Survey on traffic safety awareness at Queens schools
We’ve assembled a survey on school safety around schools in Queens. Please participate and distribute this survey to Queens families. It doesn’t matter if your kid attends school outside of Queens, or if it’s a private school, Pre-K program or high school.
This survey will help guide our advocacy and recommend changes to the school safety environment, via elected officials, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Education. Already, we are learning that school safety agents are often at risk, though officially, they are not charged with traffic safety in their job description!
Fill our our traffic survey here.
Thanks for your participation!
Tracking Progress: September 2015
Fatalities. There were two traffic fatalities in Queens in September. The neighbors we lost included:
- Sade Eversley (22), motorcycle passenger killed after falling off and being struck by two cars at Belt Parkway and Cross Bay Blvd. in Howard Beach
- Unidentified male (38), motorcycle driver killed after striking sign and utility pole near Cypress Hill St. and Jackie Robinson Pkwy in Glendale
In the 12 months ending September 2015, there have been 66 overall traffic fatalities in Queens, down 29% from the 93 people killed in 2013, the Vision Zero benchmark year. Citywide, there has been a 23% decline in fatalities.
Injuries. In the 12 months ending in September 2015, there have been 2,400 pedestrians injured in Queens by motor vehicles, a decline of 14% from the Vision Zero benchmark year, 2013. In the same time, there have been 906 injuries to cyclists, a rise of 10% since 2013. Overall, including motor vehicle occupants, there have been 15,334 people injured in motor vehicle crashes in Queens over the past year, down 1% since 2013. Citywide, there has been a 8% reduction in injuries. While pedestrian injuries have continued to fall in Queens, injuries to cyclists have been rising, likely the result of more cyclists on the road. Injuries to motorists and passengers has also been rising recently, and now exceed 2013 levels.
Enforcement. Overall, while enforcement of speeding, red light running, and not giving right of way to pedestrians remains significantly higher than pre-Vision Zero levels, tickets issued for illegal cell phone use, an important contributor to distracted driving, remains sharply down. Overall, enforcement across all four categories is down 1% since 2013.
See our full report here, including results by borough and community board.
Kidical Mass Returns to the Queens Waterfront
2nd Annual Family Zombie Ride
Hosted by Kidical Mass NYC
Saturday, Octrober 24, 2015 at 9:30am
Gantry Plaza State Park, Long Island City, Queens
Just in time for Halloween, the Zombie ride is about 7 miles through Long Island City and Astoria, with stops at Brooklyn Grange, and Coffeed, and passing by the Museum of the Moving Image, Rainey Park and possibly Roosevelt Island. We will end at Socrates Park in time to enjoy the Fall Festival. Folks should arrange their own travel back from Socrates. Please bring a lock for your bike if you plan to enjoy the festival. This ride will be escorted by our local precincts, but children should have at least intermediate biking skills and feel safe and comfortable riding on the road. Age 7 and up.
Third 111th Street Town Hall!
Streetsblog has the background on why this third community forum is happening: Francisco Moya’s Hush-Hush 111th Street Meeting Now Open to the Public.
Please come and show your support for a safer 111th Street and better access to Flushing Meadows Corona Park!
The forum will be held Monday, October 5th, 7-9 pm, at St. Leo’s Parish Church, 104-05 49th Avenue in Corona.
Tracking Progress: August 2015
Fatalities. There were seven traffic fatalities in Queens in August, including two vehicle occupants, one motorcyclist, one bicyclist and three pedestrians. The neighbors we lost included:
- Donald Angrum (60), driver of a car involved in a two-car crash on Rockaway Blvd. near JFK Airport
- Unidentified Male (61), pedestrian killed while crossing the street in Middle Village
- Lamont C. Smart, Jr. (21), passenger killed in a three-car crash in Springfield Gardens
- Amit Roy (55), pedestrian killed by reversing taxi in Jackson Heights
- Unidentified Male (61), cyclist killed in collision with truck in Far Rockaway
- Stephen-John Salmon (22), motorcyclist killed by SUV in Rochdale
- Unidentified Male (34), pedestrian killed by car in Queensboro Hill
In the 12 months ending August 2015, there have been 71 overall traffic fatalities in Queens, down 24% from the 93 people killed in 2013, the Vision Zero benchmark year. Citywide, there has been a 19% decline in fatalities.
