Mayor Bloomberg may not have completely tamed the mean streets of New York, but he certainly calmed them down and made them less deadly.
The number of traffic deaths declined steadily during his administration, and hit record lows in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
The increased safety — traffic deaths are down more than 30% from 2001 — came about because of a sweeping and aggressive program carried out by Bloomberg’s Department of Transportation.
It involved redesigning dangerous intersections and boulevards, imposing 20-mph speed zones around schools, widening sidewalks, extending street crossing times for pedestrians, installing speed-enforcement cameras and creating the nation’s first protected bicycle lanes.
“Hundreds of New Yorkers would not now be alive if not for these life-saving street improvements,” said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.
Under the mayor and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, drivers and cars no longer were granted top-priority status. Pedestrians, bicyclists and bus riders became equally — if not more — important, White said.
The Bloomberg administration says it converted 180 acres of roads to other uses, including public plazas, pedestrian medians and bicycle lanes.
The DOT also launched Citi Bike, the nation’s biggest bike-sharing program, and Select Bus Service, with off-board payment that cuts the time it takes for passengers to board, which translates into faster trips for riders.
Perhaps most notably, the DOT created a public plaza in Times Square, diverting traffic around part of Broadway right in the heart of the city.
Taking back so much pavement for pedestrians, and creating new open space like the Times Square plaza, is the mayor’s “top legacy,” Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said.
“I grew up in New York and I dreaded everything about places like Times Square,” Russianoff said. “The murderously crowded sidewalks. The slow slog as pedestrians made poky progress to get to their theater. And the cars! Honking and ploughing slowly into crowds.”
“And now?,” Russianoff said. “Tables and chairs. Much wider sidewalk space. Tourists speaking in dozens of languages. A state of affairs I never could have imagined through most of my life in New York City.”
But while swinging for the fences on transportation, Bloomberg had some big strikeouts.
He pushed for “congestion pricing” that would have imposed new tolls on drivers going south of 59th St. The revenue would have funded mass transit. But the state Legislature would not go along.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission spent years on a program creating a new yellow cab with Nissan and mandated its purchase by all taxi owners — only to see a judge rule the TLC overstepped its authority. City Council approval was required, the judge ruled.
“That was a significant initiative and it was thrown out,” James Vacca, chairman of the Council’s transportation committee, said.
Still, “The sum total is that Bloomberg redefined what city streets can and should be,” White said.
