Over the past several years, important changes have been made to the city’s streets: new pedestrian plazas, wider sidewalks, narrower intersections, and dedicated lanes for bicycles and buses. Though a majority of New Yorkers supports these changes, they have nonetheless become the subject of heated controversy and debate. Hardly a day passes without one of the city’s papers or magazines covering this debate about the city’s new transportation policies. This report investigates the changes happening on the city’s streets in terms of a historic goal that the city set in 2008: to reduce traffic fatalities by half by 2030. Achieving this goal is critical: despite decades of progress, traffic crashes still pose a risk to the health and safety of city residents on the same scale as gun violence. In fact, more New Yorkers are killed by traffic than murdered by guns, according to data from the city’s health department. (Author/publisher)
Abstract