"Why furnish your enemies with ammunition?" J.J. Hunsecker, "Sweet Smell of Success"
The Department of Transportation's crusade against universal daylighting is now giving aid and comfort to the city's most pro-car, anti-safety voices in their fight against a common-sense bill that would bar parked cars at corners for better visibility — which is already a state law from which the city simply exempts itself.
Earlier this year, DOT officials released a scary report that suggested that removing parking near crosswalks, also known as daylighting, was not only not safe, but that doing it right would cost $3 billion and take 300,000 car spots. As Streetsblog predicted, that flawed report — whose shortcomings the DOT admitted in the report itself — is now being smashed into the debate like a reckless Dodge Charger by opponents to stop a Council daylighting bill just as it is gaining support.
The latest chapter in the saga began last week when the Council's Progressive Caucus issued a press release stating its hopes of passing the legislation this year. Days later, the New York Post published a story rehashing the months-old stats (minus the caveat about its well-documented flaws) — and then, predictably, right-wing electeds jumped on the culture-war bandwagon.
"Even the anti-car woke activists at DOT are raising red flags. Leftists need to STOP playing urban planner and START listening to the PEOPLE," wrote southern Brooklyn Council Member Inna Vernikov in a post on X.
"This 'daylight' plan is even worse than Daylight Savings Time," echoed Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella in a statement. "It is a big mistake to impose a 3 billion dollar parking ticket on New York City residents, for a concept that should not see daylight."
Queens Council Member Bob Holden added in an X post, "This bill is so bad that even the inept DOT is against it, which tells you just how radical it is." (Holden seems to want it both ways: If the DOT is inept, why is the agency also correct that daylighting is a bad idea?)
Clearing corners of eyeline-blocking cars has been standard practice as far back as the 1920s across more than 40 states, including in New York, but the state law that bars parking at corners also allowed the Big Apple to exempt itself for reasons that elude us to this day.
DOT's $3-billion estimate breaks down to a eye-watering $75,000 for each of the city's roughly 40,000 intersections, way above estimates from the Council and other cities.
Over in Hoboken, for example officials have seen the daylight. The Mile Square City aggressively rolled out the parking ban years ago — and has not logged a single traffic fatality since 2017. Mayor Ravi Bhalla called out his counterpart at New York's City Hall for that $3-billion price tag to create hardened daylighting.
"It’s obviously a scare tactic. We know that that’s simply not accurate," Bhalla told Streetsblog in an interview.
Hoboken was able to roll out daylighting en masse by starting with low-cost interventions like paint and plastic sticks, which can start for as low as $1,500 per intersection, according to Bhalla.
"There’s no reason why every single street in New York City at such a low cost shouldn’t be daylit, especially when we’re talking about a matter of life and death," the mayor said.
Our neighbor to the west studied different levels of interventions, including $2,000 to add some bike racks all the way up to $30,000 to build a concrete bumpout, which officials should reserve for busier and more dangerous locations, Bhalla said.
DOT's drumming up fears over losing hundreds of thousands of parking spots was also unwarranted, given that the spaces shouldn't be for car storage in the first place, Bhalla said.
"When we say 'No parking' in front of a fire hydrant, do people say, 'You’re taking away a parking spot?'" the mayor asked. "We need to start looking at daylighting the same way. That’s not a space to park, because of safety reasons.
"You’re talking about people who won't have to cross into the street to see whether cars coming," he added.
The daylighting bill's sponsor also called DOT's figure "over-bloated," with the Council estimating the pricetag at around $9,900 per intersection.
"I assume [the price tag estimate] was made with gold barriers," Queens Council Member Julie Won said in a statement. "It isn’t unreasonable to invest under $10k to save the lives of children and all pedestrians with daylighting?"
DOT spokesperson Vin Barone referred Streetsblog back to Deputy Commissioner Eric Beaton's testimony at the April hearing, where called the tab a "very round number rule-of-thumb estimate" that included the cost of installing blocks, buying and maintaining vehicles to do so, renting space for storage, paying for gas, and moving the materials every time the street gets repaved.
