by several months of bureaucratic delay. Once retrieved, investigative files have revealed that police blamed victims and exonerated drivers based on little more than the word of the driver or the driver’s passengers.

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City contributions to the MTA, the black line near the bottom of the graph, have declined slightly since the 1990s, while MTA funding from fares and dedicated state taxes have risen steadily. Source: IBO

The New York City Council doesn’t like the MTA’s budget. And really, who would? Fares and tolls are scheduled to rise in 2013 and again in 2015, bus lines cut in 2010 aren’t scheduled to ever come back, and the MTA is assuming net zero increases for transit worker compensation. It’s a product of worldwide financial crisis and Albany fiscal skullduggery, and it isn’t pretty.

Like all New Yorkers, the members of the City Council want a better deal from the transit system than we’re likely to get for the next couple of years, and in a hearing of the transportation committee today, they made that plain. Unlike most New Yorkers, however, the council can do more than talk. When it came to investing more City money in transit — something that hasn’t happened in decades — today’s hearing was a lot quieter.

Council members’ MTA wish lists were long and varied. “I will not be supporting any toll increase for the Verrazano,” declared Staten Island’s Debi Rose. Flushing’s Peter Koo wanted cleaner stations. Transportation Committee chair James Vacca named preventing a fare or toll hike as his top priority, with restoring service cuts right behind it.

“There’s going to be many more seniors in this city over the next decade,” said Gale Brewer, representing the Upper West Side. “What are we going to do about more buses?”

The answer to Brewer’s question was blunt. “When we can afford to run more service, we’ll run more service,” said MTA Director of Government Affairs Hilary Ring.

That’s where the council could come in. According to the city’s Independent Budget Office [PDF], New York City’s contribution to the MTA has been essentially flat for twenty years. In real dollars, city government contributes less to the MTA’s operating budget now than it did in the 1990s. City contributions to the capital budget, too, have been at or below the levels of the late 1980s and early 1990s for nearly two decades.

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In a speech to NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation, City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca focused on improving bus service and protecting pedestrians. Image: City Council

In a speech this morning at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation, City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca laid out his agenda for the coming year. His remarks focused on efforts to support Select Bus Service outside the Manhattan core and to improve pedestrian safety. Also on Vacca’s list were curbing placard abuse and enforcing existing regulations on commercial cyclists.

Citing reports from the Center for an Urban Future and the Pratt Center for Community Development, Vacca argued that the city’s transit system is inadequate for low-income communities, especially as employment shifts from Manhattan to the other four boroughs. “As our city decentralizes its job growth,” he said, “the hub and the spokes model must be adapted to meet changing needs.” Better transit outside Manhattan, he said, is a matter of “social, economic, and environmental justice.”

The solution, Vacca argued, is Select Bus Service, which he said he hoped to see expand more rapidly than it has so far. “I’m not talking about expanding the network of slow buses,” he said. “I’m talking about the network of SBS buses that will get people where they want to go quicker.” He specifically endorsed each aspect of SBS: dedicated and camera-enforced lanes, priority at traffic signals and off-board fare payment. The city’s first SBS line, along Fordham Road, goes through Vacca’s district and has been a smash success.

There’s little the council can do legislatively to speed up SBS implementation, Vacca said, but he plans to hold an oversight hearing to call attention to the issue. He also suggested that the council could help build political support for rapid bus service, even bringing it back to communities that have rejected the idea. “We can try to get them to be a ‘Yes,’” he said.

In terms of pedestrian safety, Vacca reiterated his position from last week’s landmark hearing on inadequate NYPD traffic fatality investigations. “There are too many people in this city who drive too quickly who physically injure another person who end up with a traffic ticket,” said Vacca. “That’s unacceptable.”

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Deputy Chief John Cassidy, executive officer of NYPD's transportation bureau, and other department higher-ups at today's City Council hearing on traffic enforcement. Photo: John Del Signore/Gothamist

Unacceptable. Absurd. “Next to useless.”

Those were just a few terms employed by City Council members today describing the NYPD approach to traffic enforcement. During a four-hour hearing, so packed with spectators and media that some were pointed to an overflow room to listen to testimony, council members grilled department brass on traffic crime prevention and crash investigations and questioned the low number of charges brought against drivers who injure and kill. Council members also heard heartrending testimony from victims of vehicular violence.

The hearing was co-chaired by James Vacca and Peter Vallone, who chair the council’s transportation and public safety committees, respectively.

“Driving in our city is a privilege, not a right,” said Vacca. In his opening remarks, Vacca noted that New Yorkers are more likely to be killed by a speeding driver than a drunk driver, and said that more city pedestrians are struck walking with traffic signals than against. “I want to know that the police department is doing to track down these scofflaws,” said Vacca. “We have to bring these people to their senses. We don’t accept gun violence as a way to die. We shouldn’t accept traffic deaths as a way to die either.”

