The City Council delayed a bill that would have legalized walking into the street outside of crosswalks, also known as jaywalking, apparently after advocates for the proposal voiced concerns about last-minute changes they said would victim-blame pedestrians killed in crashes.
Lawmakers had hardened the language on the bill on the day of its committee vote Tuesday to say that pedestrians "shall" yield to drivers, compared to merely being "advised" that drivers have the right of way in the original legislation text, and advocates with Transportation Alternatives worried the latest version could criminalize New Yorkers anyway.
"City Council can right one wrong without creating another, and New York City can better protect pedestrians by redesigning safer, slower streets with better visibility — not criminalizing pedestrians or blaming them for their own deaths," interim co-executive director of the advocacy group Elizabeth Adams told Gothamist, which first reported the bill pause. "The legislation should go further to protect pedestrians and clearly protect their right to safety and security on our streets, especially during one of the deadliest years for pedestrians in the past decade."
The law's edit came weeks after the Mayor Adams administration claimed that the bill would encourage the supposedly unsafe practice that NYPD cops enforce in a racially biased manner.
Police hand down few fines for jaywalking, but more than 90 percent of them go to Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, said the sponsor behind the Council bill.
"This is a very clear indication of systemic bias in how these laws are enforced," Brooklyn Council Member Mercedes Narcisse said when her amended bill passed the Council's Transportation Committee on Tuesday. "I have never heard a New Yorker exclaim, 'I am so glad they caught that jaywalker.'"
But sometime after that committee vote — which came with the support of that committee's chair, Selvena Brooks-Powers — a vote to approve the bill by the full Council on Thursday was canceled.
Under questioning by reporters, Speaker Adrienne Adams said that “things are still being discussed” — a rare setback for a bill once it has passed its committee.
Transportation Committee Chair Brooks-Powers said — on Twitter — on Friday that advocates asked for the bill to be pulled.
"Advocates (in support) wanted more convo and so the vote was delayed," Brooks-Powers wrote.
Even in its amended form, Narcisse's legislation would still make it legal to cross the street against a traffic signal and outside of marked or unmarked crosswalks.
The amended bill also required the city Department of Transportation to undertake an education campaign for pedestrians.
Narcisse was nowhere to be found at the Council on Thursday as her bill was laid over. She did not respond to requests to comment.
New York Police Department brass and DOT came out against legalizing jaywalking at a hearing on the bill in June, arguing that it would put pedestrians in harm's way, a point parroted by the one politician who voted against the measure at Tuesday's committee meeting.
"The streets have never been more dangerous with bus lanes, bike lanes, scooters, and vehicles going, not paying attention to the speed reducers. And I think if we have people crossing, you know, not in designated areas where they can remain safe, I think it becomes a public safety issue," said Joann Ariola (R-Queens).
There has been a crisis of pedestrian deaths on the roads this year, but street safety improvements like bike lanes actually decrease the rate of death and injury by 32 percent, according to DOT stats.
The Council's Transportation Committee chairperson doubted that legalizing walking in the street will put New Yorkers in more danger.
"There is little evidence to support the claim that criminal or civil offenses for jaywalking change pedestrian behavior or increase pedestrian safety," said Brooks-Powers (D-Queens) at the Tuesday committee meeting. "Giving less than 500 jaywalking summonses a year almost exclusively to Black and Latino New Yorkers does not keep us safe."
The NYPD has a well-established history of overwhelmingly ticketing pedestrians of color for allegedly crossing against a traffic signal, a trend that continued into 2023 with 92 percent of tickets going to Black or Hispanic New Yorkers. That share rose even higher to 96.5 percent for the first three months of this year, Streetsblog recently uncovered.
Even under Narcisse's legalization bill pedestrians could still face fines for going into the street; so far this year, the NYPD has issued 59 tickets to people "walking into traffic unsafely," which is like "jaywalking-lite." Of the 57 instances where the race of the walker was known, 53 tickets — or 93 percent — went to people of color, according to city data.
The city rules for pedestrians specify that pedestrians shouldn't cross in front of oncoming vehicles, meaning "no pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close that it is impossible for the operator to yield."
That's a pretty uncommon violation, even compared to the relatively rarely enforced jaywalking ban, noted a pedestrian and bike lawyer.
"It seems like a pretty narrow circumstance in which it could even potentially be valid," said Brandon Chamberlin, an attorney with Adam White Law.
"It’s possible that tickets can still be given out" if Narcisse's bill passes, Chamberlin said. "[But] it couldn’t just be for jaywalking — there would have to be a car very close by."
Chamberlin said the Council's bill was well written to undo the jaywalking prohibition, but it will be key to see how the city implements it during its rule-making process.
If it ever passes, that is.
Clarification: Due to an editing error, this story has been amended to make it clear that it remains unclear who pulled the bill.
