Speaker Adams to Sink Daylighting Bill: Advocates

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Council Speaker Adrienne Adams will block a proposed law to ban parking near intersections, the visibility-improving street design also known as daylighting, from coming to a vote, according to advocates, who accused the top city lawmaker of stifling the common-sense safety design.

The speaker cut the bill from a list of proposals that could still come up for a vote at the Council's last full session on Dec. 18, daylighting proponents said. As a result, the legislation, which enjoys a majority of Council support, will have to be re-issued in the next session, punting it, and its valuable safety improvements, until next year.

"Instead of working to save lives, Speaker Adams is ignoring the most prominent street safety bill of her four-year term and leaving a legacy of unsafe streets, blocked intersections, and tragedy," Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, and Sara Lind, co-executive director of Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog) said in a statement.

The legislation, Intro 1138 by Council Member Julie Won (D–Long Island City), would have prohibited parking within 20 feet of corners, which is already state law but the city has long been able to exempt itself from the regulation.

Since Won introduced her bill more than a year ago, drivers have killed or seriously maimed nearly 1,800 New Yorkers – or about five a day – at intersections, according to an analysis release by Transportation Alternatives at a rally earlier on Tuesday.

"[Speaker Adams] has the opportunity to either let this bill die or tell all New Yorkers she is standing up for their safety," Elizabeth Adams, the advocacy group's deputy director of Public Affairs, said at a press conference outside Speaker Adams's office on Broadway.

Won's proposal would also have required the Department of Transportation to add hard infrastructure at 1,000 intersections a year to keep cars from illegally parking there.

Won did not return a request for comment about bill's removal. Speaker Adams's spokesperson countered that the list of legislation for the final full Council meeting of the year "has not been finalized yet."

"The Council continues to work on dozens of pending bills to determine which can advance for consideration by the full body," said Julia Agos in a statement.

Abandoning the bill would cap a four-year record of Adams consistently standing in the way of progressive policies on livable streets, including decimating the pandemic-era outdoor dining program, failing to enact a lower 20 mile per hour speed limit after state government granted the ability, yielding to anti-bike conservatives, and allowing a program to hold reckless drivers accountable to sunset.

The southeastern Queens Democrat's latest move shatters nearly two years of grassroots efforts by advocates to clear intersections of drivers obstructing pedestrians – especially children. Since Adams began her term in 2022, 50 kids have been killed in traffic in the city, according to Transportation Alternatives.

Since this 51-member lawmaking body took office at the beginning of 2022, a whopping 12,261 New Yorkers have died or suffered life-altering injuries. There are 118 intersections that have logged five or more of these devastating casualties each, according to the advocates. (DOT disputed the number, saying that the number of intersections with five or more injuries or deaths is about half of the advocates's tally. Both the Post and amNY reported the larger figure.)

The most dangerous crossings in each borough are:

• West 120th Street and Lenox Avenue in Manhattan
• Northern Boulevard and 48th Street in Queens
• Flatbush Avenue and Avenue H in Brooklyn
• Bruckner Boulevard and St. Ann’s Avenue 
• Hunton Street and Richmond Road in Staten Island

There are parking bans at some corners of those junctions, but plenty of their approaches still allow drivers to park right at the crosswalk, blocking sight lines.

Intersections are the most dangerous part of any street for pedestrians, accounting for 55 percent of their crash fatalities and 79 percent of injuries, according to city stats. Daylighting has brought safety benefits to cities from Hong Kong to Hoboken.

Council members had been negotiating behind closed doors with each other and the Department of Transportation for months to likely scale back the hallmark safety bill due to resistance from the city agency and car-first lawmakers.

As Won's bill gained momentum early this year, DOT put out a controversial study arguing daylighting without hard infrastructure would actually increase injuries by 15,000 per year.

DOT even persuaded a supporter of the bill, Council Member Gale Brewer (D–Upper West Side), to cancel her endorsement, by telling her the legislation would remove 13,000 parking spaces in one district.

The DOT's opposition is built on a flawed study conducted by the agency, which the agency admits had major "limitations":

Researchers at the Council ran their own review of the stats and they could find no evidence for increased dangers from daylighting and accused DOT officials of skewing their data. The Council never published its full review, but Streetsblog obtained an internal summary.

Brewer has since signed back on to the bill, as have new supporters Council members Lynn Schulman (D–Forest Hills) and Harvey Epstein (D–Lower East Side), bringing its total support to 27 of the 51 members, including one Republican, Frank Morano, who penned a clarion call op-ed for Streetsblog.

Won had considered amendments to assemble the two-thirds majority she needs to overcome an all-but-assured veto by Mayor Adams.

Those changes initially included restricting universal daylighting to areas near schools and other locations like parks, while only covering corners where vehicles approach in the rest of the city. That would daylight around three-quarters of the roughly 40,000 city intersections.

DOT officials also sent the Council a counter-proposal: the agency would daylight 100 locations a year – with no hardening requirement at all, despite agency leaders's insistence that the parking obstructions are key for safety. The city-favored version duplicated legislation from 2023, yet Speaker Adams embraced it.

The agency has insisted that it retain control over where and how to add daylighting, but advocates noted that this can take years for the lifesaving measure to arrive, as more people die and suffer serious injuries in collisions.

One daylighting supporter at Tuesday's rally recalled her ex-husband being injured by a turning driver in 2014, and DOT only recently adding daylighting at that intersection a few months ago.

"We dealt with surgery, many, many doctor's appointments, and months of excruciating pain and immobility – and on top of that, the hardest part was the knowledge that we came this close to losing him," said Dahlia Goldenberg, who is also the associate director of Families for Safe Streets. "No one should have to go through that."

A DOT spokesperson maintained that it should not have to add daylighting across the board.

"There isn’t a one-size-fits-all quick fix, but we will continue to use every tool available – including targeted daylighting – to make our streets safer," said Will Livingston in a statement. "Under Vision Zero, we have taken a data-driven approach to street safety that has helped reduce fatalities to historic lows."