After sixteen-year-old Renee Thompson was killed by a turning vehicle last September while crossing Third Avenue at 60th Street in Manhattan, the New York City Department of Transportation came up with a plan to make the intersection safer by adding curb extensions and turn lanes. Third Avenue and 60th Street are both designated truck routes, and handle a great deal of traffic coming from the Queensboro Bridge. The Transportation Committee of Community Board 8 voted unanimously in favor of this plan, and earlier this week, it gained the approval of the full board.
Traffic calming plans and other street safety improvements are often implemented in response to incidents where people are injured or killed. The response of NYC DOT, as well as CB8′s endorsement of the plan, was certainly an appropriate, and Tri-State applauds the effort to prevent another tragedy from taking place at this location.
In an ideal world though, unsafe street conditions would be fixed before injuries and fatalities ever take place. And while it’s impossible to predict where crashes will take place, there’s no good reason not to be proactive.
Two Community Boards currently have an opportunity to take action before tragedy strikes. Manhattan Community Boards 9 and 10 are considering an NYC DOT plan to calm traffic on a 10-block section of Harlem’s Morningside Avenue, which acts as a north-south “speedway” between 116th and 126th Streets along the eastern edge of Morningside Park. The plan has won the approval of CB9, which covers the west side of Morningside Avenue, but CB10 – which “has a history of inaction and opposition when it comes to livable streets projects” – covers the east side of the road and is opposed to the plan, citing concerns about traffic congestion. But Morningside Avenue already has excess capacity, according to NYC DOT, making it an ideal candidate for a classic 4-to-3-lane road diet.
Unlike Third Avenue and 60th Street, Morningside Avenue is not a truck route, and between 2007 and 2012, there were no traffic fatalities on the 10 blocks in question. But there have been several people injured in the area, placing the corridor among the “top 33% of the most dangerous traffic corridors in all of Manhattan.”
While one would hope CB10 would place a greater emphasis on livable streets — especially so close to open space, and in a neighborhood where three-quarters of households don’t own cars — here’s hoping that it won’t take a tragic fatality to get the board to change its attitude about safety.
