Streetsblog New York City

This morning, elected officials and community leaders unveiled a slate of pedestrian safety improvements to Delancey Street, long ranked as one of the city’s most dangerous places to walk.

Nine people were killed and 742 injured between 2006 and 2010 on Delancey, from the Williamsburg Bridge to the Bowery. In the last six years, there have been 118 pedestrian injuries and six pedestrian fatalities on the corridor, according to DOT.

The Delancey Street Working Group, convened by State Sen. Daniel Squadron in September 2011, gained new urgency after Dashane Santana, 12, was killed while crossing the busy street in January.

Teresa Pedroza, Dashane’s grandmother, was at today’s press conference, which was convened by DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Sadik-Khan was joined by State Senator Daniel Squadron, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Community Board 3 Chair Gigi Lee and Lower East Side BID executive director Bob Zuckerman.

Delancey Street now has more than 21,000 square feet of new pedestrian space, shorter crossing distances, longer crossing times, new turn restrictions and more consistent lane markings for drivers going to and from the Williamsburg Bridge. Drivers can now access the Williamsburg Bridge via Clinton Street, which also includes a two-way protected bike lane. The improvements were funded through the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program.

Carmen Luna, 60, lives on Clinton Street near its intersection with Delancey, and has lived in the area for most of her life. Her sister was hit by a truck driver while crossing Delancey about two decades ago, she said, and suffered brain damage as a result. Luna welcomed the safety improvements. “This is very important,” she said. “We don’t have enough crossing time.”

Luna also admired the new pedestrian space and seating, which will be maintained by the Lower East Side Business Improvement District.

Traffic enforcement continues to be the missing component for pedestrian safety on Delancey Street. “They don’t do anything,” Luna said of officers directing traffic.

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In the wake of the death of Dashane Santana, the 12-year-old girl killed by a minivan driver while she was crossing Delancey Street earlier this month, Lower East Side leaders are demanding safety improvements for the many pedestrians who cross this approach to the Williamsburg Bridge. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Dan Squadron and City Council Member Margaret Chin have each called on DOT to take action to prevent one more life from being taken by Delancey Street traffic.

A report from DNAinfo this morning lays out just how hostile the design of Delancey is to pedestrians. To cross Delancey at Clinton Street, where Santana was killed, pedestrians must traverse ten lanes of moving traffic in just 22 seconds.

That’s far less crossing time than pedestrians have at some of the city’s most notoriously dangerous intersections, which DNAinfo went out and measured. Reports DNAinfo’s Julie Shapiro:

For example, pedestrians crossing the eight-lane Queens Boulevard at Union Turnpike have a full 30 seconds to make it to the other side.

People traversing the six-lane Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 145th Street have 40 seconds, nearly double the crossing time on Delancey Street.

Other busy intersections with longer crossing times than Delancey Street include West Street at Albany Street, where pedestrians have 31 seconds to cross eight lanes; Houston Street at Essex Street, where pedestrians have 30 seconds to cross eight lanes; 12th Avenue at 23rd Street, where pedestrians have 34 seconds to cross six lanes; Ocean Parkway at Church Avenue in Brooklyn, where pedestrians have 45 seconds to cross 10 lanes; and Atlantic and Flatbush avenues in Brooklyn, where pedestrians have 60 seconds to cross four lanes.

DNAinfo’s report also includes the above video, which includes an interview with one of Santana’s schoolmates.

The area’s elected officials are primarily calling for pedestrian crossing times to be extended, a move that would surely make it easier to cross. Shrinking Delancey down from ten lanes should also be on the table; no matter how long the light is, that’s a wide street to ever cross safely.

DOT will present its plan for improving Delancey Street next Wednesday.

The details of Governor Cuomo’s economic plan, which includes both tax reform and a new infrastructure fund, were released today with support from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

One of the MTA’s most important revenue streams is seriously affected by the tax reforms. The payroll mobility tax will be cut by $250 million under the deal, though the MTA will be reimbursed for its losses.

The payroll tax, which generates around $1.5 billion in revenue for transit every year, has been a top target of Senate Republicans from the minute it was proposed in 2009. Under the deal, small businesses — likely those with annual payrolls less than $1.75 million, based on previous reports — will have their MTA tax reduced. The current payroll tax exemption for public schools will also be extended to private and parochial schools.

