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DOT chief pushes back on City Council’s latest street safety proposals
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Feb 14, 2023
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Catalina Gonella
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Feb 14, 2023
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The Adams administration on Tuesday resisted a slate of street safety bills proposed by the City Council.
Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez’s issues with the legislation revolved around his agency’s authority to manage city streets. But during a lengthy hearing, he was put in the position of arguing against measures intended to protect students leaving school and pedestrians on busy streets.
“It sounds, unfortunately, like DOT doesn’t support any of the bills that we’re looking to discuss today,” Transportation Committee Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers said at the start of the hearing.
They included a proposal to install bollards on some sidewalks and crosswalks when they’re reconstructed. But Rodriguez said the DOT works with the NYPD to determine where those go, and doesn’t want to be forced to add them anywhere.
Another bill called for installing safety signs near schools to alert drivers that students are nearby.
“Our research shows that the specific treatments this bill would require are not effective at reducing injuries,” Rodriguez said in his prepared remarks. “In fact, there is evidence that excessive signage can actually distract drivers from seeing the most important messages.”
Rodriguez also shot down proposals to require the DOT to install reflective material on some curbs to make them more visible and to add speed bumps near senior centers.
The hearing, which was Rodriguez’s first public appearance before the City Council in 2023, came after 255 people were killed by motorists in New York City last year.
The proposals are supported by street safety advocates like Priscilla Afokoba, whose 10-year old daughter was struck by a car in Far Rockaway while walking on the sidewalk last year.
“It’s an experience nobody would ever wish on their worst enemy,” said Afokoba. “The thought of my daughter taken away from us and to never see her again is simply unbearable.”
Amy Cohen, who founded Families For Safe Streets and whose 12-year old son Sammy Cohen Eckstein was killed by a driver next to Prospect Park in 2013, said the city needs the “rapid implementation of the proven traffic calming and design changes needed to ensure that every street across the city is safe to navigate for our children, our seniors and all New Yorkers.”
Rodriguez was also pressed on his department’s failure to make good on the Streets Master Plan, which was passed by the Council in 2019 and requires the city to install 30 miles of new bus lanes and 50 miles of protected bike lanes each year.
DOT officials blamed a shortage of workers for the department's failure to meet those goals in 2022, but noted that crews had upgraded more intersections with safety improvements last year than were originally promised.
But the Council and DOT officials did agree on one area: a proposed resolution to ask lawmakers in Albany to reduce the speed limit to 5 mph on streets participating in the city's Open Streets Program. Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul signaled she would support a law to allow the city to reduce its speed limits.
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new york city
Politics
transportation
Stephen Nessen
Stephen Nessen covers transportation. Since 2008 he has reported on everything from Occupy Wall Street, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, Hurricane Sandy, to Trump’s campaign for president. His transportation reporting has taken him everywhere from the MTA’s secret Rail Control Center to the gleaming subways of Seoul. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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