Good morning. It's Tuesday. We'll find out why a transit advocacy group says the first quarter of 2024 was the worst for pedestrian fatalities in New York in 10 years. We'll also get details on the latest official who plans to challenge Mayor Eric Adams in the Democratic primary next year.
A recent report by a transit advocacy group found that the first three months of 2024 were the deadliest for pedestrians since the city began its Vision Zero campaign to reduce or eliminate traffic fatalities. The group, Traffic Alternatives, also projected that 2024 would be the worst year for what it called "traffic violence" in the 10 years of Vision Zero. Traffic fatalities in New York have declined in the last 30 years, as my colleague Dodai Stewart pointed out in the Street Wars series last week. Some 265 people were killed in 2023, down from 381 in 2000 and 701 in 1990. This year, Transportation Alternatives says, pedestrian fatalities are up. As of June 30, 61 pedestrians had been killed in accidents on the streets, compared with 48 in the first six months of last year. The increase comes after a record low number of pedestrian fatalities in the pandemic year of 2020 and the second-fewest number last year, according to the city's Department of Transportation. Transportation Alternatives also says that 51 motorists have died in traffic accidents so far this year, more than in any previous year under Vision Zero. Traffic experts say reckless driving has become a problem, particularly outside Manhattan. "There's a culture of racing cars and doing doughnuts and other car tricks that we would think of as suburban or rural phenomena," said Sarah Kaufman, the director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University. The city says that automated speed cameras and red-light cameras have helped, as have automated devices that track other traffic problems. Today the transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, will release statistics showing that an automated enforcement program has reduced the number of overweight trucks — trucks that weigh more than is allowed for their size — on a portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway by 64 percent since in November. But as for the speed and red-light cameras, Kaufman said that "a huge number of vehicles are skirting penalties by obscuring their license plates." For a ticket to be issued, the license plate on a car that a camera catches speeding or running a red light must be legible. And speeders seem to speed repeatedly. Kaufman pointed to a study by another N.Y.U. researcher, Marcel Moran, who used the term "super speeders" to refer to drivers with more than 100 infractions involving speeds of at least 10 miles per hour above the limit. His analysis of city data showed that the number of super speeders had climbed rapidly since 2020, when there was one. Last year, there were 186. He also found that super speeders had 35 nonspeeding traffic violations, including an average of seven red-light camera infractions. One car had accumulated 373 tickets. The average super speeder car owes $11,083 in fines, according to Moran's analysis. Officials want more penalties for drivers caught running traffic signals. The city has been pushing for new state laws to increase the penalties for dangerous driving, including a provision that would make it possible to suspend the registration of vehicles that rack up more than five red-light camera violations over 12 months. In a city of dashboard-pounding, outta-my-way driving, officials want everyone to go slower. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, recently signed legislation known as Sammy's Law, which gives New York City the authority to lower the speed limit to 20 m.p.h. on almost all streets. It was named after Sammy Cohen Eckstein, a boy who died after he was hit by a van in Park Slope, Brooklyn, nearly 11 years ago. Elizabeth Adams, the interim co-executive director of Transportation Alternatives, said New York City was lagging on infrastructure changes that would make streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. She said the city had completed only 2.3 miles of the 50 miles of protected bike lanes scheduled for this year. She also urged more "daylighting" — redesigning intersections to improve visibility by making the space close to the corner a no-parking zone. Such designs are lacking at 92 percent of the intersections at which pedestrians were killed, she said. The Transportation Department said it planned to daylight at least 1,000 locations this year. And the agency is looking to install more red-light cameras. But that hinges on whether Hochul signs a bill — passed by the Legislature in the session that ended last month — that would allow them. WEATHER Prepare for a chance of showers and thunderstorms that will persist through the evening. Temperatures in the mid-80s during the day will drop to the mid-70s in the evening. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Aug. 13 (Tisha B'Av). The latest Metro news
We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. City comptroller challenges Adams
Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, will announce today that he will run against Mayor Eric Adams in the Democratic primary next year. My colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons writes in an exclusive article that Lander's move sets up an unusual face-off between the two most prominent citywide elected officials. Two other Democrats have already announced plans to challenge Adams: Scott Stringer, who preceded Lander as comptroller, and Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn. Both have supported left-leaning policies, and Lander is also looking to run to the left of Adams, a moderate Democrat whose approval rating has tumbled to a record low. Lander, 55, used a campaign kickoff video to appeal to New Yorkers who are worried about budget cuts to libraries and the high costs of child care. Voters "can replace a leader when they fail the basic tests of the job: to be honest with us, to keep our families safe, to make sure our kids learn — the basic things New Yorkers need their government to do," Lander says in the video. As the city comptroller, Lander has tussled with Adams, saying that the migrant crisis showed that the mayor could not navigate crises. Last year Lander moved to limit the mayor's emergency spending powers after a company landed a $432 million no-bid contract to provide services to migrants — and was accused of giving them bogus work papers, hiring unlicensed security guards and wasting food. Lander's office is also organizing lawsuits to force a congestion-pricing program to move forward. It is unusual for a citywide elected official to run against an incumbent mayor in a New York City primary. It last happened 35 years ago, when Harrison Goldin, the comptroller at the time, ran against Mayor Edward Koch in the Democratic primary. Koch, whose approval ratings had slipped after nearly 12 years in office, lost the primary to David Dinkins, who went on to defeat Rudolph Giuliani, the Republican candidate, in the general election. Goldin, after coming in fourth in the primary, left city government to start a financial advisory firm. METROPOLITAN DIARY Hummingbirds
Dear Diary: As I left my house in Staten Island, I nodded at the man who was mowing my next-door neighbor's badly overgrown lawn. It was nearly knee-high in some spots and thick with weeds. He had been at it for quite a while. "That's a lot of work," I said. "I'm glad she finally called you!" He smiled, gestured toward my front yard and said something I didn't catch. Assuming he was asking if we would like to hire him, too, I walked over to politely decline. It turned out he was pointing at the hummingbird feeder at our front window. "I saw hummingbirds all morning," he said. "I live near I.S. 61 and have hummingbird feeders, too. They come all the time." — Sarah Yuster Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Mathew Brownstein and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: A dangerous time for pedestrians
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