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| DATE | 2020-09-06 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Things that will totally fuck up your life that
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wsj.com
New York City to Lower Speed Limit on Nine Major Streets
Akane Otani
4-5 minutes
New York City will lower the speed limit by 5 miles an hour on nine
major roads across the five boroughs, officials said Tuesday, responding
to an increase in fatal car crashes this year that they say has been
caused by reckless driving.
The officials said they saw an increase in speeding violations when the
coronavirus pandemic hit New York in March. Lockdown restrictions to
control the spread of infections likely led to drivers taking advantage
of emptier roads, they said. Now that much of the city has reopened and
traffic has returned, officials are concerned that drivers are still
ignoring posted speed limits.
“Speeding has been rampant in New York City. It’s been rampant all
around the country, and unfortunately it’s having an effect on all the
great progress we’ve made toward Vision Zero,” the city’s Department of
Transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, said at a news conference.
Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx.
Photo: David 'Dee' Delgado/Bloomberg News
Under Vision Zero, an initiative launched by Mayor Bill de Blasio in
2014, the city is trying to eliminate all traffic deaths on its streets
by 2024. While fewer pedestrians and cyclists have been killed in
traffic accidents this year compared with the same period in 2019,
deaths involving motor-vehicle drivers and passengers have risen, said
Nilda Hofmann, the New York Police Department’s chief of transportation.
Over the coming weeks, the city will post signs declaring a 25 mph speed
limit on parts of Riverside Drive in Manhattan; Bruckner Boulevard and
Webster Avenue in the Bronx; Northern Boulevard in Queens; Flatbush
Avenue, Shore Parkway Service Road and Dahlgren Place in Brooklyn; and
Targee Street on Staten Island, officials said Tuesday.
The city will also lower the speed limit for Rockaway Boulevard in
Queens to 35 mph from the current 40 mph.
The changes are needed, “especially in this month, when we hopefully
expect our children to return to school,” Chief Hofmann said.
Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
Photo: Yana Paskova/Getty Images
Along with lowering the speed limit on major arteries, city officials
said they would continue to expand New York’s vast network of speed
cameras. Currently, the city estimates it is installing 60 speed cameras
a month. By the end of 2021, it hopes to have 2,000 cameras up and
running, according to Ms. Trottenberg.
Local representatives said they welcomed the change.
Councilman Rafael Salamanca Jr., a Democrat who represents the South
Bronx, said that as a child, he remembered hearing locals call the
intersection of Bruckner Boulevard and Hunts Point Avenue the “highway
to heaven”—a reference to the high number of fatalities that occurred there.
Elderly residents and those with disabilities have often struggled to
safely cross the area’s vast streets without getting caught in traffic,
he added.
While “changing the speed limit from 30 to 25 may seem inconvenient for
residents of the South Bronx, at the moment, it’s the right thing to do,
because pedestrian safety is a priority,” Mr. Salamanca said.
Write to Akane Otani at akane.otani-at-wsj.com
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
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