Injuries. In the 12 months ending in August 2015, there have been 2,387 pedestrians injured in Queens by motor vehicles, a decline of 15% from the Vision Zero benchmark year, 2013. In the same time, there have been 897 injuries to cyclists, a rise of 9% since 2013. Overall, including motor vehicle occupants, there have been 15,231 people injured in motor vehicle crashes in Queens over the past year, down 2% since 2013. Citywide, there has been a 8% reduction in injuries. While pedestrian injuries have continued to fall in Queens, injuries to cyclists have been rising, likely the result of more cyclists on the road. Injuries to motorists and passengers has also been rising recently.
Enforcement. This month’s highlight on the enforcement front was from the 108th Precinct (Community Board 2 in Woodside and Sunnyside), which increased ticketing across all four of the areas were tracking: speeding, red light running, illegal cell phone use, and failure to yield to pedestrians. Other highlights included ticketing of drivers who fail to obey a red signal by 101st and 106th Precincts; ticking of illegal cell phone use by the 105th Precinct; and ticketing of speeding by the 113th Precinct.
Overall, including the four categories we’re tracking, there was a 20% increase in enforcement actions in Queens in August compared with July of this year. In the rest of the city, enforcement actions rose by 5.3 percent.
See our full report here, including results by borough and community board.
Tracking Progress: July 2015
Fatalities. There were nine traffic fatalities in Queens in July, including five vehicle occupants, two motorcyclists, one bicyclist and one pedestrian. The neighbors we lost included:
- Susana Ha (42) and Angelica Ung (10), passengers in a car struck by a speeding SUV in Bayside
- Troy Smith (41), driver killed in a single car crash in Rochdale
- Unidentified Male, pedestrian killed on Belt Parkway in Rochdale
- Garth Jackson (50), passenger killed in two-car crash in Cambria Heights
- Aron Aranbayev (40), pedestrian killed in hit and run in Forest Hills
- Unidentified Male (37), motorcyclist killed in collision with car in Kew Gardens
- Adelso Espinal (32), motorcyclist killed by car after crashing in Hillcrest
- Kevin Lopez (18), cyclist killed by car in Long Island City
In the 12 months ending July 2015, there have been 77 overall traffic fatalities in Queens, down 17% from the 93 people killed in 2013, the Vision Zero benchmark year. Citywide, there has been a 19% decline in fatalities.
Injuries. In the 12 months ending in July 2015, there have been 2,392 pedestrians injured in Queens by motor vehicles, a decline of 15% from the Vision Zero benchmark year, 2013. In the same time, there have been 864 injuries to cyclists, a rise of 5% since 2013. Overall, including motor vehicle occupants, there have been 15,079 people injured in motor vehicle crashes in Queens over the past year, down 3% since 2013. Citywide, there has been a 8% reduction in injuries. While pedestrian injuries have continued to fall in Queens, injuries to cyclists have been rising, likely the result of more cyclists on the road. Injuries to motorists and passengers has also been rising recently.
Enforcement. After NYPD’s big June surge in Vision Zero-related traffic enforcement, July saw a significant drop-off in enforcement actions against driving behaviors that put other road users at risk. Overall, including the four categories we’re tracking (Illegal Cell Phone Use, Disobeying Red Signal, Not Giving Way to Pedestrians, and Speeding), there was a 35% reduction in enforcement actions in Queens in July compared with June of this year. In the rest of the city, enforcement actions fell only 11%, in part due to an uptick in speeding enforcement not seen in Queens.
See our full report here, including results by borough and community board.
A Conversation with Yvonne Short, Director of the Rego Park Green Alliance
Yvonne Short demonstrates the tool kit for her interactive installation, “Stat Girl” at the RPGA studio in Long Island City.
The Rego Park Green Alliance is a non-profit studio in Long Island City that creates art for social impact. Projects vary from 3D printing programs for school students, to mural installations, and now a new focus on pedestrian safety issues.
