Streetsblog New York City

DOT is proposing to add a two-way, jersey barrier-protected bikeway to a block of Bruckner Boulevard that's currently a high-speed asphalt free-for-all. Image: DOT

The Bronx River Greenway, threaded along the waterfront between expressways, railroad tracks and busy arterial avenues, is difficult to access for many of the surrounding South Bronx residents. A proposal from DOT [PDF] would improve park access while providing some order to the area’s streets.

“It’s hard for folks in the neighborhood to get to these parks,” said Joe Linton, greenway director for the Bronx River Alliance. “We’re going to need these on-street improvements.”

The plan has four components. The first will add a two-way barrier-protected bikeway along a block of Bruckner Boulevard, immediately adjacent to the Bruckner Expressway. It would connect a sidewalk near the southern end of Concrete Plant Park to north-south bike lanes on Bryant and Longfellow Avenues. The lane is carved out of the massive expanse of asphalt currently used for a 41-foot wide travel lane.

While this is a huge safety gain for a location that currently sees a lot of wrong-way cycling on a high-speed road, the lane connects to a pedestrian bridge across the Bruckner Expressway that has no ramps. Instead, bike riders have to carry their bikes up a sloping set of stairs.

“They can still do more to seamlessly connect it,” said Richard Gans, a volunteer on the Transportation Alternatives Bronx committee. “In general, we’re happy with the improvements that are proposed,” he added.

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You don't normally hear from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly or Manhattan DA Cy Vance when a child is killed by a motorist.

In case you missed it, after years of bashing the city’s efforts to make walking and cycling less dangerous, the editors of the New York Post have decided they care about children’s safety. But in its Saturday editorial persecuting the crossing guard who was not present when 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba was fatally struck by a truck driver, the Post chose not to acknowledge that if police and prosecutors were doing their jobs, the NYPD crossing guard program would not be necessary in the first place.

Look at today’s headline stack: a young couple and their baby killed by a hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn; a 61-year-old pedestrian in critical condition in the Bronx; another pedestrian seriously hurt by a curb-jumping motorist in Midtown. All this death and suffering, and more, since Amar Diarrassouba was killed last Thursday. The fact is reckless driving is rampant in NYC, it happens at all hours of the day and night, and the law enforcers charged with bringing it under control — NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and, in little Amar’s case, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance — have failed to do so.

From the Post editorial:

New York’s criminal-justice system has a duty to hold this guard liable for her words and her actions. The authorities need to probe this case thoroughly — and pursue the full measure of punishment allowed by the law.

New York City employs more than 2,000 crossing guards to keep its schoolchildren safe as they navigate Gotham’s busy streets and cross dangerous intersections. Those who take these jobs take on an important public trust. Amar Diarrassouba’s death is a reminder of the terrible price that the innocent pay when someone in a position of public trust blows off that responsibility.

It’s much easier for the Post to scapegoat Flavia Roman than to take on the players responsible for the city’s deficient traffic justice system, and though editorials trashing street safety measures are common, we can’t recall the last time the paper called for the prosecution of a killer motorist. But forget the cowardice and rank hypocrisy on display here. Let’s talk about public trust.

Whose job is it to protect children when crossing guards are not on duty? Ebrahim Kebe, Timothy Keith, Kevin Rodriguez, Dashane Santana, Moses Englender, Andrew Ramirez, Aniya Williams, Joshua Ganzfried, Max Mendez, Axel Pablo, Diego Martinez, Hayley Ng — all children killed by city motorists. In none of these cases was the driver known to have been charged for taking a child’s life.

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Twelve pedestrians were killed by motorists in the 33rd and 34th Precincts from 2009 through 2011. Police in those precincts issued a total of 125 speeding summonses in 2011. Image: TSTC

In our Tuesday post on the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s latest “Most Dangerous Roads for Walking” report, we noted the concentration of pedestrian deaths on Broadway in Washington Heights, where pedestrian islands, protected bike lanes and other safety features are not present above 168th Street.

In addition to engineering, another factor in pedestrian fatalities and injuries is, of course, traffic law enforcement. In the 33rd and 34th Precincts, which cover Washington Heights and Inwood, very few motorists are penalized for reckless driving — even those who cause grievous injury.

