Pols: No cam do
Fail puts kids at risk from speeding near schools
The streets of New York City are about to become a good deal more dangerous.
The city’s speed camera program was suspended on Wednesday because the state Senate failed to pass legislation extending the program despite calls by advocates and elected officials, including Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo.
“Imagine a government allowing drunk driving laws to lapse,” Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White said. “It would be unthinkable to intentionally make our streets more dangerous, but that is exactly what the Republican leadership in the Senate has decided to do, except the offense they’ve decided to legalize is even more deadly.”
The cameras did not technically go dark; the city will keep them on to monitor data about the speeds of vehicles, a City Hall spokesman said. What the city will not be able to do is issue $50 tickets to those caught speeding.
“Unfortunately, maybe we’ll get the chance now to see, with the cameras turned off, what happens to that speeding,” DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said Wednesday.
The city has argued that the cameras are a clear success — pointing to data showing that they reduce speeding by more than 60%.
Trottenberg said speeding had declined 60%, the number of struck pedestrians dropped by 17% and fatal crashes dropped by 55% in areas where speed cameras were in use.
De Blasio had hoped legislative session with a law to expand the use of the cameras, seeking to nearly double the number of locations in which they could be used. But after Wednesday, the city will be left with just 20 mobile speed cameras that are covered under a separate law and can be used around schools through August.
“We’ll be using mobile cameras, we’ll take them around the city and we’ll try to hit the spots, but then by the end of the summer everything is completely shut off,” Trottenberg said.
A Transportation Department mobile unit employee named Dee, who declined to give her last name, expressed her displeasure.
“I got grandkids, how’re you telling me you’re doing something for the safety of children, that you’re gonna take it away?” she asked. “What about if you take this camera off, god forbid and something bad happened to that child? What are you gonna tell people — I’m sorry? If I only knew?”
At an unrelated press conference in his Manhattan offices, Gov. Cuomo said Republicans in the Senate were endangering children’s lives.
“You are putting lives in jeopardy. It is that simple,” he said. “You will see speeding and recklessness increase, and you will put lives in jeopardy.”
Bills to extend the program had passed the Democratic-controlled state Assembly, but died in the GOP-led Senate, where Republicans stalled their passage on behalf of Sen. Simcha Felder, who has sought to tie the issue to requiring armed guards at city schools, a nonstarter for Democrats. Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, caucuses with the GOP and has provided them with the needed 32nd vote for the Senate majority.
“They don’t want to admit that they’re against it,” Cuomo said of the Republicans. “You don’t need a special session, you don’t need a lightning bolt from heaven.”