Syracuse Struggles to Unify for Street Safety - Streetsblog New York City

"Syracuse has long had a road violence problem. According to federal stats covering 2019 through 2023, there were 567 car crashes in the city, causing 42 deaths and 608 serious injuries. Nearly half of the fatal crashes involved a pedestrian or bicyclist. Syracuse's fatality rate (deaths per year per 100,000 residents) is 7.27, which is 40 percent higher than the state's rate and 150 percent higher than New York City's below-3.0 rate."

""People are dying," said Alex Lawson, a cyclist and the chair of Moving People Transportation Coalition, a volunteer group that advocates for a better regional transportation system. "Why aren't we doing everything we can to fix it?" The crisis reached a peak in July, when two students at Syracuse University were fatally struck by the driver of a dump truck, and a 7-year-old boy was seriously injured by the driver of an SUV."

"A bicycle master plan, created in 2012, outlined 88 projects to be finished by 2040. But fewer than 10 projects have been completed, according to a city audit. And a lot of the bike infrastructure in town is "sharrows," the ignoble chevrons of death - this in a city where three out of every 10 households don't have access to a car."

A decade-old effort to pass a Vision Zero plan and access federal funding may be stalling in Syracuse amid political finger-pointing. The city recorded 567 crashes from 2019–2023, causing 42 deaths and 608 serious injuries, with nearly half of fatal crashes involving pedestrians or bicyclists. Syracuse's fatality rate is 7.27 per year per 100,000 residents, substantially higher than the state and New York City. Two student deaths and a seriously injured child in July heightened urgency, yet a Common Councilor withdrew the Vision Zero plan from a vote. Long-promised bicycle projects largely remain incomplete, though some infrastructure and sidewalk improvements have been made.

Read at Streetsblog