A slide from a consultant’s report on pedestrian safety in the 96th street area.
Three pedestrians have died this year near West 96th street, and several leaders have talked about changing the streets to make them safer. Now there’s an action plan that the local community board thinks will help achieve those goals.
Community Board 7 chair Elizabeth Caputo put together the board’s top recommendations for immediate actions to improve the streets. (A more thorough study with long-term recommendations is here.) We’ve posted her full letter to the city Department of Transportation below. It’s also available as a PDF file here.
Here’s the basic outline:
For 96th and Broadway, where Alexander Shear and Samantha Lee were killed:
1. Install a signalized and striped median-to-median pedestrian crossing of 96th Street at Broadway.
2. Change the traffic light pattern at the 96th/Broadway intersection.
3. Immediately inspect the pedestrian crossing on the east side of Broadway at 96th Street.
4. Explore the Nelson/Nygaard recommendation to eliminate left-hand-turns at Broadway and 96th Street.
For the area near 97th and West End Avenue, where 9-year-old Cooper Stock was killed:
1. Change the signal light pattern along 97th Street.
2. Change the signal light pattern along West End Avenue.
3. Take immediate action to slow and guide traffic making left turns from West 97th Street onto West End Avenue.
4. Install “No Left-Turn” signs, effective from 7AM-10AM, for eastbound 95th Street traffic at West End Avenue.
The DOT will come to a meeting on Thursday, January 30 at 6 p.m. at Goddard Riverside (593 Columbus Avenue at 88th street) to discuss the changes. A DOT spokesman tells us that the agency is “actively identifying and evaluating a range of options for the area. As we mentioned last week, we are developing a proposal with pedestrian safety enhancements for the intersection of West 96th Street and Broadway, and will present it to Community Board 7 as soon as possible.”
Mayor de Blasio has also turned on traffic cameras to catch speeders and the NYPD has added officers to the highway division, which enforces traffic violations. A working group will present more plans to him on February 15. The mayor has said that a recent push around 96th street to ticket jaywalkers is not part of his pedestrian safety efforts, but that local commanders can make their own decisions about local enforcement goals.
Simplest solution: red light for ALL vehicular traffic while pedestrians have green light in all directions. Pedestrians who are in the intersection when they should not be are on their own.
Pedestrians will actually have to heed the Don’t Walk signs. Crazy drivers aside, people are consistently crossing against Don’t Walk signs at 96/Bway when they see the red light for the cars and not looking for the cars making the left turn from Bway to 96th.
Agree completely, if pedestrians heeded the don’t walk signs, 95% of the issues at 96th and Broadway would be resolved.
97th narrows from three lanes btwn CPW and Col, to two btwn Col and Ams, to one btwn Ams and WEA. They should eliminate all parking on 97th btwn Ams and WEA and install left turn signalized left turn lanes at Broadway and WEA. It would also be safer and improve traffic flow if we had subway entrances on the sidewalks on Broadway instead of the middle of street. The current set up creates much more pedestrian traffic crossing Broadway at 95th and 96th streets. The whole huge project of creating the huge headhouse and narrowing the streets and sidewalks was a terrible waste that created more problems for pedestrians and vehicles.
I agree with you, Steven. Putting the entrances to the subway station back where they were- on the sidewalks is the obvious solution to this problem, albeit an expensive one.
I agree. Having one entrance to the subway on the median creates additional pedestrian crossing. With entrances on the 4 corners of the intersection, as there used to be, far fewer pedestrians would cross the street.
In addition, plenty of intersections in Manhattan prohibit left turns. The left turn signal is confusing for pedestrians.
This still doesn’t address the 97th Street issue – as a FDR > WSH thoroughfare, it picks up a lot of traffic at speed – with streets that widen and constrict at certain points…drivers don’t care and maintain speed – simple traffic signal changes will NOT change this behavior…it might avoid accidents at best.
Speed bumps for goodness sake! A driver getting a jolt will get the message…slow the f down – there are people around. Many cities do this, why can’t we?
These solutions are half-baked and aren’t going to solve the underlying problem…
I am a cyclist, pedestrian, and motorist in this area and I am underwhelmed by the Community Board’s solutions.
Re: “…the 97th Street issue – as a FDR > WSH thoroughfare, it picks up a lot of traffic at speed….”
