NEW YORK: Many New Yorkers imagine town is finest appreciated on foot. However the teeming streets – full of vehicles, bikes and a rising variety of different autos – grew to become 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 mild 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. Total, in 2024 there was an almost 18% surge in pedestrian deaths, which jumped to 119 by means of 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 govt director of Transportation Alternate options, an advocacy group that tracks visitors fatalities. “So, to see any improve 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 12 months generally known as “Sammy’s Legislation,” which gave town the authority to decrease the velocity restrict to twenty miles per hour on nearly 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 current bike lanes, the Transportation Division mentioned. The town has additionally put in greater than 1.4 million sq. ft 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 town wanted to extra quickly deploy options, reminiscent of bus lanes; curb extensions; raised crosswalks; concrete dividers that slender driving lanes and make it more durable to take large turns; and different “three-dimensional obstacles”. “Clearly, as New Yorkers are getting out an increasing number of, we’re not as protected on the streets as we must be,” Pearlstein mentioned.