According to the Daily Politics blog, the reductions were one price of Senate Republican support for the tax package. It does not appear, based on press reports, that previously-discussed plans to reduce the payroll tax in suburban counties made it into the package.

According to the Straphangers Campaign’s Gene Russianoff, that $250 million cut may not affect the MTA at all. For public schools, the exemption currently works like this: They first pay the payroll tax and then file for a refund from the state’s general fund. The MTA gets the money up front despite the exemption. If the proposed reimbursements work like this, transit service will likely remain unharmed by the changes.

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Strange development in the Sheldon Silver bike fall story. Yesterday, through a spokesman, the Assembly Speaker explained bruises and cuts on his face by saying he hit a pothole while biking. But the location and time of the bike crash in question are a mystery, and Raymond Hernandez at the Times reports that Silver has clammed up about it:

Mr. Silver has declined to tell reporters or local officials where the accident took place, or when. (Mr. Silver was in Puerto Rico last week for a conference of New York’s Hispanic lawmakers, and it remains unclear whether the accident took place there or somewhere else.

But he was in no mood to discuss his accident. Asked outside the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington about how he bruised his face, he said only, “I fell off a bike.”

And when asked where the mishap occurred, he quickly ended the conversation. “What difference does it make?” he said, waving his hand as he walked away.

Very odd.

Capital New York’s political reporter extraordinaire, Azi Paybarah, breaks this remarkable story:

Half of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s face is bruised and purple, and there are stitches over his left eyebrow and a scab across his nose and the back of one of his hands. Silver sustained the injuries while riding a bicycle when he hit a pothole and fell, according to a spokesman for the lower Manhattan Democrat.

“The speaker said to me he feels a lot better than he looks,” spokesman Michael Whyland said.

Despite the injuries, the 35-year-veteran legislator is keeping up with his normal schedule.

This might be a good time to ramp up the campaign to put a price on the East River bridges. The free ride creates a huge incentive for massive trucks and other vehicles to chew up the pavement on the streets of Silver’s Lower Manhattan district. Just sayin’.

Delancey Street is one of the most dangerous roads in the city. Between 2008 and 2010 alone, 134 pedestrians and cyclists were hit by drivers on Delancey, according to Transportation Alternatives, and two were killed on the street this year.

Last week, Streetsblog reported on a new design for the base of the Williamsburg Bridge which routed cyclists off Delancey and onto calmer side streets. The implication, it seemed, was that the Department of Transportation wasn’t planning to make Delancey safer for cyclists and pedestrians, just less trafficked by them.

Elected officials on the Lower East Side, however, aren’t standing for the deadly status quo. On Monday, State Senator Daniel Squadron convened the first meeting of a new working group meant to improve safety in the area.

“For too long, Delancey has been the scene of far too many tragedies,” said Squadron in a statement. “Our working group is a much-needed step toward ending the cycle of danger. I’m confident that, together, we can find the short-term and long-term solutions to ensure a safe Delancey Street for all types of users.”

Joining Squadron were City Council Member Margaret Chin and representatives from the offices of Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Borough President Scott Stringer, Community Board 3, the Lower East Side Business Improvement District, and Transportation Alternatives. Staff from the Department of Transportation and the NYPD, which would have to implement any safety plan, were also in attendance.

The group will meet monthly to create a set of short-term and long-term changes to improve safety for all users of Delancey. “All solutions are still on the table,” said Squadron spokesperson Amy Spitalnick. In an e-mail, she listed a few possible solutions already being considered: “turning restrictions, stop lines, lengthening medians and crossing times, and a real solution for bikes (understanding that they’ll end up on Delancey no matter what).”

We’ll be reporting on the working group’s recommendations as they develop, but for now, it’s encouraging to see this broad and powerful coalition of elected officials and community leaders commit to a safe Delancey Street. Their statements, collected in a press release, are below:

Read more…

The current MTA capital budget is very bad news for transit riders, who are being asked to shoulder $7 billion in debt all on their own. Where can the 8 million daily riders who count on the MTA turn for help?

Not Washington: The just-negotiated debt ceiling deal is likely to mean more cuts to transportation, which would probably translate into more cuts at the MTA.