Two innovative programs in the last few years have set out to educate and inform people of the dangers on NYC streets. Stat girl is an interactive display that helps facilitate conversations on road safety. Pedestrian Penguin is a board game that teaches students about various scenarios and the implications of bad choices on the road.
But long before the inception of these safe streets initiatives, Yvonne Short found her niche in creative solutions. Art interventions, she would say. She left the corporate world, when her children began school. Her family moved from Manhattan to Rego Park, Queens, and Yvonne first enrolled her kids in private school. But taking a left turn, instead of her usual right one day changed everything.
Our starting project was the underpass under 63rd drive. It’s the hub of the community, everybody walks there to get to school or to get to the trains.
People aren’t going to get involved unless their kids are involved. They wont get involved in cleaning up
an underpass, but they will get involved in creating a mural. So we decided to do a 2,000 square foot mural on one of the walls on 63rd drive. We got a grant from Citizens Committee- they gave us $1,000.
We ended up doing our first collaborative mural on a wall and we had about 300 people on the wall, painting. Then we started getting people to sign petitions, because now they were more involved, they’d done a wall! So when I would send an email saying ‘sign this petition, we’re doing this, this, this and this…they were into it. The mural was a way to start getting people involved. We met about 10 more people who were already advocates in the community, in making it better, and that was very helpful in moving us along.
For our land equity program, it can be anyone from an individual who is interested in making a change in their community to another non-profit which would like to collaborate. They might say, ‘we don’t know how to make murals’….but that’s what we (RPGA) do.
I can bring the community in to make it collaborative. So that’s what we do, we go and meet them and help make their space better. We help figure out what it is that they are trying to accomplish and help them narrate that story.
Funding
You always have to have revenue coming in. Grants are one way…. I decided that I was going to look at organizations that were doing what I wanted to do. I was doing murals at the time, so I looked at Groundswell.
Look up any organization that’s in your space, and see how their taking in revenue. All organizations need to bring in revenue. At first, what most people do, is to mimic. I didn’t want to be a Groundswell, I wanted to do collaborative murals and I looked at how they were doing it. They were doing residencies. They were partnering with schools and asking them to help bring in funding. We adopted that model.
When we went into a school, we went into the PTA and said, “Look, you have a thousand kids in your school. Some of those parents are going to give $10 bucks. If they do a movie night, they can raise funds. At first we mimicked, but now we do what we do. We went to Queens Council of the Arts and got funding. Next year we’ll look at National Endowment for the Arts to get additional funding.
Stat Girl
As part of the tool kit, children are encouraged to play out, draw and discuss different traffic scenarios.
We heard about a couple of kids at my daughters school, who got hurt in car crashes, and now we have money in the bank, so we can play.
Let me show you Stat Girl. We take this into schools. We take an intersection point and put in all the statistics, motorists, pedestrians, cyclists. We find those numbers and put them in the slots, so that they’ll know at a particular intersection who was injured and who was killed.It makes it real for the kids, and this is what we do, not to scare them, but so they know that you have to be careful. You have to be careful. And then we do this interactive game with them.
It starts off with motorists, pedestrians and cyclists at zero. And then we have a kit, and it has a hat, and a streering wheel and little things for driving and we give them scenarios, and they have to act them out. And the kids have to decide who’s right in the scenario. It’s really adorable, but at the same time, the kids discuss who’s at fault. And it gets them involved in the question of how do you change a poor choice… That’s what we do with our Stat Girl. It becomes a great residency. Then they bring the lesson home to their parents.
Pedestrian Penguin
With the penguin game, there are problem cards and there are solution cards. There are action cards and there are scenarios. On the back of every card, there is an accident happening. And everybody goes flying. We make it cute and funny, but’s also like ‘these things happen’.
There’s a guy walking across the street with his headphones blaring. There’s a bicyclist crossing and doing the wrong thing. As adults, we know if a driver is texting and he goes past the light, we know and can see when somebody is texting and not stopping, so we step back. We don’t just say, oh the light is green for me, I can go…NO…If you have two people and one person is making a bad choice and another person is making a good choice, you can prevent an accident. And you have to read the cards. At at the bottom of the cards, we always have a statistic.
The kids get it. They learn it. And they start to think- people are not stopping at the stop signs, I better be careful to make sure I really wait until the driver stops.
