Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday presented a range of policing and transportation plans intended to eliminate traffic deaths in New York City, including increasing precinct-level enforcement of speeding and redesigning dozens of major street intersections and corridors each year.
Other new plans include the formation of an “enforcement squad” at the Taxi and Limousine Commission, with a focus on dangerous cabdrivers, and a potential partnership with state officials to lower the citywide speed limit to 25 miles per hour, from 30 m.p.h.
“Our lives are literally in each other’s hands,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference on the Upper West Side. “Our children’s lives are in each other’s hands.”
He was joined by William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, and Polly Trottenberg, the transportation commissioner, among other officials.
Mr. de Blasio had discussed this Vision Zero strategy — adopted from a Swedish traffic safety approach that views all traffic deaths as inherently preventable — during his campaign for mayor. The city has since experienced a spate of traffic deaths, including three pedestrian deaths last month in fewer than 10 days on the Upper West Side.
Though cycling and pedestrian advocates have cheered the mayor’s stance, officials had not been clear on exactly what form the pledge would take.
So far this year, the New York Police Department has devoted increased attention to jaywalking, though Mr. de Blasio said this focus was not part of the city’s broader traffic safety plans. Through Feb. 9, the city had issued 215 jaywalking summonses, compared with 27 over the same period last year. Tickets issued to drivers have fallen slightly.
Mr. Bratton has said the Police Department would enlarge its Highway Division to 270 officers from 220, though so far, the department has struggled to find enough officers interested in the assignment, according to a top police official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss personnel matters.
The mayor has also expressed support for two Bloomberg administration initiatives: the expansion of “slow zones,” designated areas where the speed limit is reduced to 20 m.p.h., from 30, and the installation of more ticket-issuing speed cameras. Some cameras have been installed near schools, under a plan passed past year by the State Legislature, and the use of more would also require approval in Albany.
Street safety was considered a priority under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and traffic fatalities fell by about 30 percent during his administration. But policies like the expansion of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas were often framed, at least initially, in terms of environmental friendliness and a decreased reliance on car travel.
Many residents of car-dependent neighborhoods, as well as groups like AAA New York, were often sharply critical of the reallocation of street space under Mr. Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan.
While Mr. de Blasio has pledged to continue or expand many of his predecessor’s transportation policies — including the creation of bike lanes and the extension of the city’s fledgling bike share program beyond stretches of Manhattan and Brooklyn — his positions, now couched in Vision Zero, have thus far attracted few opponents.
Other city officials seem likely to follow his lead. Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, has said that traffic safety would be the group’s top priority. And Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, has compiled a list of potentially dangerous intersections from community boards, to be shared with the mayor’s Vision Zero task force.
