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New York City Will Add 1,500 Timers for Pedestrians to Make Streets Safer
New York City will install countdown timers at 1,500 boulevard intersections to make its streets even safer for pedestrians after traffic fatalities reached an all- time low, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
The plan was among the recommendations in a report by the city’s Department of Transportation, which studied fatal traffic accidents since 2002. The city will also test removal of curbside parking to improve left-turn visibility on Manhattan avenues and implement a pilot program to create 20 mile-per-hour zones in residential neighborhoods.
Pedestrians accounted for 52 percent of traffic fatalities in the city between 2005 and 2009, according to the mayor. The city had 256 traffic deaths in 2009, a 63 percent drop since 1990, and its safest year since record-keeping began in 1910. Pedestrian deaths dropped to 155 in 2009 from 186 in 2002, and reached a low of 139 in 2007, city officials said.
“The report and actions detailed today, including the installation of pedestrian countdown signals across the city, will make our streets even safer, especially for the pedestrians,” Bloomberg said at a news conference at Northern Boulevard and 108th Street in Queens, one of the wide roadways equipped with a new countdown device.
Joint Venture
It will cost the city $4 million to install all 1,500 timers as part of the walk/don’t walk signs, which tell pedestrians how long they have to cross a street before the light changes, said Seth Solomonow, a Transportation Department spokesman.
GELcore LLC of Independence, Ohio, a joint venture between General Electric Co. and Emcore Corp., manufactured the first 250 devices, and installation will be completed within a month, said Nicole Garcia, a department spokeswoman. A contract covering the remaining 1,250 hasn’t been awarded yet.
Of the 10 largest U.S. cities, New York recorded the lowest traffic fatality rate: 3.5 per 100,000 residents, compared with an average 7.75 per 100,000 among the others, according to the Transportation Department report released today.
Among the report’s findings: driver inattention caused 36 percent of fatal pedestrian crashes; failure to yield occurred in 27 percent; where accidents killed or seriously injured pedestrians, 80 percent of the drivers were men and 79 percent involved private vehicles, not taxis, trucks or buses. Manhattan had four times as many pedestrians killed or seriously injured per street mile than the other four city boroughs.
Test Program
Several cities, from San Francisco to Wilmington, Delaware, have installed countdown signals at intersections. New York tested the timers at 24 locations and studied the eight-year fatality data before deciding to go ahead with the plan, said Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
“New York is not like any other city, and so what we’re doing is bringing targeted solutions to the streets,” Sadik- Khan said at the news conference. “Before we were to go for full-scale implementation of a technology like the one we’re implementing today, we wanted to make sure that it worked.”
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net.
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