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Pedestrian Safety

By Gail Robinson

26 August 02

It was dubbed the Boulevard of Death --12 lanes of traffic, daring people to cross. From 1993 to 2000, 72 pedestrians were killed on Queens Boulevard, memorialized with makeshift tributes and protests by irate neighbors.

The death toll has fallen since the outcry of 2000 -- no one has been killed so far this year -- and neighborhood activists credit better signs, improved timing of lights and other measures. But Queens Boulevard still presents a daunting challenge. On a recent afternoon, an elderly woman had to stop three times and wait for the light to once again turn green as she navigated the crosswalk at 67th Road. She stopped between the service road and the main boulevard, at the median strip and finally, once again before entering the last of the service lanes and getting safely to the other side.

Signs berate and remind pedestrians and drivers alike: "A Pedestrian Was Killed Here." "Be Alert." "Wait for the Walk Signal." Fences along the median prevent people from crossing between intersections.

In many ways, Queens Boulevard provides a metaphor for pedestrian conditions throughout the city: Better than they once were but still hazardous. Deaths have fallen sharply since the early 1990s but about 200 New Yorkers are killed and thousands more injured while walking or bicycling every year. And, even for those who escape unscathed, walking or bicycling can often be unpleasant, a kind of death defying obstacle course.

In a dense city where everyone competes for everything, balancing the needs of drivers, walkers and cyclists presents a constant challenge. The Bloomberg administration has indicated that it might be more pedestrian friendly than its predecessors. But helping pedestrians could mean placing restrictions on motorists -- and while city officials recently passed a new law banning bicycles on sidewalks, they would be loathe to do anything that would irk the more numerous and politically powerful drivers of cars.

"Every place in the city is too potentially dangerous," says Charles Komanoff of Right of Way, a New York group that describes itself as "dedicated to asserting the rights of car-free street users." "We look at every place as a hot spot because of the ingrained culture that the driver comes first."

THE BLISS LEGACY

On September 13, 1899, an electric car struck and killed Henry Bliss, making him the first pedestrian death in North America. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bliss died in Manhattan -- at the corner of Central Park West and 74th Street. Many others followed.

By the early 1990s, about 250 pedestrians were killed by cars, trucks and buses every year. "Killed by Automobile," a detailed analysis of 947 cases between 1994 and 1997 in which people not in cars or other vehicles were killed by those who were, concluded that elderly New Yorkers were particularly likely to die this way. Drunk driving figured in only four percent of the fatalities studied; 17 percent involved a driver turning into a crosswalk and 11 percent involved speeding.

Over the next several years, pedestrian deaths fell to their current level. This was due partly to increased police enforcement of traffic laws and to TRAFFICSTAT, a relative of the heralded COMPSTAT program which helped police track traffic hazards. That information enabled the Transportation Department to address problems at the deadliest intersections. For example, traffic engineers improved signs and lighting at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn, previously one of the city's most hazardous crossings.

"They've taken care of the worst locations," says John Kaehny, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. To slash deaths further, he says, "you have to change the overall picture, which is much more costly and difficult than improving a few hotspots."

PEDESTRIAN DEATHS

Walking Downtown

By Carolyn Ennis

Lower Manhattan has never been an easy place to walk around. Walking from the South Street Seaport to Battery Park City, for example, would require a detour of several blocks around the World Trade Center and then a hazardous navigation of the seven lanes of West Street, which is called a street but functions as a high-speed highway.

Despite the construction of the Tribeca Bridge along Chambers Street in 1992, "20,000 children still cross West Street on a daily basis to reach their schools, the park and the ball fields and their homes in Battery Park City," says Judy Duffy of the local community board.

But now, the need to rebuild the area excites planners, officials and local residents with the opportunity it creates to make the area more pedestrian-friendly than it was before.

All six plans released in July by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation called for restoring Greenwich Street as a through-street. Several of the plans proposed creating an underground tunnel for vehicular traffic on West Street. Planners estimate the cost of this, however, could be as much as $2 billion

Widening sidewalks presents a far cheaper way to make life easier for beleaguered pedestrians. "There are a lot of streets in Lower Manhattan where pedestrians walk in the streets because the sidewalks are too narrow. The cost of making improvements by widening the sidewalks is low," said John Kaehny, of Transportation Alternatives.