We all make mistakes. I’ve been the driver, I’ve been the bicyclist, I”ve been the pedestrian. We can all make mistakes and can have poor judgement. We all have to learn everything. Yes, I want Queens Blvd to be redesigned, and I’m happy that they got $250 million for it, but it’s going to take 30 years, and it’s not enough, and if people keep texting, we are not going to reduce the injury rate.
I saw some kids get hurt, on Queens Blvd. My daughter and I were walking and a car went out too early and another car moved in on it…and we saw a crash. It was terrible.
There are several different places we want to do teaching residencies. Afterschool programs could purchase them, which we know they would do, provided we go in and teach the game first. But also, we want sponsors so we can get it into schools where there is no afterschool program.
So if I talk to a fourth grade teacher, I discover they have lunch, and the kids tend to either have a game time, or go to the gym, or sit and watch a movie. Maybe we can say, ‘give them the card game- let them play at their lunch table for 10 more minutes. This is fun for the kids, and they do not want to see the same Annie movie 10 more times…
Yvonne Short, collaborator supreme
I’m sitting on the sidelines as a creative studio, and I thought, ‘we can do this’. We can use creative ideas to make changes. I can’t go out and ask every councilmember for money, it seemed like too long a process, it was exhausting, I’d end up thinking I’m not going to make it with those people….but I know how to be creative, I know how to illustrate, I know how to have fun, I know how to go in and teach kids. That’s where I shine, so I have to do what I shine at.
Second 111th Street Town Hall
Julissa Ferreras is hosting a second forum for the community to discuss and ask questions about DOT’s proposal for a safer 111th Street on July 29th, 2015 at 6-8 pm at the NY Hall of Science. The meeting is cosponsored by Councilmember Daniel Dromm, Community Board 4, the Partnership for a Healthier Queens, Immigrant Movement International, Make the Road New York, Transportation Alternatives, and Make Queens Safer. If you live near Flushing Meadows Corona Park, or are a frequent user of the park via the 111th Street, please try to make it to this important meeting to show support for the proposal.
Tracking Progress: June 2015
Fatalities. There were four traffic fatalities in Queens in June, including two vehicle occupants, one motorcyclist and one pedestrian. The neighbors we lost included an unidentified 62-year-old man, who died in a single car crash in Jamaica Hills; Louis Benjamin, a 39-year-old who died in a single car crash in Rosedale; Betty Jean DiBiasio, a 21-year-old pedestrian killed by a hit-and-run driver in Astoria, and Izayha Felder, a 19-year-old motorcyclists killed in a crash in St. Albans. In the 12 months ending June 2015, there have been 79 overall traffic fatalities in Queens, down 15% from the 93 people killed in 2013, the Vision Zero benchmark year. Citywide, there has been a 16% decline in fatalities.
Injuries. In the 12 months ending in June 2015, there have been 2,381 pedestrians injured in Queens by motor vehicles, a decline of 15% from the Vision Zero benchmark year, 2013. In the same time, there have been 855 injuries to cyclists, a rise of 4% since 2013. Overall, including motor vehicle occupants, there have been 14,971 people injured in motor vehicle crashes in Queens over the past year, down 4% since 2013. Citywide, there has been a 9% reduction in injuries. While pedestrian injuries have continued to fall in Queens, injuries to cyclists have been rising, likely the result of more cyclists on the road. Injuries to motorists and passengers has also been rising.
Enforcement. In June, many precincts across Queens significantly stepped up enforcement actions against driving behaviors that put other road users at risk. Highlights of Vision Zero enforcement in June included citations for red light running in the 100th, 103rd, 104th, 106th, 108th, 110th, 112th, 114th, and 115th Precincts; speeding in the 105th, 112th, and 113th Precincts; and cell phone use in the 104th Precinct; and failure to yield to pedestrians in the 104th, 105th, 109th, 110th, 111th, 112th, and 114th Precincts.
The increased enforcement in June appeared to reverse an apparent trend in declining enforcement actions against these behaviors. We hope NYPD keeps it up. Enforcement actions against drivers using handheld cell phones continue to decline sharply.
See our full report here, including results by borough and community board.