Washington Heights is an entrance and exit point for the George Washington Bridge. And with two toll-free bridges connecting Manhattan to the Bronx, and, ergo, Westchester County, Inwood is plagued by cut-through traffic (a problem that could be exacerbated by toll hikes on the Henry Hudson Bridge). We wrote that speed enforcement in the 34th Precinct effectively stopped after the installation of Manhattan’s first “Slow Zone” last October, but there wasn’t much enforcement to speak of before then either.

In 2011, the most recent year covered by the Tri-State report, and the first year in which NYPD made traffic summons and crash data available to the public, the 34th Precinct issued just 17 speeding summonses, and 152 summonses for failure to yield to a pedestrian. To the south, the 33rd Precinct issued 108 summonses for speeding, and 80 summonses for failure to yield, for the entire year.

Four pedestrians were killed by motorists in the 33rd Precinct between 2009 and 2011, according to Tri-State. In the 34th Precinct, eight pedestrians died in traffic during that period. Injury numbers by precinct are not known, since NYPD did not begin releasing that data until the middle of 2011.

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For years, the federal government has adopted roadway guidelines that fall far short of what’s needed — and what’s possible — to protect cyclists and pedestrians. By “playing it safe” and sticking with old-school engineering, U.S. DOT allowed streets to be unsafe for these vulnerable road users.

But that could be changing. The bike-friendliest transportation secretary the country has ever seen told state transportation officials yesterday at AASHTO’s annual Washington conference that U.S. DOT was getting into the business of issuing its own design standards, instead of simply accepting the AASHTO guidelines.

LaHood told an audience of state transportation officials that the FHWA is getting into the roadway design business.

Normally, the Federal Highway Administration points people to AASHTO’s Green Book, the organization’s design guide for highways and streets — and indeed, the agency is still directing people to the 2001 edition of the Green Book. Cycling advocates have long criticized the AASHTO guide, and the FHWA’s adherence to it, since even the most recent version doesn’t incorporate the latest thinking in bicycle and pedestrian safety treatments.

In FHWA’s new round of rule-making, DOT will set its own bicycle and pedestrian safety standards for the first time. The agency will “highlight bicycle and pedestrian safety as a priority,” LaHood said. (You can watch his entire speech on AASHTO’s online TV channel.)

FHWA will rely heavily on input from AASHTO but also signaled that it would work with others to incorporate the full spectrum of bike/ped design best practices.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials publishes its own, much more cutting-edge, design guide for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. No one at U.S. DOT reached out to NACTO in advance of the AASHTO speech, but NACTO spokesperson Ron Thaniel said they have a “close working relationship with Secretary LaHood” and “look forward to working with him” on the new standards.

LaHood noted that he would be meeting with cyclists next week at the National Bike Summit here in Washington and that he would work with them on ways to improve infrastructure “to make biking and walking opportunities as safe as they possibly can be.”

But it was wise of him to make his announcement at AASHTO, not at the Bike Summit. He seems to be trying to bring AASHTO into the fold of a movement to embrace more innovative bikeway designs. “I’m asking [the cycling community] for their help but I’m asking you to be helpful also,” he told the state officials. “I know that most of you want to build the 21st century infrastructure that your communities need to be competitive. The problem is we don’t have modern-day roadway standards to help us bring these ideas to life.”

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Of the five boroughs, Brooklyn saw the most pedestrian fatalities from 2009 through 2011. Many of the victims were seniors, as indicated by pink icons on this TSTC map.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s latest “Most Dangerous Roads for Walking” report [PDF] is another urgent reminder that roads and streets designed for maintaining auto capacity are not safe for people who travel outside a car.

Drawing on federal data from 2009 through 2011, the report ranks the region’s most dangerous roads in terms of total pedestrian fatalities — 1,242 in all during the three-year time frame. Reads the report:

Almost 60 percent of these fatalities occurred on arterial roadways, high-speed roads often with multiple lanes in each direction and few pedestrian amenities such as marked cross-walks or pedestrian count-down signals.