Alexander Wood, executive director of the Disability Network of New York City, wants to make sure that any plans for the area improve access for the disabled as well. Many piers currently lack wheelchair ramps, Wood said, and the shuttle buses that take people to and from the newly-numerous ferries do not have wheelchair lifts.

While final plans are debated, some interim improvements are being made, such as better sidewalk lighting, reduced crowding and sidewalks a little less cluttered with obstructions. At the same time, though, security precautions have created barriers, literally, that did not exist before.

In the last few months, a number of pedestrians have died or been injured on the streets of New York.

Among them:

  • Four-year-old Sergio Lara Jr., waiting with his mother and sister to cross 120th Street and 103rd Avenue in Richmond Hill, Staten Island. Two cars collided at the intersection and one then hit the family, killing the boy. A month earlier, the city had approved plans for a traffic light at the two streets, but it had not been installed.
  • A women and her 13-year-old granddaughter in Brownsville, Brooklyn. They were struck and killed by a sport utility vehicle that went out of control and jumped the curb. The driver, who faced no charges, said she may have confused the brake and the accelerator.
  • Fifteen Saturday shoppers and strollers near Bloomingdale's were wounded, two critically, when a taxi cab went out of control and jumped the curb.
To further reduce such deaths and injuries, some advocates urge that drivers who cause accidents be prosecuted. Few are.

For years, prosecutors, citing court rulings and a lack of resources, were loathe to bring charges in traffic accidents unless the driver was either drunk or guilty of two violations, i.e. speeding and running a red light, not just speeding. Last year, though, Jon Paul Lazertes gained the dubious distinction of being the first sober person in New York ever convicted of murder for his role in a traffic accident. He killed two people after driving at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour on the Belt Parkway.

In many cases, there may have been no clear-cut violation. So, for example, no charges were filed against a 76-year-old Long Island man who lost control of his delivery van and killed seven people outside Macy's on Herald Square three days after Christmas.

PREVENTIVE TACTICS

But what can be done to avoid the accidents in the first place?

The mayor and City Council apparently think cracking down on cyclists might help. Last month, Bloomberg signed a law instituting fines for cyclists who ride on sidewalks. Alternative transportation advocates say the measure ignores the fact that cars -- not bicycles, skateboards or skates --kill pedestrians.

Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall has said improving conditions for pedestrians is important to her, particularly in Lower Manhattan. The city has widened sidewalks at Times Square and added mid block crossings in some congested midtown areas.

The mayor and Weinshall would like to see more cameras installed at intersections to nab drivers running red lights, but the state, which has the authority to issue traffic tickets, has stymied such efforts, says Kaehny.

To take some cars off the streets, the mayor announced earlier this year that he would reduce the number of city owned cars. He has encouraged members of his administration to use mass transit rather than limousines and generally does so himself.

And Bloomberg has retained some of the restrictions on cars with only one occupant from entering Manhattan that were put in effect after September 11. Bloomberg also plans to have some parking meters operate on Sundays, which might discourage people from driving in to Manhattan.

Right of Way has recommended a set of things it thinks the mayor could do to make the city more pedestrian friendly. It includes symbolic measures such as standing "with victims of car violence rather than with drivers" and no longer "embracing the motoring minority." But it also calls for efforts to control traffic in residential neighborhoods, placing tolls on the East River crossings and expanding sidewalks and crosswalks.

But Komanoff says the mayor has not done very much. "I haven't seen anything from this administration that materially improves the lot of pedestrians and bicycle riders other than that he has held on to some of the restrictions" on car with single occupants, he says.

Komanoff does praise Bloomberg for "opening the discussion" on making driving in New York cost more by instituting tolls on the East River crossings. While that idea has always been seen as too politically volatile to touch, it is just the kind of thing many pedestrian and cycling advocates support.

WALK, DON'T DRIVE

These activists want to alter the basic balance between human and machine in the city. For 100 years, says Kaehny, the city accommodated the auto, narrowing sidewalks to create more lanes for car and truck traffic and rounding corners to make it easier for cars to turn.

