CHEKPEDS

An influential Manhattan panel voted to return street safety to the DOT. Will Mayor de Blasio heed the call?

Rising crash injuries and basically flat traffic deaths point to the shortcomings of Vision Zero. And data from Crashmapper shows the dangers of SUVs.

The departments of Sanitation and Transportation say they'll do something about it. But will their formal "request for expressions of interest" from community, industry and advocacy groups actually solve the problem?

With the right traffic signal timing, city officials could maximize the successive green lights for all road users.

When CHEKPEDS introduced Crash Mapper a year ago, it was already an improvement over City Hall's Vision Zero View. Crash Mapper uses the same data as the city map, but the public can do a lot more with it.

The street safety advocates at Hell's Kitchen-based Chekpeds have relaunched NYC Crash Mapper, a tool lets you drill down on traffic crash data in your neighborhood, community board, or City Council district. The new Crash Mapper interface is a step up from City Hall's Vision Zero View tool, which launched in 2014, in some important ways.

Split-phase traffic signals protect pedestrians and cyclists by separating them from turning drivers -- people walking and biking across the street get their own signal phase, and drivers turning into the crosswalk get another. Research indicates that split-phase signals are highly effective at preventing traffic injuries and deaths. But when DOT revealed its strategy to reduce crashes caused by left-turning drivers, there was no commitment to increase the use of split-phase signals.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign joined locals in Hell's Kitchen today to call on the Port Authority to invest in improved and expanded bus facilities to relieve pressure on local streets.

Manhattan Community Board 4 has renewed its call for safety improvements at the Hell's Kitchen crossing where an elderly woman was killed by a driver last week. The request comes five years after a resolution that asked for exclusive crossing time for pedestrians at the deadly intersection, and is the latest episode in a years-long, and largely futile, campaign by neighborhood residents for split phase signals.