We were so impressed by new Council Member Frank Morano's comments at Wednesday's daylighting rally that we asked the Republican lawmaker to expand on his thinking — and offer a roadmap for any of his colleagues on either side of the aisle to shed their concerns about any "loss" of "parking" and just get behind the safety redesign. Here's Morano's full op-ed.
Let me get one thing out of the way: I love my car. My wife drives. Most of my neighbors drive. I represent the South Shore of Staten Island, where the family sedan is as essential as the Sunday sauce. So if you hear that a Staten Island Republican is backing a street-safety bill, you might assume I’ve gone rogue.
But here’s the truth: Intro 1138 — the daylighting bill — isn’t anti-driver. It’s pro-visibility, pro-safety, and frankly, pro-common sense.
Every driver knows that nervous moment when you inch into an intersection, craning your neck around a parked SUV that’s blocking your view. You pray the oncoming car sees you first. We’ve all been there — and too often, that blind spot leads to a crash. Clearing 20 feet of space near a crosswalk means everyone, pedestrian or motorist, gets a fighting chance to see what’s coming. That’s it. No ideology. No secret war on cars. Just sightlines.
And it’s hardly radical. Forty-four states already require daylighting. So does the rest of New York State. So does New Jersey — which means plenty of Staten Islanders who moved across the Outerbridge are already living with it, and they still manage to find parking. If Staten Island ever did secede (as some of my constituents half-jokingly propose every few months), we’d have daylighting on day one.
Opponents like to portray this bill as a “parking grab.” I get it — parking scarcity in New York is a blood sport. But let’s be honest: those end-of-the-block spaces aren’t supposed to be legal anyway. State law already bans parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. The city just carved itself an exemption years ago and never gave it back. All we’re doing is catching up to the law everyone else already follows.
Now, I’ve seen the Department of Transportation’s report warning of “billions in costs” and “thousands of new accidents.” That study has been thoroughly debunked by the City Council’s own data team. The truth is, the intersections the DOT looked at weren’t truly daylighted — many had bus stops, hydrants, or cars parked illegally right where the line of sight should be. It’s like judging the effectiveness of lifeboats on the Titanic by studying the ones that never left the ship.
Meanwhile, the evidence from places that actually do daylight is overwhelming. Hoboken — just across the river — hasn’t had a single traffic death in eight years. San Francisco saw double-digit drops in pedestrian crashes after clearing sightlines. It works.
I also hear from people who say, “We can’t afford to lose 300,000 parking spots citywide.” But those numbers assume every single intersection has a car parked illegally at its corner, all the time. In reality, many are hydrant zones, loading zones, or curb cuts that can’t be used for parking anyway. What daylighting really removes is the false comfort that squeezing another car into a dangerous blind spot is somehow harmless.
And here’s something you won’t hear from the anti-daylighting crowd: this bill actually empowers neighborhoods. Each district would identify about 20 intersections per year for daylighting. That’s a real chance for community boards and local Council members — not bureaucrats in Manhattan — to decide where to start. If you believe in local control, this bill delivers it.
It even helps with another issue Staten Islanders know too well: flooding. Those curbside “no-parking” zones create natural pockets for stormwater to collect, reducing overflow onto streets and into basements. It’s not glamorous, but if you’ve ever had to bail out your driveway after a Nor’easter, it matters.
I’m new to the Council, but I’m old enough to know that leadership sometimes means challenging your own side’s assumptions. Conservatives often talk about responsibility and order — well, that’s exactly what daylighting is about. It rewards the responsible driver who follows the rules, not the guy who slides his SUV halfway into the crosswalk to “just run in for a minute.” It restores order to intersections that have become chaotic free-for-alls. And it saves lives without raising taxes, creating new bureaucracies, or banning cars.
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to make sure the wheel can see around the corner.
So yes, I’m proud to be the first Republican on this bill — and I hope I won’t be the last. Daylighting isn’t a culture war issue; it’s a common-sense one. Whether you walk, drive, bike, or push a stroller, we all want to get home safely. And if that means giving up the illusion of one extra parking spot per block, I’d call that a fair trade.
After all, as any Staten Islander will tell you, the best way to keep traffic moving is to stop pretending we can’t see what’s right in front of us.
