‘Walkable’ New York City became deadlier for pedestrians in 2024

NEW YORK: Many New Yorkers imagine the town is greatest appreciated on foot. However the teeming streets – filled with vehicles, bikes and a rising variety of different autos – turned more and more hostile to pedestrians in 2024, metropolis statistics present.
In July, a 51-year-old man was killed by a driver who ran a purple gentle in Harlem. In Oct, Felix Mendez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant, was killed by a driver whereas he waited at an intersection in Brooklyn at 3am. On Christmas Day, a taxi driver hit six pedestrians, together with a 9-year-old boy, in Manhattan.
General, in 2024 there was a virtually 18% surge in pedestrian deaths, which jumped to 119 by Dec. 30 from 101 throughout the identical time interval in 2023.
“Each single New Yorker is a pedestrian; we’re probably the most walkable metropolis within the US and the overwhelming variety of any New Yorkers’ journeys are on foot,” mentioned Philip Miatkowski, the interim deputy government director of Transportation Alternate options, an advocacy group that tracks visitors fatalities. “So, to see any enhance like that’s positively alarming and one thing we have to take critically.”
Leaders in New York have been trying to find methods to enhance pedestrian security. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed laws this yr often known as “Sammy’s Regulation,” which gave the town the authority to decrease the velocity restrict to twenty miles per hour on virtually all streets. It was named after Sammy Cohen Eckstein, a boy who died after he was hit by a van in Brooklyn in 2013. The town added 51km of protected bike lanes in 2023 and extra in 2024, and has widened present bike lanes, the Transportation Division mentioned. The town has additionally put in greater than 1.4 million sq. toes of pedestrian area over the past three years and has redesigned streets, together with Queens Boulevard and 96th Avenue in Manhattan.
Danny Pearlstein, coverage and communications director for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group, mentioned the town wanted to extra quickly deploy options, comparable to bus lanes; curb extensions; raised crosswalks; concrete dividers that slim driving lanes and make it more durable to take broad turns; and different “three-dimensional obstacles”. “Clearly, as New Yorkers are getting out increasingly, we’re not as secure on the streets as we ought to be,” Pearlstein mentioned.