Vision Zero

Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a powerful piece by executive editor Jill Abramson about recovering from injuries sustained on city streets, based on her own experience and those of three other Times employees. Their stories, along with accompanying maps of New York City's most dangerous intersections, conveyed the widespread and profound impact of traffic violence more effectively than anything the Times has published before. Now the question is: Will the Times continue to beat the drum for safe streets?

The office of Ydanis Rodriguez says he is aiming to get several traffic safety bills passed in the near future, while others that were taken up by his transportation committee at a Wednesday Vision Zero hearing may be held up.

Over the past three weeks, DOT has been rolling out its 25 mph arterial slow zone program to high-crash streets one by one: Atlantic Avenue, the Grand Concourse, McGuinness Boulevard, and this morning, Broadway in Manhattan. Now, the initiative will expand to nine more streets across the city by the end of August, with 12 more streets to be announced later this year.

The speed limit will be lowered to 25 miles per hour on eight miles of upper Broadway this summer, DOT announced today.

Before the big City Council hearing on street safety legislation this afternoon, elected officials joined families of traffic violence victims outside City Hall to push for speed camera and speed limit bills in Albany, along with more traffic enforcement and better street designs from the de Blasio administration.

Last night in Brooklyn Heights, at the first of nine Vision Zero pedestrian safety workshops, dozens of Brooklynites came to tell NYPD and DOT staff about dangerous streets in need of safety fixes in their borough.

The City Council transportation committee has a full docket of traffic safety bills on the agenda for its April 30 meeting. We'll have more on some of these bills in future posts, but for now here's a summary.

Local elected officials and advocates joined NYC DOT and NYPD this morning to unveil the city's second "arterial slow zone" on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, where speed limits will be dropped to 25 mph and traffic signals will be retimed to discourage speeding.