Op-Ed: The importance of pedestrian safety

Community Board 10 has been discussing the issue of pedestrian safety a lot this past year. Traffic studies by the city Department of Transportation have identified 86^th Street as well as the Fourth Avenue corridor as particularly dangerous streets. A special committee on pedestrian safety established by the community board reached similar conclusions.

Unfortunately, pedestrian safety improvements suggested by the DOT have been greeted with stiff resistance in our neighborhood by motorists who fear that they will result in more traffic congestion. This misses the point that traffic congestion is caused by cars, not by pedestrians.

As an architect and urban planner, I am keenly aware that our society has been infatuated with cars for 100 years, resulting in a complex web of economic and policy incentives that practically forces us into car dependency.

Americans lavish subsidies on motorists at 10 times the rate we devote to mass transit riders. Yet, the American Public Health Association estimates that cars are responsible for $180 billion in added health care costs due to collisions and $80 billion due to toxic emissions each year. Auto emissions also play a significant role in global warming. Think about that the next time you fill up your gas tank.

Bay Ridge has vibrant, interesting and useful streets that encourage a dynamic urban lifestyle, but the risk to pedestrians and bicyclists of injury from car collisions is still too high. This holds our community back from reaching its full potential.

Younger residents understand this and have turned away from cars. Nationwide, the number of miles driven by Americans in their 20s has declined by 30 percent since the 1970s. Society is changing and cars are no longer seen as the best route to personal mobility and autonomy, especially in dense urban neighborhoods like ours.

My six-year-old daughter recently became obsessed with the Disney movie, “Cars,” a charming film that extolls the virtues of community, while sending a mixed message celebrating the romance of cars in American pop culture. Ironically, the movie’s co-director and screenwriter, Joe Ranft, died before the film was finished. He was killed in a car crash.

The next time you need to run some errands around the neighborhood, think about whether you can walk instead of taking the car. Every mile you walk instead of driving is better for your health, better for the environment and better for the community we live in.

Robert HuDock is a practicing architect and urban planner and a member of Community Board 10. He sits on the CB10 Transportation Committee and is currently at work on a book entitled “Car Wars: Reclaiming Our City Streets for Pedestrians.”