NYPD officials remained on defense for most of the hearing, as they were quizzed by council members in sometimes heated exchanges. Most questions were fielded by Deputy Chief John Cassidy, executive officer of the department’s transportation bureau. Here are some highlights:

• Vacca asked if police currently charge drivers who speed or are involved in crashes with reckless endangerment, which Vallone — a former Manhattan prosecutor — said could be done with no changes to existing law. Susan Petito, a senior attorney for NYPD, responded that such data is not segregated, and the department therefore couldn’t say. More generally, Petito said that while reckless endangerment is “available as a tool,” police can’t normally determine probable cause if they don’t witness a violation.
• NYPD applies the same principle to VTL 1146, the statute that includes Hayley and Diego’s Law as well as Elle’s Law. NYPD protocol mandates that for an officer to issue a ticket under 1146, the officer has to witness the violation. An amendment to Hayley and Diego’s Law aims to close that loophole.
• Council members learned that there are just 19 investigators on the NYPD Accident Investigation Squad, and that there can be as few as one investigator on duty, depending on the shift. Since department protocol limits the use of the AIS to cases where the victim is killed or is deemed likely to die, and local patrol officers are not trained to perform in-depth crash investigations, cases that involve injuries that are not considered life-threatening receive only cursory attention. When asked by Vallone how it could be that a cyclist or pedestrian could have both legs broken with no possibility of charges against the driver, Cassidy replied, “I don’t set policy.”

Read more…

This morning’s City Council hearing on traffic crash investigations is already having an impact. Public Safety Committee Chair Peter Vallone, Jr. and Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca announced today that they will introduce a resolution in support of Albany legislation to make it clear that the police can enforce the state’s careless driving law.

Right now, the NYPD isn’t enforcing that law, which was named after toddlers Hayley Ng and Diego Martinez, killed in a 2009 crash in which a delivery van left unattended and in gear jumped a Chinatown curb.

Under current police protocol, only the citywide Accident Investigation Squad, a special unit called when someone is killed in a traffic crash or likely to die, employs Hayley and Diego’s Law. At today’s hearing, the NYPD said that the department has instructed regular cops not to issue tickets under Hayley and Diego’s Law after judges threw out arrests where the officer didn’t witness the violation directly.

The state legislation, sponsored by State Senator Dan Squadron and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, would make it explicit that police officers can issue tickets for careless driving without directly witnessing the violation.

“We believe that providing law enforcement with this additional tool is one of the surest ways to hold careless drivers accountable for their dangerous behavior,” said Squadron and Kavanagh in a statement given to the Council today. “This new legislation will make our original law more effective by ensuring that officers will issue a violation when careless driving warrants one.”

The Squadron/Kavanagh bill, which was only introduced last week, doesn’t yet have any co-sponsors in Albany. If the City Council passes a forceful resolution in support of the legislation, however, that could prove a good kickstart to the bill.

We’ll have more on today’s hearing later today.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and her city-owned Chevy Suburban in 2008. Photo copyright Steven Hirsch.

To hear Christine Quinn tell it, New Yorkers are crying out for relief from unjust parking policies. Over the last two years, it seems that when City Council members weren’t flogging legislation to add layers of bureaucracy to DOT’s street safety program, they were tripping over themselves to absolve motorists of one responsibility after another.

No matter that most New York commuters don’t drive to work. Or that drivers would be best served by rational prices for on-street parking, not endless cruising for free spots. Or even that one bill, prohibiting the sanitation department from placing stickers on vehicles parked in the path of street sweepers, would put an end to a practice that has benefited the entire city by improving street cleanliness. Nothing has stood in the way of Chris Quinn’s mission to free the put-upon car owner from the tyranny of onerous city edicts.

Including public opinion, it appears. According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, a majority of city voters disagree with Quinn and the council that city sanitation stickers are “unnecessarily punitive.” The poll found that 60 percent of voters, including 57 percent who park on the street, support the use of the stickers.

Support for the yellow stickers ranges from 56 – 40 percent each in Brooklyn and The Bronx to 66 – 26 percent in Manhattan. Men are stuck on the stickers 63 – 33 percent while women want them 57 – 37 percent. There is little partisan difference.

“Even voters who park on the street and do the Alternate Side Parking dance are stuck on the stickers by a wide margin,” said poll director Maurice Carroll in a Quinnipiac media release.

You’ll recall that the sanitation sticker bill was the brainchild of Brooklyn Council Member David Greenfield, who promoted it with characteristic zeal (“I mean, what’s next? We’re going to start slashing people’s tires when they don’t park on the correct side?”). It was also championed by transportation committee chair James Vacca, who called the stickers “cruel.” Weighed against the reality of voter sentiment, such inflammatory rhetoric makes the council look out of touch. It could be that New Yorkers aren’t as worked up about this stuff as their electeds think.

You don’t have to be a political scientist to know that governing by pet peeve is not likely to result in sound policy. Now that Speaker Quinn and the council have impartial evidence that a small number of gripes doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of the electorate at large, maybe they will turn their attention to actual problems, starting with the hundreds of fatalities and thousands of injuries suffered on city streets every year.