Give mayor credit for lifesaving achievement
On Jan. 11, 2001, the front page of this newspaper renamed Queens Blvd. the “Boulevard of Death” as the bloodstained thoroughfare was averaging nine pedestrians run down in crashes every year, one every six weeks. So we are more than pleased to offer the highest praise to Mayor de Blasio for helping the street live down that gory reputation. The wide road hasn’t seen a single pedestrian death for three years running, thanks among other things to a lower speed limit, redesigned crosswalks, rejiggered car lanes and improved waiting areas for walkers.
Those are some of the creative safety tools, together known as Vision Zero, that de Blasio and his transportation commissioner Polly Trottenberg are aggressively applying all across the city.
It’s now clear beyond any reasonable doubt they are saving lives.
Last year, on the 6,000 miles of roads in the five boroughs, 214 people were killed in crashes; 101 of them were pedestrians, the lowest level since recordkeeping began in 1910. Measured against 2016, the drops are 7% and 32% respectively.
Go back to 2013, and the declines work out to 28% and 45%, respectively — made all the more remarkable because nationally, many such trends are going in the wrong direction.
These are grandparents on their way home from the senior center. Moms carrying groceries. Millennials paying more attention to their smartphones than to the people ahead of them. Young people on their way to school.
Among kids, the life-saving has been most pronounced: There was just one child killed last year. For the last five years, an average of seven schoolchildren had perished each year, prompting their parents to push through their pain to launch a powerful grassroots road-safety campaign. Those voices have helped tremendously. As has the NYPD, which boosted enforcement with more summonses to drivers who failed to yield in crosswalks; such tickets are now four times the pre-Vision Zero numbers. And longoverdue criminal consequences for hit-and-runs.
There are more speed cameras and red light cameras, or at least as many as Albany will now allow. There is that lower speed limit, 25 mph citywide down from 30. More education for taxi and Uber drivers. More protected bike lanes. More time given to pedestrians at crosswalks.
Bicycle, motorcycle and motor vehicle fatalities were up a blip in 2017. But the streets on the whole are growing safer for all.
A more livable city, quite literally, with zero still far off but closer than before. Thanks, mayor.