Much of this has been at the expense of pedestrians. And so, on summer evenings, walkers, cyclists, skaters, baby strollers and scooters compete with each other and with vendors, newspaper boxes and sidewalks cafes for room to maneuver on city sidewalks. Turning cars ignore people in crosswalks, though wary motorists look out for people darting from between parked cars to cross streets in mid block.

The sidewalks may be more crowded than ever, according to a recent report in the New York Times. In 2000, about 23 million people visited New York. In 2001, more than 37 million people visited -- and the overwhelming majority no doubt walked the sidewalks of Manhattan at some point, joining the borough's 1.5 million residents and 800,000 daily commuters in a scramble for space.

Inanimate objects make a bad situation worse, says Transportation Alternatives. It has mounted a campaign to, in its words, "take back New York's precious and vanished sidewalk" by ridding sidewalks of obstructions such as the distribution boxes for publications. Some 150 of those crowd a single four-block area of the Upper West Side.

Parks are a battleground as well. For years, advocates have been trying to get cars totally banned from Prospect Park, which now allows vehicle traffic at rush hour. This year, they think they could succeed because all city councilmembers who represent districts bordering the park have endorsed a trial ban. The Department of Transportation remains opposed to the idea.

"TRAFFIC CALMING"

Many pedestrian rights and safety advocates in New York and throughout the country have embraced an array of steps called "traffic calming." As described by the Institute of Transportation Engineers, these are a "combination of mainly physical measures that reduce the negative effects of motor vehicle use, alter driver behavior and improve conditions for non-motorized street users."

Specific ideas includes speed humps, a more attractive variant on the speed bumps found in many residential neighborhoods; extending sidewalks into the parking lane at intersections to slow traffic and shorten crossing times for pedestrians; and creating median strips on streets.

One pioneer in the field, Michael Wallwork of Jacksonville, Florida, has developed a kit for a roundabout to be installed at intersections. He tried it out in three New York neighborhoods and proclaimed it a success. By forcing cars to slow down to go around the device, he says, the roundabout "doesn't stop traffic so you have flow. It stops accidents and lets people cross."

Such measures are not without cost. They would slow traffic, Kaehny says, but unlike many frustrated drivers stuck in jams, blaring their horns, he thinks that is not necessarily bad. "Speeding is absolutely epidemic in New York," Kaehny says, adding, "When you talk about slowing traffic, it's not to a crawl. We're not talking about putting speed bumps on Atlantic Avenue."

JAYWALKING PART OF THE PROBLEM?

But what about pedestrians? Don't they share some of the blame for the chaos on city streets?

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani apparently thought do. During his administration, he installed barriers at several crowded midtown Manhattan intersections to restrict not only when but how people could cross the street. (They remain there.) And he tried to stop jaywalking by increasing enforcement and raising fines.

By all accounts he had little effect. "There's city pride associated with jaywalking. We view people who don't do it as rubes," Justin Harrington of Bozell, an ad agency hired by the city to develop an anti-jaywalking campaign, told the New York Times.

This attitude angers some drivers. While faulting motorists who speed along Queens Boulevard, the American Automobile Association also condemns "those pedestrians who meander across the roadway as if they have no more to contend with than a clang-clanging street car."

Weinshall sees their point: "In any large urban setting, people rush through the streets but New Yorkers are notorious."

GREENWAYS ARE AN ANSWER

Those looking for a respite in the conflict between person and vehicle can find some relief on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. The oldest greenway in the United States, it was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, the designers of Central Park and Prospect Park. Lined mostly with homes and apartment buildings, it extends from Church Avenue in Flatbush almost to the Coney Island boardwalk and features 12 lanes of traffic -- six on the main road flanked by three lanes each on two service roads, each separated from the main traffic by a wooded median. Benches and a pedestrian path go down each median and the west side features a bike path as well.

On a recent Sunday, elderly people leaning on walkers meandered the walkway, and they were largely separated from cyclists on their way to the beach, from the children on scooters and, most importantly, from the smoothly moving lanes of cars. Of course, it being New York, some pedestrians insisted upon ambling along the bicycle path, and some cars turning off the parkway ignored pedestrians and cyclists, ignoring the rules of right of way. But, for a street in New York, this was about as good as it gets for pedestrians.

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