Transportation Alternatives

The City Council is holding a first-of-its-kind hearing on NYPD crash investigations today, a joint effort of the transportation and public safety committees. Based on the early reports via Twitter, it sounds like council members are holding NYPD's feet to the fire for failing to investigate serious crashes and letting motorists off the hook for the harm they cause.

Children growing up in Manhattan's low-income communities are at significantly higher risk of being seriously injured or killed in traffic than their neighbors in wealthier districts, a new study from Transportation Alternatives finds [PDF]. Intersections near public housing appear to be particularly dangerous for children trying to cross the street.

Despite the millions of New Yorkers who ride subways and buses and the thousands of life-altering traffic injuries suffered by residents of the five boroughs every year, transit and safe streets are typically second- or third-tier issues in the city's big-time political campaigns. The 2013 mayoral election could be different: NYC DOT's program to re-orient city streets for transit, biking and walking has raised the profile of transportation and public space issues. And that's before any bike-share stations have hit the streets.

The family of Mathieu Lefevre, the 30-year-old artist killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in East Williamsburg last week, was joined by dozens of supporters outside 1 Police Plaza today to demand that NYPD rein in deadly driving and end its policy of silence when it comes to fatal traffic crashes.

On Monday Transportation Alternatives released a report tallying pedestrian-involved crashes in each of the city's community board districts, based on numbers from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, between 1995 and 2009. Not surprisingly, the data reveal that the most collisions occurred in Midtown Manhattan, where high-density auto and foot traffic led to 8,604 crashes in District 5 alone.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the adoption of Hayley and Diego's Law, which established the charge of "careless driving" in New York State and gave police and prosecutors a new tool to hold motorists who injure pedestrians and cyclists accountable. Unfortunately, says Transportation Alternatives, over the past 12 months the law has gone largely unenforced by NYPD.

Transportation Alternatives launched an updated version of its CrashStat website today, providing a wealth of new data about street safety in New York City and where pedestrians and cyclists are most at risk. The upgrade adds four years of geo-coded data about traffic injuries and fatalities, a smoother interface, and a wealth of interactive features.

Transportation Alternatives and the New York Chapter of the American Association of Family Physicians today released a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, signed by 140 medical professionals from a broad spectrum of specialties, praising the city's bike and pedestrian infrastructure as essential to the health of New Yorkers. It's a solid counterweight to the hysteria surrounding the recent Hunter College bike-ped crash study: