We’re with Mayor Adams: The city’s most urgent priority is ensuring that crime declines. To date this year, felony assaults, robberies and rapes are up over 2022, while murders and shootings are stable or trending downward.
But as Adams also made clear in his State of the City speech, public safety also means safer streets. Last year New York suffered 433 murders, its lowest toll since 2019. Meanwhile, 255 people died in traffic, down a bit from 2021 but higher than any other year since the start of Vision Zero. The grim tally included 114 pedestrians and 17 cyclists — and 16 children, a nine-year high.
The chief culprit is reckless driving. The mayor wants to attack the problem by getting Albany to boost penalties for serious crashes, running red lights and driving while impaired (don’t forget pot, people), as well as for those who drive with revoked or suspended licenses. And without waiting for the Legislature, he is vowing to increase police enforcement for a range of offenses. Good; e-bike and scooter riders who dangerously break the rules of the road should face consequences, too. And progressives who applaud tougher traffic enforcement while insisting that criminal punishment is useless at curbing bad behavior should reassess their blind spots.
But it’s not just about enforcement; it’s about design. Adams also pledges more protected bike lanes, widened sidewalks and redesigned dangerous intersections.
Get to it. The streets, bike lanes and sidewalks are delicately interwoven tapestry. That is why the mayor must also follow through on his rhetorical commitment to ticket and tow more illegally parked cars and crack down on the rampant abuse of parking placards, a bee in the bonnet of this editorial page. He and his staff haven’t always led by example in this department.
As long as 5-year-olds like Yaakov Farhi, hit by a driver outside his Midwood home, and Jonathan Martinez, hit by a pickup truck driver as he crossed the street in East Elmhurst, are dying on the streets, there’s a long distance to travel.