City Council investigators have eviscerated a city study that trashed the safety design also known as daylighting, calling out the Department of Transportation for relying on deeply flawed data and then using it to throttle support for a popular Council measure.
DOT leaders have for months claimed that banning parking near intersections to clear up sight lines would actually increase crash injures, but a new review by a Council data team blows apart that argument.
The Council team could find "no statistically significant association" between the DOT's daylighting data and increased crash injuries, according to a summary of findings obtained by Streetsblog. The summary also accused the agency of skewing its results by lumping in danger spots and locations without any daylighting.
Advocates said the latest findings underscore the need for city politicians to finally enact a common-sense bill for universal daylighting before the end of the year.
"All New Yorkers deserve to cross the street safely," said Sara Lind, co-executive director at the advocacy group Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "This report shows that daylighting is, in fact, critical safety infrastructure."
Devil's in the data
The Council data team conducted a months-long review of DOT's original January study [PDF].
DOT claimed it found a 30-percent higher injury rate at crossings that not only banned parking but also lacked hard infrastructure to keep out cars. But the Council team pointed out that the DOT study relied on corners with fire hydrants and bus stops, even though the former often has a car parked there and the latter are prone to higher injury rates because there are typically so many more pedestrians there, according to research.
"This increased pedestrian exposure at bus stops could explain the effect reported in DOT’s analysis of bus stops and hydrant zones," the Council team wrote. "Therefore, bus stops likely should not have been used as a proxy for daylighting."
Indeed, when the Council staffers re-ran an analysis of more than 2,500 of DOT's test intersections and found a significant link between bus stops and pedestrian injuries and fatalities, but no "statistically significant" effects for hydrants.
The Council team had to clean up the data further, because they discovered DOT's study included locations with hydrants "that could not be located" (emphasis added).
When the Council researchers looked at locations with parking regulations, they found that some had signs that were more than 75 feet back from an intersection, "raising concerns about accuracy and representativeness," they wrote.
They also did an analysis of DOT's before-and-after data of intersections that got those parking signs (cutting those that were further than 75 feet back), and found no "statistically significant" effects, in line with the agency's finding.
The DOT study's control groups, i.e. intersections without daylighting, were also "too distant or dissimilar" in some cases, making for poor comparisons, according the Council researchers, and the city failed to account for "other factors affecting crashes."
Daylighting boosters have long called out flaws in the DOT study, which its authors acknowledged in the small print. Most glaringly, the study couldn't pinpoint whether a crash happened at the corner with a hydrant or bus stop, or if that location was free of an illegally-parked car at the time.
DOT's daylighting dilemma
DOT had published the study just as a popular bill in the Council to require universal daylighting citywide gained momentum, and agency officials – joined by car-first lawmakers and right-wing news outlets – have used the faulty findings as a cudgel to stop it.
The proposal, Intro 1138 by Queens Council Member Julie Won, would ban parking within 20 feet of an intersection and require DOT to add hard infrastructure to keep drivers out at 1,000 crossings annually.
The parking ban is already the law of the state, along with 43 other states, but the Big Apple has long been able to exempt itself in favor of more personal car storage.
The legislation has majority support of the 51 members, but has remained stuck in limbo amid negotiations for months under Speaker Adrienne Adams, as advocates hope to get it over the line before the end this year's legislative session. It would likely require a two-thirds super-majority to override a promised veto by Mayor Adams.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has pledged to implement universal daylighting and stand up to entrenched DOT bureaucrats, but advocates have still pushed for the legislation to codify the regulation into city law independently of whether a mayor wants it or not.
DOT whipped up worries among lawmakers against the bill by forecasting a cost of 3$ billion dollars, 15,000 additional pedestrian injuries every year, and the greatest fear of all for politicians: the removal of 300,000 parking spots, about one-tenth of the city's roughly 3 million street spaces.
The agency's reps have long insisted that the city should retain control over where to add daylighting, rather than be forced to implement it everywhere in a way that is "indiscriminate."
DOT recently successfully peeled off at least one supporter from the bill, Upper West Side Council Member Gale Brewer, by telling her the law change would "remove" 13,000 parking spaces in one Council District.
The agency's anti-daylighting drumbeat is poised to have national reverberations as well, as other cities often take note from the largest municipal transportation agency in the country.
But other jurisdictions that have embraced daylighting have reaped its benefits, from Hoboken, New Jersey, to San Fransisco, California, and around the globe from Hong Kong to Lima.
Council insiders recently circulated a list of 16 studies showing the benefits of daylighting, including some of those cities, Streetsblog learned.
The list also included a study showing a crash reduction of 84 percent in the Netherlands when parking was banned between five to 10 meters from intersections (or around 16-33 feet), and a six-year study in Seattle, where researchers logged a 12-percent drop in car-pedestrian collisions when vehicle storage was prohibited within 30 feet.
A DOT spokesperson said that 90 percent of its 7,558 intersections were fire hydrants, and only 10 percent bus stops, insisting that the Council's review actually validated its findings, because the lawmaking body also found that a sign alone didn't reduce crash injuries.
DOT spokesperson Vin Barone claimed the Council report "validates our findings that there is no significant safety benefit to unhardened daylighting, but some benefit from hardened daylighting."
"We will continue to champion daylighting as a useful tool when used appropriately," he added.
Council Member Won and Speaker Adams, both in Puerto Rico for the SOMOS lobbying event, did not respond.