AGREE COMPLETELY! 97th Street becomes an all-too-easy alternate for subhuman suburbanites seeking to avoid whatever congested mess that is that leads them from the FDR to the West Side Highway and thence either to the GWB or to the northern sub-oibs.
Put speed bumps at each W.97th intersection…and maybe find some of the old Giuliani-era squeegee men (unless they’ve retired to Floriduh) and license them to work each intersection as a way of slowing down /discouraging those city-hating wanna-be Formula-One maniacs.
Dear Rako and others:
Your input at the next Community Board meeting (either Full Board or Committee) would be very helpful. Please come and speak up, or if you can’t make it you can always have a friend read a written statement.
Change happens – often more slowly than we would like – but only if we participate in the process.
Btw, speed bumps on bus/emergency vehicle response routes are a tricky issue…
Having lived in the area for a number of years, I am speaking from experience. First, there was no left turns from Bway onto 96th St.in the past. For many when they see car stop, they proceed and forget that there are cars turning. Some are in a hurry to catch a train, some are use to the old ways and the varied signal light changes are confusing. Many walk when they shouldn’t and others (in a hurry) are annoyed at having to walk around folks. Regarding 97th St and West End. Because this is the route used prior to the turns on Bway, many of the cars are still using this route to get to the West Side Hwy and tend to speed to make the light. A speed bump at the east end section of 97th St and West End, sounds like a good idea. The car owners will balk and say it is doing damage to their cars and slowing traffic. However if they moved at a reasonable speed, there would be no damage and those walking would be safer. Pedestrians also have a role to play in monitoring their own safety and not walk when they should stand still, nor cross in the middle of the block.
CB7 should also do their job and lobby to halt the gigantic 22-story JHL Nursing Home that is supposed to be built on West 97th Street between Columbus & Amsterdam. If you think the area is congested and dangerous now, just wait until the intersection of 97th and Broadway is flooded with even more traffic including ambulances) because of this.
In order to make the 96th Street intersection safer, the community board should consider the following:
1. Sidewalk fences, one of the simplest safety measures to implement and keep pedestrians out of harms way.
2. Not allowing any turns on the 96th and Broadway intersection. Turns would have to be initiated in less densely used intersections.
3. Installing rumble strips on Broadway to slow traffic.
Alex Shear, the 73-year-old avid collector who was struck and killed by the tour bus on January 10, was the subject of a 10-page profile in the New Yorker, back in 1999. He sounds like he was quite the fascinating / eccentric UWS character.
(plus fun to see 15-year-old New Yorker cartoons)
I often go a block out of my way, to 95th or 97th, to avoid the pedestrian confusion at 96/Bway. Even after all this time, many pedestrians do not understand the left turn arrangement, and start to cross when they feel the light has been DON’T WALK too long to be working properly. Thanks for this important story and the Comm Bd letter.
If, as the West Side Rag article discusses, a big box store such as Bed, Bath & Beyond or Party City is in the future for 93rd Street, then the 96th Street area is bound to become even more congested.
This is called re-active problem solving and not PRO-active. These deaths could have easily been prevented (says I) if any of these genius planners had only TRIED to cross this intersection in real life instead of just on paper.
There is another “danger spot” no one is looking at simply because no one has died there yet – – the intersection of 96th and West End. Anyone trying to make a left turn onto West End northbound knows exactly what I’m talking about. Why isn’t there a left turn only signal there? Cars sitting in the middle of the intersection, only one or two cars per light cycle being able to turn, cars jumping the yellow and whizzing past terrified pedestrians. It seems all these brilliant traffic planners can’t get it right. Ask them to try crossing THAT intersection in real life during rush hour.
And wasn’t there a big online survey (which I took and wrote exactly these things) less than a year ago?
I have a great plan idea…. WAIT FOR THE WALKING LIGHT AND LOOK BOTH WAYS!! It is a tragedy that people have died but, with the exclusion of the young boy at 97th, if pedestrians actually waited for the white light of the crosswalk this might not have happened. Too often we take for granted our lives. We get caught up in the NYC pace of things. The majority of the time crossing before the light saves you less than a minute and, in some cases, it is better to just be late.
I take the 123 to work and to City College. I deal with that intersection at the busiest times. There are always people impatiently darting across or standing off of the median waiting to run for it. It makes me really sad because I know there have been times when I wanted to pull someone back or yell at them for their stupidity.