Streetsblog New York City

While acknowledging that casualties have dropped overall in recent years, safety advocates and government officials are calling on the DOT to establish measurable benchmarks for further reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths in the city, and want the agency to get moving on relatively minor improvements that would help meet those goals.

At a hearing of the City Council's Transportation Committee at City Hall on Wednesday, DOT Deputy Commissioner David Woloch and Director for Street Management and Safety Ryan Russo caught an earful from council members, transportation watchdogs, community board leaders and members of the public who have lost loved ones.

The protracted exchange between the committee and Woloch and Russo, during which even the simplest of questions couldn't elicit a straightforward response, began when Chairman John Liu asked if the DOT has a systemic master plan for pedestrian safety enhancements.

The answer, which Liu never received in so many words, might be summed up as "Not exactly."

For example, the DOT is just now assembling its first-ever comprehensive study of pedestrian injuries and fatalities, which total some 10,000 and 150 per year, respectively. And though it is rote knowledge to many ordinary citizens, the agency seems stymied by the fact that the vast number of serious collisions occur at a relatively small number of intersections.

In testimony before the committee, Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White pointed out that the DOT can readily recite the number of potholes and stoplights it plans to address during a given period, but that it has no target for reducing pedestrian injuries and deaths -- a task White said should be "job one" for the agency that declares pedestrian safety its "most critical mission." The "real story," White said, is that DOT has reduced auto-pedestrian collisions by improving a small number of intersections, and could replicate that success elsewhere at little cost.

"Signal timing is cheap," said White.

The new collision study, expected to be ready sometime later this year, will help the DOT in the future, Woloch and Russo said. But as of now pedestrian fatalities are "diffuse" and current stats don't indicate "where to go" to make changes, a situation further complicated by the agency's "limited resources."

The committee also learned, among other things, that the DOT does not investigate every auto-pedestrian collision; that there is no formal process for analyzing the site of a fatality in order to prevent future collisions; that there is no set process for gauging input that might remedy dangerous conditions before a collision occurs; and that three years after launching the Safe Routes to School program, in 2007 the DOT will complete improvements at 12 of 135 high-priority schools -- not a "very ambitious goal," said Liu.

Teresa Toro, NYC Coordinator of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, testified that the city should mandate physical improvements by DOT, as well as procedural changes by the NYPD. While DOT has an "obsessive preoccupation with traffic flow," Toro said, the police are "not even comfortable" enforcing laws on the books designed to protect pedestrians.

Without citing specifics, Liu said the committee has "a number of ideas" for bills that are "passable."

Photo: sc_UK/Flickr

The Department of Transportation's recently announced streetscape renovation at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn marks the first time ever in New York City that car parking spaces have been removed to make way for bicycle parking.

Since breaking the news of this development on Monday, Streetsblog has learned more about the project. DOT's plan is to widen the sidewalk by five feet for approximately 112 feet along the southeast curb of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue. For the real estate brokers out there, that's 560 square feet of new sidewalk space for Williamsburg. New bicycle racks will provide approximately 25 bike parking spaces. DOT is aiming to complete the project some time within the first six months of 2007. It will cost about $32,000 and the funding is coming from DOT's general budget.

This sidewalk widening project has been about three years in the making. In the last few years, the Bedford Avenue L subway station has become a popular park-and-ride for bicycle commuters. With increasing complaints of bikes blocking the crowded sidewalks, in 2004 the NYPD began dropping in and sawing bikes off of the street furniture with chain saws.

"Clearly, that was a bad solution," says Teresa Toro, chair of Community Board 1's transportation committee and New York City Coordinator at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. "Everybody in the community recognizes that there are so many more people biking. There was much frustration around the police doing those bike raids, clipping locks."

Toro credits Brooklyn DOT Deputy Borough Commissioner Dalila Hall for working with the community to develop solutions. As plans were being developed to build out the sidewalks at Bedford and North 7th, DOT fast-tracked the installation of about 150 new bicycle parking spots in the neighborhood.

In April 2005, Brooklyn Community Board 1 approved a plan to widen the sidewalks and remove parking along two stretches of North 7th Street at Bedford Avenue (see the draft plan below). The widening along the southeast corner -- the part of the project that DOT has agreed to get done in the next six months -- is aimed more at improving pedestrian access to the crowded subway stairwell than increasing bike parking. "There will be a few bike racks away from the subway stairs. But the northwest corner would have been the one with a ton of bike racks on it," Toro says.

The sidewalk build-out and bike parking on the northwest corner is on hold for lack of funding. The southeast corner is being done first, Toro says, because "It has been recognized as a real need for a while. The city's Subway-Sidewalk Interface project (PDF file) identified that as a trouble spot and it came up again during the Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning discussions."