Street not-smarts

Mayor de Blasio, who early in his first term vowed to make the streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers, is set to leave office with a bloodstain on his final report card. In the summer just concluded, according to an analysis by Transportation Alternatives, crashes took 77 lives, the highest number since before Vision Zero began in 2014. That total included 11 walkers, which is more than the last three summers combined, seven bicyclists and 42 people in automobiles. More than 200 New Yorkers have died on our streets this year, a grim high for the mayor’s term.

In related news, rather than making good on his promise to make up to 100 miles (out of the city’s 6,300 miles of streets) car-free, the Department of Transportation and its partners have come nowhere near that goal.

It would be too glib to simply blame Hizzoner for the uptick in danger on city streets; the pandemic has prompted people to abandon mass transit by the millions, flooding the roads with cars, which are getting struck in traffic and too often driving recklessly. Meantime, there are more zippy delivery e-bikes than ever zooming every which way.

To his credit, de Blasio has correctly urged Albany to give the city more control over its speed- and red-light cameras. He tried to tame e-bikes before the city and state legislators unleashed them. He’s created more bike lanes, including on the Brooklyn Bridge, to give two-wheeled vehicles protected lanes in which to ride. And he’s rightly insisting the feds fast-track congestion pricing.

But he failed to ramp up a program that was supposed to get reckless drivers off the road. He’s gone far too slow in redesigning dangerous streets like Queens Blvd., which decades ago the Daily News christened the Boulevard of Death, and the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. And Vision Zero-related moving summonses dropped from 715,000 in fiscal year 2017 to under 308,000 in fiscal year 2021.

Those are sizable blind spots in his vision.