As we face a third term by Mayor Bloomberg, note should be taken of the quite radical change his administration has been achieving to effect the way our streets work. The Department of Transportation (DOT) is no longer the laggard it was in trying to make life easier for pedestrians and bicyclists. Under Giuliani the emphasis was still on speeding the flow of vehicular traffic and making pedestrians stay out of the way of cars. The car was king. No longer. Under Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, herself a cyclist, the DOT has been establishing bicycle lanes and altering numerous street corners to slow vehicle passage and turnings for pedestrian safety. Although he failed to win passage, Bloomberg also tried to get congestion pricing for much of Manhattan to reduce the number of vehicles traveling there. Altogether, the effort has been something like trying to move a mountain – nobody thought it could be done in car-crazy America – and it’s remarkable that there’s been even partial progress.

But if the DOT has been brought around to an attitude no one would have expected, the Police Department is still wedded to its old assumptions – or so the Transportation Alternatives (TA) organization contends after having conducted months of surveys and interviews about the NYPD’s enforcement of moving violations. Exceeding speed limits and running red lights are not high on the NYPD’s list of concerns, TA says. In its now glossy newsletter called Reclaim, the TA’s fall 2009 issue says the NYPD’s weekly Compstat crime-analysis meetings begun under former Commissioner William Bratton have helped lead to a steady decline in violent crime. However, it maintains, current Commissioner Ray Kelly “and his police department remain ignorant of how many red lights were run, at what rate drivers speed, and how many pedestrians were terrified of incidents of vehicles failing to yield.�

The TA newsletter cites an interview with Professor Peter Moskos of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who is quoted as explaining that traffic enforcement is “barely considered real police work� since, “It doesn’t draw on the skills police see themselves as having. It is annoying and time-consuming for officers to do traffic stops.�

A TA survey found that “the chance of a driver being ticketed for ‘failing to yield’ [is] a staggering 1 in 579,983 and the startling fact that a driver could speed everyday through New York City and be ticketed only once every 35 years.� Confronted with such numbers, Commissioner Kelly is said to have responded, “I don’t know what they’re talking about. In 2007 and 2008 we issued 1.2 million moving violation summonses.� To this, the TA newsletter says that “in a city where 1.5 million automobile trips are made in and out of Manhattan’s Central Business District daily, and each day 1.23 million red lights are run, the NYPD’s claim of issuing 1.2 million summonses a year is not an accomplishment – particularly when many of those summonses are issued for minor infractions like failure to wear a seat belt.�

How good are anyone’s statistics in all this? The NYPD can be expected to know how many summonses it issued, but who really knows how many dangerous moves were made at unwatched intersections? Or how many drivers exceeding the posted speed limit were nevertheless driving prudently in light of the actual situation at hand? We love numbers, but we can’t always be sure of how they were arrived at, or what sense they really make. Still, anybody can tell you of cars they’ve seen going through a red light, or – even more dangerously, and commonly – of turning a crowded corner while the driver was talking into a cell phone. Lately there’s been an abundance of stories about fatalities and injuries caused by drivers either texting or talking on cell phones. Despite the reports and the warnings, these dangerous practices go on. So, while there may be a police mindset that prefers to overlook traffic infractions, there’s also the reality that there can’t be a cop on every corner to watch for violations. Calls for “educating� the populace to curb dangerous behavior seem a tame answer. However, if these are combined with selective crackdowns, the message may start to get through. There is enough cell-phone and texting violation in plain sight for the NYPD to be able to target intersections where multiple summonses can be issued with an economical use of time and manpower. If drivers start to get the message that they can be caught and have to pay, our streets and corners can become safer. Between the new DOT and a redirected NYPD we might even see rushing New Yorkers beginning to accept the virtue of patience.

— Henrik Krogius, Consulting Editor
Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News

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