Pols slow to OK speed cameras near schools
• Frederick Douglass
Academy • Girls Prep Lower East
Side Elementary • High School of Arts
& Technology • PS 158 Bayard Taylor
School • Bronx Envision
Academy • Herbert H. Lehman
High School • PS 189 Bilingual Center • PS 264 • Yeshivah of Flatbush • IS 230 • PS 139 • PS 145 • PS 228 • Success Academy
Springfield Gardens • Concord High School THE CITY HAS identified 15 schools it could potentially make safer with additional school zone speed cameras, but there’s one thing in the way: Albany.
With the state legislative session nearing its end, a proposal backed by Mayor de Blasio to double the school speed cameras and expand where they can be used remains mired in politics. And as time wanes, the risk rises because if Albany doesn’t do anything, the city won’t only lose out on adding more — it will have to shut off the 140 cameras it already has.
For those who have seen the consequences of speeding around schools — students, educators and parents — the inaction is mind-boggling. “It’s not political. We want to make sure that no more kids are being killed on their way to and from school, so that we can live out our lives like any other person,” Alison Collard de Beaufort, 17, said in an interview. “We’re not trying to do anything crazy here.”
Collard de Beaufort, a senior at Brooklyn Tech, started advocating after three classmates who had attended Middle School 51 in Park Slope with her were killed by cars in the span of about 15 months.
Speed cameras around schools were rolled out in 2014. The data say they are working — according to the Department of Transportation, speeding in school zones with cameras has dropped by 60%.
They also reduce injuries, according to the city. At Junior High School 227 in Brooklyn, overall injuries have dropped by 57%, pedestrian injuries by 64% and speeding by 29%. At Public School 246 in the Bronx, on the bustling Grand Concourse, injuries dropped by 31%, and speeding was reduced by 85%.
“The data is clear: Speed cameras save lives,” de Blasio said. “We need our current speed camera program renewed and expanded before it’s too late. This is quite literally life or death.”
But without at least an extension of the program, those cameras will go dark July 25.
The city’s request to expand the program includes a desire to raise the number of locations where cameras can operate at any one time from 140 to 290. The city has already identified schools where it might place cameras.
The bill is being held up in part by Sen. Simcha Felder, who oversees the Cities Committee, where the expansion bill has been bottled up despite support from 32 sponsors. His office declined comment.
Gov. Cuomo backed the bill Thursday — a day after his office would only tell The News that several proposals were under review. The support was announced by Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, and Alphonso David, his counsel, during a demonstration held outside his office by young children who’d lost friends and family to cars.
Among them was Preston Liao, 9, of Queens, whose younger sister Allison was struck and killed while crossing the street with her grandmother.
“My little sister was killed by a reckless driver when she was 3 years old. I wish I had super powers to save Ally’s life by teleporting into the (past),” he said. “Even though I don’t have super powers, I could still ask for speed safety cameras to protect me, my little brother Aidan and other kids.”