'Walkable' New York City became deadlier for pedestrians in 2024

New York: Many New Yorkers believe the city is best appreciated on foot. But the teeming streets -- packed with cars, bikes and a growing number of other vehicles -- became increasingly hostile to pedestrians in 2024, city statistics show.

A decade into an effort to reduce traffic fatalities in New York City, total deaths have begun to trend upward in recent years after consistently dropping during the first five years of the initiative.

And certain categories of traffic fatalities -- including pedestrian deaths -- crept upward in 2024, according to city data, stirring concerns in a place that prides itself on being walkable.

In July, a 51-year-old man was killed by a driver who ran a red light in Harlem. In October, Felix Mendez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant, was killed by a driver while he waited at an intersection in Brooklyn at 3 a.m. On Christmas Day, a taxi driver hit six pedestrians, including a 9-year-old boy, in Midtown Manhattan.

"Every single New Yorker is a pedestrian; we are the most walkable city in the United States and the overwhelming number of any New Yorkers' trips are on foot," said Philip Miatkowski, the interim deputy executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that tracks traffic fatalities. "So, to see any increase like that is definitely alarming and something we need to take seriously."

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio began an initiative to reduce traffic fatalities, called the Vision Zero Action Plan, in 2014. The year before, 299 people were killed in traffic, including an 8-year-old boy who was struck by a turning truck in Brooklyn near his school in a tragedy that solidified support for Vision Zero.

The program, modeled after a Swedish approach that views traffic deaths as preventable, has focused on pedestrian safety with measures that include new public plazas, more speed and red light cameras, and additional bike lanes.

At first, the program steadily drove down the number of traffic fatalities. The average number of deaths over the first five years was 231, and fatalities reached a Vision Zero-era low of 206 in 2018. Total traffic fatalities then rebounded, however, hovering at an average of around 250 per year over the next five years. That has led some transportation advocacy groups and experts to worry that the initiative has stalled.

Most recently there has been some improvement: There were 251 traffic fatalities through Dec. 30, compared with 263 during the same time period in 2023.

City officials said that traffic fatalities in 2024 were about average for the Vision Zero era and were significantly lower than before the initiative.

"This year has seen the fewest traffic deaths since the onset of the pandemic in 2020," Vincent Barone, a spokesperson for the city's Transportation Department, said in December. "But lifesaving street safety work continues, because one life lost to traffic violence is one too many."

In 2024 there was a nearly 18% surge in pedestrian deaths, which jumped to 119 through Dec. 30 from 101 during the same time period in 2023. The city said that the 2023 figure was the lowest in 115 years of recorded data, and that 2024 was on track to be the fifth lowest in that time.

But some transportation experts and advocacy groups say that the proliferation of e-bikes, scooters and other mechanized ways of navigating the streets has radically changed the city's landscape and outpaced the efforts of Vision Zero.

Sarah Kaufman, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University, said that the progress of Vision Zero has "flattened out in terms of what it's capable of accomplishing without major renovations of public space."

Some ways to push the initiative forward, she said, include further improvements to traffic signaling to allow pedestrians more time to cross streets, and tougher penalties for motorists who speed or run red lights.

Miatkowski said Vision Zero should be approached differently because more people were out -- biking and walking -- on the same miles of streets that more vehicles were using.

He added that traffic fatalities have been high in part because the size and shape of vehicles have changed drastically. Heavier cars mean people are less likely to survive a collision. SUVs and trucks designed with flat fronts mean that pedestrians are often pulled underneath and killed instead of being flipped onto the hood, he said.

Nationally, more than 29,000 people died in traffic crashes during the first nine months of 2024, a slight decrease from the first nine months of the previous year. New York is one of at least 10 American cities, including Chicago and Washington, that have adopted the Vision Zero approach.

Leaders in New York have been searching for ways to improve pedestrian safety. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed legislation in 2024 known as "Sammy's Law," which gave the city the authority to lower the speed limit to 20 mph on almost all streets. It was named after Sammy Cohen Eckstein, a boy who died after he was hit by a van in Brooklyn in 2013.

Officials in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams said that traffic fatalities are down 8 per cent since Adams, also a Democrat, took office in 2022. City officials also noted that deaths of older pedestrians were down 17 per cent from 2023, and fatalities involving e-bikes and other motorized two-wheelers were down 25 per cent through Dec. 25, after the city introduced new public education efforts.

The city added 32 miles of bike lanes in 2023 and more in 2024, and has widened existing bike lanes, the Transportation Department said. The city has also installed more than 1.4 million square feet of pedestrian space over the past three years and has redesigned streets, including Queens Boulevard and 96th Street in Manhattan. And it has worked to build more concrete sidewalks and islands and to expand speed and red light camera programs to reduce reckless driving.

The Adams administration has been criticized, however, for its slowness in following through on promises to build bus and bike lanes, which some city planning and transportation experts say would make the city safer. Adams has promised to install 300 miles of protected bike lanes by the end of his term.

Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy organization, said the city needed to more rapidly deploy solutions, such as bus lanes; curb extensions; raised crosswalks; concrete dividers that narrow driving lanes and make it harder to take wide turns; and other "three-dimensional obstacles."

"Clearly, as New Yorkers are getting out more and more, we're not as safe on the streets as we should be," Pearlstein said.

Kaufman said congestion pricing -- which is set to begin Sunday -- could not come soon enough. She said she would like to see the city continue to add more pedestrian access, protected bike lanes and solutions targeted to the times of day that are particularly busy, such as when schools let out and evening rush hour. She noted that most pedestrian deaths occur between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Kaufman conceded that addressing traffic deaths was a thorny policy challenge. Often when the city has tried to install bike lanes, for example, a segment of the public has come out in opposition, reluctant to cede space on the roadways to bikes, she said.

"We do need to keep traffic moving in the city to keep our economy going," she said. "At the same time, we need communities to get behind these ideas."