Upper East Side

The Upper East Side is full of dangerous intersections, and residents are clamoring for bus countdown clocks, benches, and bike racks, according to a two-part report released today by Council Member Ben Kallos [PDF 1, 2]. It's not often a council member releases a report on livable streets, and Kallos should be commended for his interest. (DOT says it "has not received any similar reports from other elected officials.") But the report amounts to a wish list of small fixes, with nary a recommendation to improve street design and enforcement in the neighborhood.

NYPD has not filed charges against a cab driver who killed a pedestrian on the Upper East Side last week, despite indications that the crash may warrant a misdemeanor charge under a new city law.

Last September, 16-year-old Renee Thompson was struck and killed by a turning truck driver at the intersection of Third Avenue and 60th Street. Now, the crowded intersection has painted curb extensions on two of the intersection's four corners that shorten crossing distances and tighten turns.

Motorists have killed two pedestrians in the 19th Precinct, on the Upper East Side, in the last month. The second victim was a woman hit by a school bus driver yesterday.

Last month, the Upper East Side's 19th Precinct devoted two full pages to traffic safety in its inaugural monthly newsletter. In an echo of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who claimed at the initial Vision Zero press conference that 73 percent of crashes injuring pedestrians are the victim's fault, it featured an eyebrow-raising statistic that blames four of the five Upper East Side pedestrian fatalities in 2013 on the dead victims. But that's a misleading way to characterize the cause of most pedestrian deaths, and given NYPD's track record of rushing to blame victims in its crash investigations, it may not even be an accurate depiction of these five Upper East Side deaths.

In September, 16-year-old Renee Thompson was walking to the subway after getting off work just after 10 p.m., when, crossing Third Avenue at 60th Street, she was hit and killed by a turning truck driver. Now DOT is proposing shorter crossing distances at the intersection, but  Community Board 8's transportation committee wants the agency to go further and also look at the dangers pedestrians face just one block away, where drivers jostle along Second Avenue to get on to the Queensboro Bridge.

Tomorrow, Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito and Transportation Alternatives will take a well-deserved victory lap on the First and Second Avenue protected bike lanes.

We mentioned this briefly in a post about the bike access improvements on the Manhattan side of the Queensboro Bridge, but the redesign of First Avenue in East Harlem and the Upper East Side is completed and worth a closer look.

Many commuters on the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge this morning noticed new markings going in on First Avenue for a short but critical extension of the protected bike lane between 59th and 61st Streets. The changes, part of a plan supported by Community Boards 6 and 8 last spring, bring safer connections to both First Avenue and 59th Street.