"There’s the cost of doing it once and then there’s the cost of maintaining it over a long period of time," Beaton said at the time.
The figure also rests on DOT's assertion that daylighting only improves safety when the agency adds hard infrastructure – as opposed to a simple parking regulation – based on its report that advocates continue to deride as deeply flawed.
The study claimed that daylighting without hard infrastructure could actually increase crashes, and Beaton told the Council that traffic injuries could surge by 15,000 — the very opposite of what occurred in Hoboken.
The DOT has opposed to universal daylighting for motor vehicles, but officials do seem to like it for outdoor dining. DOT took the trouble to write into its roadway café rules that the so-called streeteries have to be at least 20 feet away from a marked crosswalk. Yet car drivers do not have to observe this very same common-sense measure.
Both Holden and Fossella's statements also acknowledged that daylighting can work, by saying that the city should focus on the most crash-prone intersections, echoing DOT's strategy.
"This 'one size fits all' approach will make things worse for Staten Island drivers, not better. If the goal is to make things safer, then identify those intersections that present a problem," wrote Fossella.
Whither daylighting?
Intersections are statistically the most treacherous part of a street. More than half of all traffic fatalities occur there, including 59 percent of pedestrian deaths and 77 percent of pedestrian injuries, according to the same DOT.
Even relatively quiet streets become death traps when people can't see oncoming traffic due to massive SUVs blocking their view. That's even worse when the people on foot are small, as was the case when a motorist mowed down 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun in Astoria in 2023. The child's death spawned a grass-roots push by 23 community boards to endorse universal daylighting.
Won's bill has 27 sponsors, a majority that includes lawmakers from across the political spectrum, noted an advocate.
"This is something neighbors across the city can get behind," said Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy and organizing at Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "The status quo is killing our neighbors and this is a bipartisan issue and not one that should be made republican or democrat."
In near-decade that Hoboken has had zero traffic deaths, there have been dozens of fatalities in each of the districts of the three lawmakers that voiced opposition to the change – even when accounting for the Mile Square City's smaller population of 59,000.
In Vernikov's district, covering Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach there have been 38 reported traffic deaths since 2017, which would be the equivalent of Hoboken having 13 deaths in the same period, instead of zero.
Holden's district is similarly sized as Vernikov's, and has had 51 fatalities over the eight-plus years, equivalent to 17 people in Hoboken.
On Staten Island, a whopping 112 people have reportedly died since then, and given that the borough has eight times as many inhabitants, that comes out to about 13 people per Hoboken.
Crashes cost New Yorkers $15 billion a year statewide, said Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation alternatives, who cheered Hoboken's efforts.
"Instead of pushing back against growing community support, DOT should be embracing this proven, low-cost solution that saves the lives of the most vulnerable people on our streets — especially kids, seniors, and people with disabilities," Furnas said in a statement. "If DOT is serious about cutting costs, it should start by cutting crashes, not daylighting."
Neither Fossella nor Holden responded for further comment when asked why they prioritized parking over potentially saving lives of more than a dozen constituents.
A spokesperson for Vernikov, Rebeca Oliveira, provided a lengthy statement criticizing Streetsblog and not addressing our specific questions, but then demanding it be published in full. We are happy to oblige:
"Your faux outrage is not only offensive to the Councilwoman, but also to the field of journalism as a whole.
"All of our encounters with Streetsblog staff have been marked by an approach to 'reporting' tarnished by needless hostility, vitriol, and - this time around - disgusting insinuations about how the Councilwoman values human life. Is this how your staff speaks to Democrat elected officials, as well?
"We highly encourage you to evaluate your approach and do better.
"In the meantime, the Councilwoman will be busy representing the interests of her constituents who elected her in overwhelming numbers and continue to re-elect her. It should be well noted that the last attempt at a 'gotcha' article posted by Streetsblog about the Councilwoman was very well received by the wider community because - and this may come as a shock - she is accurately representing the interests of the majority of her district.
"If it is impossible for you to shelve your personal biases in the name of journalistic integrity, then you should consider an alternative field of work."
