DOT chief pushes back on City Council’s latest street safety proposals

The Adams administration on Tuesday opposed a series of road safety bills proposed by the city council.

Traffic Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez’s problems with the legislation revolved around his agency’s authority to manage the city’s roads. But during a lengthy hearing he was able to argue against measures aimed at protecting students leaving school and pedestrians on busy roads.

“Unfortunately, it sounds like the DOT will not support any of the bills that we want to discuss today,” said Selvena Brooks-Powers, Chair of the Transportation Committee, at the beginning of the hearing.

They included a proposal to install bollards on some sidewalks and crosswalks when they are reconstructed. But Rodriguez said the DOT is working with the NYPD to determine where those go and doesn’t want to be forced to add them anywhere.

Another bill called for safety signs to be installed near schools to alert drivers that students are nearby.

“Our research shows that the specific treatments that this bill would require are not effective in reducing injuries,” Rodriguez said in his prepared remarks. “In fact, there is evidence that excessive signage can actually distract drivers from seeing the most important messages.”

Rodriguez also shot down suggestions that the DOT should put reflective material on some curbs to make them more visible and add speed bumps near senior centers.

The hearing, which was Rodriguez’s first public appearance before the City Council of 2023, came after 255 people were killed by motorists in New York City last year.

The proposals are backed by road safety advocates like Priscilla Afokoba, whose 10-year-old daughter was hit by a car while walking on the sidewalk in Far Rockaway last year.

“It’s an experience no one would ever wish on their worst enemy,” Afokoba said. “The thought of my daughter being taken away from us and never seeing her again is just unbearable.”

Amy Cohen, who founded Families For Safe Streets and whose 12-year-old son Sammy Cohen Eckstein was killed by a motorist next to Prospect Park in 2013, said the city needs the “rapid implementation of proven traffic calming and the design changes needed to ensure that every street across the city is safe for our children, our seniors, and all New Yorkers.”

Rodriguez was also pressured because his department failed to catch up on the roads master plan, passed by the council in 2019, which requires the city to install 30 miles of new bus lanes and 50 miles of protected bike lanes each year.

DOT officials blamed a labor shortage for the department’s failure to meet those goals in 2022, but noted that crews had upgraded more crossings with safety improvements over the past year than originally promised.

But the council and DOT officials agreed on one area: a proposed resolution to ask Albany lawmakers to reduce the speed limit to 5 miles per hour on streets participating in the city’s Open Streets program. Last month Gov. Kathy Hochul signaled that she would support legislation that would allow the city to reduce its speed limits.