Chelseagroup rallies for pedestrian safety at City Hall

Karla Quintero, research director for Transportation Alternatives, addresses the crowd at the group’s pedestrian-safety rally this weekend on the steps of City Hall.

Chelsea group rallies for pedestrian safety at City Hall

By Lindsay Beyerstein

A pedestrian safety rally organized by the Chelsea-based non-profit group Transportation Alternatives drew more than 100 people to the steps of City Hall in the freezing cold on Sunday, including families whose loved ones had been killed by cars. The demonstrators called on Mayor Bloomberg to target the city’s deadliest intersections for safety improvements.

This past weekend, cars killed at least three pedestrians on city streets, according to news reports. In a statement issued by the New York City’s Department of Transportation, it was confirmed that 163 pedestrians were killed by cars in 2006, an increase of seven deaths over 2005 figures.

Just 10 percent of the city’s intersections account for 50 percent of pedestrian crashes, as Transportation Alternatives calls them. Certain stretches of road that are especially treacherous include Ninth Avenue in Manhattan (in south Chelsea), Roosevelt Avenue in Queens and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, advocates say.

On Feb. 7, 82-year-old Amelia Chimienti was struck and killed by a large flatbed truck trying to make a yellow light at the intersection of Ninth Avenue and 16th Street in Chelsea. Community activists had long identified that corner and others nearby as being among the most treacherous in the neighborhood.

TA’s research shows that a significant percentage of pedestrians are killed while crossing at the corner and with the signal, including Chimienti. Such tragedies can be averted by re-engineering sidewalks and intersections to slow cars down and discourage drivers from cutting corners, according to the group.

“These injuries and these deaths, they’re preventable,” said Noah Budnick, director of advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, from the podium on the steps of City Hall on Sunday. “These are crashes, they’re not accidents.”

Accidents, by definition, cannot be prevented—but most pedestrian deaths can be averted by engineering improvements, he said.

At the demonstration, Karla Quintero, the group’s research director, outlined a five-point plan to make New York streets safer for walkers.

Speaking in English and Spanish, Quintero challenged City Hall to prevent 2,000 injuries and deaths over the next year by selectively targeting the most dangerous intersections, making safety upgrades part of routine road maintenance, eliminating turning conflicts, providing special protection for children and the elderly, and charging killer drivers with crimes.

The demonstrators held up white cardboard hands to symbolize pedestrians who have died on the streets of New York.

“We use the handprint because each handprint is unique, and that’s what we’re sacrificing on the street. We’re sacrificing unique human beings,” said Rachel Myers, an activist who witnessed the death of her fiancé in a hit-and-run crash on the Upper East Side in 2004.

James St. John, whose 4-year-old grandson, James Rice, was struck and killed in February by an SUV in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, demanded that City officials be held accountable for their failure to implement a long-overdue traffic calming plan for Third Avenue in Brooklyn. The boy and his 18-year-old aunt were crossing Baltic Street at Third Avenue with the signal when a yellow hummer rounded the corner and smashed into the pair.

The traffic calming plan was proposed in 2004 after a truck killed two fifth graders at a nearby intersection, but the City failed to follow through on the recommendations.

“The City has the money. Why keep pushing this back? Why keep delaying this? Are they going to wait until we’ve got no kids, no senior citizens, nobody?” St. John asked.