Two crashes on consecutive weekend days at the same Canal Street intersection are the latest evidence that the city has failed to tame the blood-slicked sluice cutting through Lower Manhattan.
In both crashes, motorists came off the highway-like Manhattan Bridge at the Bowery, but the violence only underscores that the entire crosstown corridor remains one of the most dangerous streets in the borough, and the city has not made significant changes in a decade.
Advocates said the latest wrecks should kick Hizzoner into action to make the street safe once and for all.
"City Hall knows that Canal Street is one of the most dangerous in our city, but they’ve stalled any improvements over and over again. Spinelessly ignoring a public health emergency puts every New Yorker at risk," Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas said in a statement. "Mayor Adams must act now before more New Yorkers are killed."
On Saturday morning, the first motorist jumped the curb of a pedestrian triangle and smashed through a bench, killing 63-year-old May Kwon, who was sitting there, along with 55-year-old cyclist Kevin Cruickshank, according to the police and witness reports.
Less than 24 hours, in the early hours of Sunday, another driver crashed into a food truck, injuring its operator as well as a passenger in the car, according to a police spokesperson.
Adams should know how dangerous the area is, as he rallied at the base of the bridge in 2007 as a Brooklyn state Senator, after a cyclist, Sam Hindy, was killed by a driver after falling on the span's roadway.
The then-state Senator Adams said "this is one incident too many," blamed confusing signage, the New York Post reported.
Officials have studied fixes for Canal Street for more than two decades, and two years ago the Department of Transportation launched a study to upgrade pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, but failed to follow up with changes to the streetscape.
"All they ever do is nip around the edges but there’s never a comprehensive vision to fix Canal," said Lower Manhattan resident and street safety advocate, Joseph Tedeschi. "It is a nightmare intersection. There’s no meaningful bike path or safety infrastructure at all there."
Since 2022, 18 New Yorkers have been killed or seriously injured on Canal Street, according to the advocacy group, and near-identical crashes have happened around the chaotic exit of the span for years.
Cruickshank, a Morningside Heights resident, was a member of Transportation Alternatives, according to the advocacy organization.
"No one should be killed just for riding their bike or daring to sit on a bench in the city they call home," Furnas said.
The area's Council member put blame squarely on the Adams administration's failure to act.
"I’ve repeatedly urged DOT to release their long-overdue safety study and implement real change. And still, nothing. No urgency. No accountability. Now, two more lives are gone," said Chris Marte in a statement. "If this tragedy does not compel Mayor Adams and the Department of Transportation to take immediate, public, and comprehensive action, then they are willfully allowing one of our city’s busiest streets to remain one of its deadliest."
'People fly off the bridge'
It's easy to see why these collisions keep happening by design. There is just one proper bollard at the northern end of the triangular plaza, but little else beyond a row of destroyed plastic flappers.
Meanwhile across the street, there are rows of cement bollards and a boulder, protecting a space at the bridge entrance that nobody uses.
The bridge funnels drivers at 35 miles per hour down a wide sloped and curved roadway toward the dense streets of Manhattan, and there is little protection against the multi-ton vehicles. That is especially dangerous at night when roads become playgrounds for reckless speedsters.
"People who live in that neighborhood know, when the traffic goes down in the middle of the night, people fly off the bridge," Tedeschi said.
In 2009 a cement truck also crashed into a shopfront coming off the bridge, injuring eight – at least the second time a driver careened into a building there that year, according to the Tribeca Trib.
These kinds of wide roadways are "just asking for trouble," said Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, an area BID.
The Department of Transportation shortened crossing distances for pedestrians by closing off a section of the road with painted markings and plastic flappers in 2015. But that clearly wasn't enough, given that within two years, a driver crashed and killed his 17-year-old passenger in 2017 at the same spot.
"[It's] déjà vu all over again," Chen said. "It’s the same identical pattern."
There used to be a ghost bike at that intersection commemorating the 2007 death of Hindy on the Manhattan Bridge, but drivers kept ramming into it, according to longtime safe streets advocate and author Jessie Singer.
Study upon study
Early studies of Canal Street began as far back as 2002, and the latest plans began in early 2023, the city announced it would study the sclerotic artery for bike and pedestrian upgrades, and early survey results showed that the overwhelming majority of people, take transit or bike to Canal, but the relatively few in motor vehicles take up almost all the space.
Pedestrians make up 64 percent of the streets users, but get only about 40 percent of the streetscape on paths between 12-20 feet wide, according to DOT. At the Bowery intersection pedestrians get a measly 10 percent of the streetscape, despite outnumbering drivers three to one.
A DOT spokesman focused on the bad behavior of the driver, adding that the agency will do more outreach and give updates for its safety project in the fall.
"This driver should not have been on our streets and, as we work to develop safety improvements along Canal, we will continue our advocacy at the state level for legislation to address the most dangerous recidivist drivers who pose an outsized risk to all New Yorkers," said Vin Barone in a statement.
Both people in the car tried to flee the scene, but cops caught them a block away, according to the NYPD.
Officers slapped 23-year-old Staten Islander Autumn Donna Ascencio Romero with a slate of charges, including two counts of murder and manslaughter, criminal possession of a weapon, leaving the scene, along with criminal possession of stolen property.
The driver reportedly previously hit a woman with her car in Brooklyn in April, the Daily News reported.
