NY DOT PREPARES TO INSTALL APS BUTTONS AT OUR CROSSWALK
This update is for Sept 3 - Sept 9. Labor Day has come and gone and not much has changed in the crosswalk since May 24 when I started this petition. The crosswalk is slightly safer for our families, kids, elderly, and disabled now because of three things:
- Roger Mosier, Chief of Park Operations at Central Park Conservancy, has done a great job of bringing their vehicles into compliance with the traffic rules that require all vehicles to stop at the red light and wait for green - REGARDLESS IF THE CROSSWALK CLEARS OR NOT. This is important because if one vehicle will stop and wait, it is likely that others will stop and wait, too. He has been an incredible partner, willing to educate his crew when they fail to stop and wait, and always, Roger has been responsive and helpful.
- My presence filming in the crosswalk for over 13 weeks, almost daily, has raised awareness among both the pedestrians and the vehicles that regularly use the crosswalk/roadway, such as pedicabs and horse-drawn carriages. As a result almost all of them at least stop and many of them wait for the green to proceed. Pedestrians are also more likely to press the signal button to call the red light before proceeding into the crosswalk.
- The moveable signs and the barrier designed to protect the pedestrians and control the traffic flow are now being maintained in the roadway so that after events they are being moved back. This is once again Roger Mosier's contribution. Before I started this project, the signs and the barrier were standing on the side of the roadway and were not in their proper position and had been neglected since before the pandemic. Credit is due to Kimberly Rancourt, NY DOT's Director of Special Projects, for getting the wheels on the moveable signs repaired promptly.
I have now moved on from the filming aspect of this project and am now moving full speed toward filing our lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. More on this in the previous update.
Meanwhile, the fruits of our labor all during the summer are beginning to appear. Today, an electrician from NY DOT appeared in the crosswalk to examine our signal box to see what steps had to be done to replace our older-style buttons with the new yellow APS buttons that make audible sounds, like "Wait" when the button is pressed and the orange don't walk light is on and "Beep, Beep, Beep" when the white safe-to-cross light is on. It remains to be seen if we will also get countdown timers on the face of the lights to indicate how long is left to cross but I am hoping we will get these, too.
This is a result of Gale Brewer's letter to DOT as well as my own request for APS buttons that are mandated by the recent federal court remedial order in American Council of the Blind of New York v. City of New York, 495 F.Supp.3d 211 (S.D.N.Y. 2020). I have also been in contact with Andrew Schilling, the court-appointed Independent Monitor for the remedial order in this case. He has been very helpful in pressing NY DOT for prompt action on our request.
A big shout-out to Gale Brewer, our District 6 City Councilmember, her Chief of Staff, Shulamit Puder, and Andrew Schilling for making this happen, almost by Labor Day. LOL. Now it remains to be seen how long they will take to do the work but the remedial order requires it to be done within 18 months.
Yesterday I started compiling some statistics from the 2,600+ video clips that were recorded between May 24 and Labor Day. These statistics will be used in the lawsuit to support our contention that the crosswalk is unsafe and that the City of New York is doing nothing to make it safe.
During the three-hour period between 1:53 pm to 4:53 on Sept 4, the 40-second red traffic light was called by pedestrians 57 times by pressing the signal button. During the time the light was red and the pedestrians had the right of way to cross the roadway without being assaulted by vehicles, 391 vehicles ran the red light, despite the fact that in most cases, there were pedestrians in the crosswalk at the time. Of these, 4 were horse-drawn carriages and 21 were pedicabs.
Interestingly, during the first hour on Sept 4, when NYPD sent three officers, including a captain, to complain that I was using amplified sound without a permit to call out the assholes running the red light, the number of vehicles running the red light dropped from an average of 157 per hour to just 75, despite the fact that the officers were not doing any enforcement work except politely discouraging me. They did not issue a summons to me even though I handed them my driver's license and demanded they issue one so I could see what the judge would say. In the end, we did fist-bumps all around and they disappeared. NY Parks Enforcement also showed up a little later with three officers and stayed for 4 minutes. Again, no enforcement but the number of vehicles flying thru the red light did not go down. Fist bumps all around and they, too, left, all of us in a good mood.
One of the most dangerous things a driver intending to run the red light can do is to cross over the three lanes of traffic in the roadway and into the two-way traffic in the jogger lane to avoid the other vehicles lawfully stopped for the red light in search of an opening. This occurred 32 times during the three-hour period.
The other most dangerous thing a driver can do is go the wrong way thru the crosswalk while pedestrians are crossing. This occurred at least once in the three-hour period but I was not counting these very carefully. Later, I will.
The fine for a first offense of failure to obey a traffic control device (running the red light, for example) is $190. The fine for failure to use and or/ride in an available bicycle lane (crossing over from the bicycle lane into the vehicle lane or the jogger lane, for example) carries a fine of $115 for a first offense. So running the red light by crossing over from the bike lane (this is the middle lane) into the motor vehicle lane (far right) or jogger (far left) AND running the red light is $305. Based on these fines and my documented observations, the City of New York is losing more than $30,000 per hour during peak hours like 1-4 pm the Sunday before Labor Day in revenue from just the vehicles running the red light in our crosswalk. But there would be a lot of pushback from the bikers and other operators of two and one-wheeled vehicles if there were 100% enforcement.
It is axiomatic that if the NYPD were to issue a ticket for just a tiny fraction of the violations (say 5%) on a regular and continuing basis, compliance in stopping at the red light would go way up and the crosswalk would become dramatically safer. Of course, revenues would go down but so would pushback.
Revenue down, pushback down, much safer crosswalk. Sounds like a lose-win-win. The wins win.
Here are links to the videos from Sept 3 - Sept 5, the last day of filming so far. This includes the 3-hour downstream clip from Sep 4 from which the statistics are drawn. These links are valid for 30 days. You can download the clips any time the link is valid. I have not tested these links so please be sure to let me know if the link does not work for you, my email: jeromekjerome@gmail.com.
TODAY'S SCREENGRAB is a photo of the NY DOT Traffic Signals Department Truck at our crosswalk to investigate the requirements to install APS buttons here.
I'm gonna need help paying for this lawsuit. Please contact me if you are in a position to help.