NYC streets with the most pedestrian deaths were as follows:

• The Bronx: Broadway (5); East Gun Hill Road (5); Grand Concourse (4); Baychester Avenue (4)
• Brooklyn: Ocean Parkway (6); Eastern Parkway (5); Kings Highway (4); Utica Avenue (4); Bedford Avenue (4)
• Manhattan: Broadway (12); Amsterdam Avenue (7); Seventh Avenue (5); Second Avenue (5); First Avenue (4)
• Queens: Woodhaven Boulevard (7); Jamaica Avenue (5); Union Turnpike (4); Queens Boulevard (4); Northern Boulevard (4); Lefferts Boulevard (4)
• Staten Island: Richmond Avenue (3); New Dorp Lane (2); Hylan Boulevard (2); Port Richmond Avenue (2)

Of Broadway’s 17 pedestrian fatalities, only one occurred south of 96th Street. There was a concentration of fatal collisions in Washington Heights, where drivers head to and from the George Washington Bridge, and where Broadway’s tree-lined medians and pedestrian islands disappear.

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Quick, what aspect of police work and law enforcement were mayoral contenders addressing when they said the following at Friday’s candidate forum?

• Bill de Blasio: “It’s hard to report crimes and get the kind of response that you deserve…The police need more training to treat these crimes with urgency…Police need better training and we need to strengthen the laws.”
• Christine Quinn: “If we see any situation where police or DA’s are not taking those crimes seriously, we need to take action no matter what elected position we are in.”

Were they talking about traffic violence and NYPD’s lackluster crash investigations? Nope, they were responding to questions about assault against bus operators and harassment and crime against bus and subway passengers.

Safety on the transit system is important, but so is safety on the streets. And so far the candidates haven’t approached the NYPD’s failures on traffic violence with the same fervor they displayed Friday evening for tackling transit crime.

Tom Allon called for “GropeStat” to pinpoint problem harassment locations. “If there’s somebody who’s a serial offender, the DA’s office should take away his MetroCard. Ban him from the subway, ban him from the bus forever,” he said.

Streetsblog followed up with Allon after the forum to ask if this banned-for-life standard should apply to deadly drivers. “There should be a zero-tolerance policy. We have to crack down on people who are a menace to other people,” he said. “It’s one of those crimes that doesn’t get enough attention.”

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Allstate has joined Progressive Insurance as the second company to offer New Yorkers the chance to save money with usage-based car insurance. Like its cousin, pay-as-you-drive insurance, usage-based insurance rewards people for driving less. On top of that, by constantly monitoring how people drive, it creates incentives based on behaviors that can’t be tracked by traffic tickets or crash reports alone. The New York City Department of Transportation is promoting the concept in its effort to cut down on dangerous driving.

Slow down! You might just save 15 percent on car insurance. Photo: Randy Le'Moine Photography/Flickr

New York City residents drive fewer miles than residents of the suburbs or other major cities. But city motorists who drive only occasionally are probably still paying the same amount for insurance as people who drive every day.

With usage-based insurance, participants install a small device, compatible with all cars built since 1996, that records driver behavior. This includes miles driven, time of day, time behind the wheel, braking behavior, and speed. The device is not GPS-enabled, so the insurer does not know if a driver is speeding on a given street.

Progressive’s Snapshot program, which has signed up more than one million drivers in 44 states and the District of Columbia, evolved from an earlier pay-as-you-drive program the company offered. In 2010, it became the first-of-its-kind insurance product in New York. In October 2012, it was joined by Allstate’s Drive Wise.

Usage-based insurance is opt-in: In the ten states where Allstate offers the program, 20-25 percent of new customers choose to enroll. A third of Progressive’s customers who are offered the program choose to enroll, though a Progressive spokesperson could not say whether all customers are invited to participate.

By rewarding drivers who drive less, insurers are giving their customers an incentive to walk, bike, or take transit. “You get a discount on your insurance if you use other modes of transportation,” said Allstate spokesperson Allison McMahon. Usage-based insurance customers can save up to 30 percent over traditional insurance; Progressive says participating customers save an average of $150 per year with the program. A selling point used by the insurers is that usage-based customers can only see their rates go down — the behavior captured by the in-car devices cannot cause a driver’s rate to increase above what it would be if that driver did not participate in the program.

In California, which has created a regulatory framework for pay-per-mile insurance programs, a Brookings Institution study found that this type of insurance can lead to a reduction in driving and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as savings for low-income households.

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Bill de Blasio’s comments in today’s Brooklyn Paper are straight out of the “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” playbook.

