I began the day with a Freedom of Information request to the NYPD for all accident reports in this crosswalk from 2014. It's easy to find press coverage of fatalities or accidents involving celebrities like Bono, but finding out how many ordinary people just broke a leg or lost an eye is much more difficult because reports of these accidents are not published by the NYPD.

I also made an FOI request to NY DOT for records about the speed limit in this crosswalk and the other two in the park that have a 10 MPH speed limit posted there. This came about sometime after the June 20, 2020, CB7 committee on Parks and Environment meeting where these problems were last discussed. In that meeting, the proposal was to lower the speed limit to 20 MPH in the park. There was no mention of 10 MPH but a CPC worker told me it was part of the settlement with Jill Tarlov's husband, Michael Wittman. These records may shed some light on that.

I also ordered a Pocket Radar gun so that I can have reasonably accurate readings of the speed of different vehicles going into the crosswalk.

By 11:15, I  was in the crosswalk, shooting clips of pedestrians in the crosswalk when they had the right of way. ~80 kids from ECFS, in four groups of about 20 kids, crossed the crosswalk twice during my morning watch from 11:15 to 12:15. That's 160 kid-crossings per hour at this time on a school day.

Often they had to run across to make it to the other side between packs of bicycles. They aren't able to enter the crosswalk right away when the light turns red because no one stops until pedestrians actually enter the crosswalk, which means potentially risking their lives. As a result, they are often late entering the crosswalk and have little time to transverse it before the red light turns green so they have to run. Most of the bikes would stop if they were going the speed limit when the red light went on. 

At 11:23, Kimberly Rancourt from NY DOT called me to say they had found replacement bases for the moveable signs upstream of the crosswalk and another further upstream at the Sheep Meadow crosswalk and would expedite the work. If you read my updates from last week, you may recall that a CPC worker told me about the broken wheels on the moveable speed limit and crosswalk signs and because of that he was unable to move them into their proper place in the street.

Kimberly advances on my list of good guys, along with Rob, David, and Roger. 

After puppy-walking from 11:30 to 12:30, I returned to the chase by calling Manhattan Burrough President Mark Levine's office to follow up on yesterday's call. Lorrie was working from home and instead, Erik Cuello answered Levine's phone. He was very helpful and after I talked to him about learning the names and contractual obligations of the horse cab and pedicab owners, he gave me the email address for the legal department at the NY Department of Consumer Affairs, which licenses those operators.

Notably, he also promised to put me in touch with the CB7 Transportation Committee, to which I was directed on Tuesday night at the CB7 full board meeting. Within a couple of hours, I got an email from Maxwell Vandervliet, District Manager for Manhattan Community Board 7. Here we are making progress, too.

I also made another FOI request for the names of the licensees operating horse-drawn cabs and pedicabs in Central Park and the form of contract, if any, that they had to sign. I followed this up with an email to the NY DCA legal department at the address Maxwell had provided.

Gale Brewer's office has been silent so far. Maybe it's because I responded by email instead of calling. I will follow up with an email tonight and call them tomorrow. In terms of responsiveness so far, it's been Levine 1, Brewer 0.

But that may be due to the fact that Levine forces you to call his office unless you already have his email address. I could have called Brewer instead of emailing.

Tonight's screengrab is a bicycle tour group being led thru our crosswalk on red even after warning the tour leader that NY law requires waiting till green or walking the bicycle thru the crosswalk after it clears.