'Bean-Counting Street Safety': Advocates Blast Gale Brewer's Daylighting Flip-Flop - Streetsblog New York City

"Street safety advocates pilloried an Upper West Side pol for backtracking on a bill to ban parking at intersections for better visibility - also known as daylighting - while calling out the Department of Transportation for fear-mongering by telling lawmakers that large numbers of parking spots would be taken from the driving minority. Council Member Gale Brewer yanked her support for Intro 1138 this week after DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez wrote an op-ed in the Daily News reiterating the agency's opposition to universal daylighting,"

"claiming that it would "dramatically" cut back on parking and that the well-established design "adds danger." After reading the op-ed, Brewer reached out to DOT officials, who told her that Council districts could indeed lose as many as 13,000 car storage spaces in the public right-of-way to enable the city to clear corners. That prompted the flip-flop, the latest example in an ever-growing saga of the self-described progressive lawmaker caving to car-focused constituents."

"Activists were furious - not only because they objected to DOT's claim that daylighting makes intersections less safe, but because Brewer's district would actually lose far fewer parking spaces which car owners fight so hard to defend. "This bean-counting street safety just really lets down the constituents who don't have the time or the resources to constantly be in the face of their elected officials," said Carl Mahaney, director of the local advocacy group StreetopiaUWS, which shares a parent company with Streetsblog."

Council Member Gale Brewer withdrew support for Intro 1138 after the Department of Transportation warned that universal daylighting could remove large numbers of parking spaces and asserted that daylighting adds danger. DOT told Brewer that council districts might lose as many as 13,000 on-street spaces to clear corners. Activists condemned the reversal as caving to car-focused constituents, accused DOT of fear-mongering and inflated data, and emphasized that Brewer's district would actually lose far fewer spaces while daylighting improves intersection visibility and safety.

Read at Streetsblog