Bill de Blasio's mayoral campaign is rehashing talking points from bike lane opponent and former deputy mayor Norm Steisel.

To a question about whether he would dedicate space for biking and walking as mayor, de Blasio replied:

The motivation [for bike lanes] has been noble but the approach has often been without the kind of communication with the community that I’d like. What I’d say is that let’s look at actual evidence, not biased evidence, but actual evidence about what has happened with each of them. Where they’ve worked, great, let’s keep them. Where they haven’t worked let’s revise them or change them.

This is more than mealy-mouthing. In the thick of the 2011 bikelash, de Blasio met with bike lane opponents Norman Steisel, Louise Hainline, and Lois Carswell, along with their attorney, Jim Walden, “to discuss bike strategy,” according to documents obtained by Streetsblog through a freedom of information request.

A month later, de Blasio sent a letter to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan that characterized the department’s evaluations of several projects as “rubber stamps” — echoing NBBL propaganda from its campaign to discredit DOT and erase the Prospect Park West bike lane. Soon after, DOT announced that it had abandoned plans for a separated busway on 34th Street.

Last night’s vote for safer streets on the Upper West Side adds to a long list of publicly vetted and community-backed bike and pedestrian projects. The real “biased evidence” is the cherry-picked data trumpeted by NBBL for its PR war against a project that grew from the ground up.

In his nascent campaign for mayor, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has yet to take a stand for measures that are preventing injuries and saving lives. Instead he is parroting the line of a handful of insider malcontents who would reverse the public process to make the streets more dangerous for millions of New Yorkers.

A commercial van driver mounted the concrete barrier protecting cyclists on Flushing Avenue just west of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway on Friday. Photo: Dmitry Gudkov

Elevated from today’s headline stack: Photographer Dmitry Gudkov snapped this picture on Friday afternoon of a commercial van — the phone number goes to Glass & Windows, Inc., of Long Island City — straddling the concrete barrier that separates a two-way bike lane, and the sidewalk beyond, from the busy intersection where Flushing Avenue crosses beneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

It’s not hard to understand why many New Yorkers feel unsafe biking and walking on streets where deadly speeding goes unchecked. And while we have the studies to prove that protected bike lanes have an impact not just on perceived safety, but on actual safety as well, every now and then something comes along to cut through the dry data and illustrate why these safety improvements matter.

Greenpoint Avenue has long been a dangerous connection between Queens and Brooklyn. The intersection with Borden Avenue in Sunnyside, where it crosses the Long Island Expressway, is often overrun with drivers heading toward an LIE onramp or exiting the highway so they can get to Manhattan via the free Queensboro Bridge. The waves of traffic make crossing Borden a dangerous mess for people trying to walk or bike around their neighborhood.

“It can be a pretty daunting intersection at the best of times,” said Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, who has lobbied for safety fixes.

In April 2012, a bike rider was struck and killed by a livery cab driver at the intersection, and months later another cyclist was killed in a hit-and-run just blocks away. The deaths spurred action from Queens residents who had long worried about traveling through the area. Steve Scofield and four other volunteers recorded conditions and behavior at the intersection, ultimately producing a list of recommendations to improve street safety. On December 18, they presented their findings to Queens Community Board 2′s transportation committee.

The group suggested adding lane markings on eastbound Greenpoint Avenue to mark where turning and through traffic should go. Currently, “it’s kind of a free for all,” Scofield said.

The group also proposed adding a dedicated left turn signal from westbound Greenpoint to eastbound Borden, as well as adding a leading signal for cyclists and pedestrians headed eastbound on Greenpoint, to give them a jump start on drivers turning to access the expressway. Currently, many cyclists heading east on Greenpoint Avenue illegally ride on the sidewalk on the other side of the street because they feel unsafe on the road, said Jessame Hannus, who presented with Scofield.

The problems at this intersection are also a symptom of the city’s lack of a coherent road pricing system. Much of the traffic is due to drivers using local streets as a shortcut between the Long Island Expressway and the Queensboro Bridge, instead of staying on the highway and paying a toll at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Consistent tolls on the East River crossings would cut down on the traffic, Scofield noted. He often sees the intersection of Borden and Greenpoint gridlocked while traffic flows freely underneath on the expressway to the tunnel.

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