Mayor Mamdani announced Tuesday that his administration will be “reimagining” the hallmark street-safety plan of the de Blasio administration, Vision Zero.
The plan, which aims to reduce annual traffic fatalities to none, has been in place since 2014. To date, Vision Zero has been credited with a 30% reduction in pedestrian deaths, according to city data.
But Mamdani said Tuesday that the street safety plan needs to be updated to match how New Yorkers get around the city.
“Much has changed since 2014,” the mayor said. “As the way New Yorkers travel changes, so too must our safety strategies.”
While a suite of already-announced street safety plans and re-started projects make up some of the mayor’s push for zero traffic fatalities, some of Hizzoner’s goals seem to exist mainly on the drawing board.
As previously reported by the Daily News, non-emergency vehicles in the city’s municipal fleet are slated to get intelligent speed governors and pedestrian alarms.
The plan also sets a goal of increasing street-corner visibility at 1,000 intersections per year — a tactic known as daylighting. Mamdani’s plan includes a new commitment to enforce that daylighting with physical barriers to keep drivers from parking too close to the curb. Yet the promise is an echo of one made, but not kept, by former Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani said Tuesday that the new strategy will explicitly seek to remove dangerous drivers from Gotham’s streets. That means using the power recently granted the city by Albany to designate drivers with 16 or more speed-camera or red-light camera tickets in a 12-month period as “super-speeders” and require them to install a speed-limiter in their car.
But the plan also calls for going a step further, pushing for legislation at the state level to enable the license suspension for serial recidivists.
“If you are breaking the law repeatedly on our roads,” Mamdani stated, “you will not be allowed to drive in New York City.”
The plan also calls on the city to explore increasing tolls or limiting parking for larger, heavier cars, given the greater danger they pose to pedestrians.
It was not immediately clear, however, what constituted an “oversized” car.
“Cars across our country have gotten much, much bigger,” the mayor said. “We are exploring every potential avenue to discourage heavier and larger vehicles.”
Mamdani mentioned his time as a state assemblyman representing Queens, during which he saw deadly accidents from large trucks. “I saw a number of times where the presence of trucks on these small, narrow roads could have fatal consequences,” he said.
The Big Apple already outlaws full-sized tractor-trailers from its surface streets, though the law is almost never enforced. A Daily News reporter spotted several full-sized 53-foot-long tractor-trailers operating on Brooklyn and Queens streets on the way to the press conference in Maspeth — where at least one such truck was parked across the street.
The plan also calls on the city to continue encouraging public transit use, as well as e-bikes and e-scooters, as alternatives to private cars. As with many a Mamdani initiative, the plan calls on the city to address the affordability of those modes — setting a goal of more affordable Citi Bike access and more thorough transit discounts for New Yorkers in need.
Asked why he was holding a press conference about a plan to find solutions, Mamdani stressed the importance of the goal.
“Today is not a thing that should be celebrated in and of itself. It should be celebrated because of what it will deliver,” he said. “Its success will be judged by what we deliver — not the vision that we have, but rather what we can use that vision to actually get to New Yorkers.”