Not Andrew Cuomo: The governor never even made time for a sit-down meeting with MTA chief Jay Walder, reports the New York Times, much less developed a plan for adequately funding transit. According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Cuomo is focused on finding funds to pay for roads and bridges instead of tracks and trains.

Not Michael Bloomberg: The MTA’s budget calls for the city to chip in half a billion dollars from the new tax revenue that will be generated by the Second Avenue Subway. The mayor put the kibosh on that idea on his weekly radio show, according to Transportation Nation.

Not the State Senate: Senate Republicans remain focused on eliminating the payroll mobility tax, which brings in $1.5 billion a year for transit. In June, eight Democrats voted with them on a one-house bill to phase out the tax.

That leaves just the State Assembly, which could redeem its decision to kill congestion pricing in 2008 by leading the charge for transit now. After an event today marking the opening of a new entrance to the Fulton Street transit center, Streetsblog asked famously tight-lipped Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver whether there are any discussions about funding the rest of the MTA’s capital plan happening in his chamber.

“There are none going on right now, but I’m sure they’ll be part of the next budget conversation,” Silver said.

Though the state legislature was expected to work well into the morning last night, dealing with major priorities like rent regulation and gay marriage in addition to lower-profile but still-important bills like the transit funding lockbox, the negotiated deals fell apart and the legislature put off all its business until this morning. The path to passage for any of those bills is a little less obvious than it was a day ago, but the lockbox still has a good chance of making it through the State Assembly.

The lockbox already passed the State Senate, where it was sponsored by Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden, and the powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced his support for the bill last night.

The bill should be on the Ways and Means Committee agenda this morning, said Lorrie Smith, the legislative director for lockbox sponsor James Brennan. “If Silver’s supporting it, then it should be on that agenda,” said Smith. The Ways and Means agenda has not been released yet, however. “We’re in kind of a holding pattern since late last evening,” Smith said.

There is still room on the calendar to pass the lockbox, said Smith, even as the time remaining in the session continues to tick away. If Assembly Republicans do decide to delay the bill with a fight over the payroll tax, as Silver’s office was worried about last night, however, that could complicate matters. “If that were to come about, it would be a problem,” admitted Smith.

“We have to hope that Senator Golden will ask them to let this go through,” said Smith. Streetsblog has a call in with Golden’s office to see if he’s communicated the importance of the lockbox legislation to his Republican colleagues in the Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver supports the transit lockbox bill, said spokesperson Mike Whyland this evening. According to Whyland, the bill will be voted out of the Rules Committee tonight and head to the floor.

Whyland said that the only thing standing in the way of the Assembly passing the measure could be time constraints, as tonight is supposed to be the last of the session. “The one thing that could jeopardize it would be attempts by suburban Republicans to attach amendments about the MTA payroll tax. That’s a non-starter,” said Whyland. While those attempts could be beaten back, he said, it would take extra time to do so. If a delay happens, the lockbox bill could be abandoned in order to make time for legislation that is a higher priority for the Democratic caucus, such as rent regulation.

The State Senate voted for the lockbox yesterday, so an Assembly vote would send it to the governor’s desk.

We’ll have more on this story as it develops.

In an unbelievable display of chutzpah -- okay, not really -- Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Ways and Means Committee Chair Herman "Denny" Farrell issued a self-congratulatory press release last Friday taking credit for "saving" student MetroCards. Here's an excerpt:

"My Assembly colleagues and I fought hard to preserve student MetroCards, because we believe that students simply shouldn't have to pay to get to school every day," said Silver (D-Manhattan). "Many cash-strapped families do not have any room in their already-tight budgets to provide children with daily transit fare."

"Many children depend on city transit to get them to school, and the MTA Schoolfare Program offers them an affordable way to do so," said Farrell (D-Manhattan). "We cannot lose sight of the needs of our most vulnerable citizens during these tough times."

Of course the vulnerable and cash-strapped, with or without children, will end up paying for this deal one way or another, since Silver and Farrell did nothing but further compromise the MTA's own already-tight budget to cover Albany's student fare tab. To these guys, victory is making other transit riders eat the cost of student fares while they heap praise upon themselves for coming to the aid of poor kids and families.