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Q&A
Universal daylighting implementation and budget concerns
2:49:13
ยท
3 min
Council Member Julie Won questions DOT officials about the implementation and budget for universal daylighting, expressing concern about the slow pace of implementation given current funding levels. DOT Deputy Commissioner Eric Beaton explains the department's approach to safety improvements and the results of their daylighting study.
- Current budget allows for only 100 hardened daylighting intersections per year
- At the current pace, universal daylighting would take 34 years to implement
- DOT defends its approach, citing a focus on high-crash locations and the effectiveness of hardened daylighting
Julie Won
2:49:13
I have a follow-up question for universal daylighting.
2:49:16
We appreciate the $3,900,000 investment to have hardened daylighting barriers, bike racks as well as concrete.
2:49:24
Right now, there's 13,543 intersections in estimate for traffic signals citywide, and there's 3,432 in Queens alone.
2:49:33
So with the amount that's currently allocated at 3.9, that's only a hundred hardened daylighting per year, not including the cost for staff as he was saying, so that means that we're estimating thirty four years for universal daylighting to take place.
2:49:49
So could you help me understand, if it costs roughly $10,000 to daylight one intersection, do you estimate the cost to be a hundred million dollars to implement 1,000 intersections?
2:49:58
Is that what DOT would need to implement 10,000?
Eric Beaton
2:50:03
So part of the reason we wanted to put this in context is daylighting is only one of many different treatments that we use to improve safety.
2:50:09
So we are very committed to improving safety all over the city.
2:50:13
We're guided by where there's more crashes.
2:50:14
We don't spend as much effort on it.
2:50:16
There are many intersections in Queens as the other boroughs that have had zero crashes or zero injuries over the years.
2:50:22
So we focus on the highest crash locations and we try to do that in the ways we can.
2:50:28
You know, I think we did this very detailed study to find out what's really effective.
2:50:33
Because it's easy to say let's just go do it everywhere.
2:50:36
But what we found is that when we do it without this hardening it actually had a small negative effect on safety.
2:50:42
And we want to make sure that we are putting the resources into anywhere that we're working to make sure we are improving the safety.
Julie Won
2:50:48
I want to point out that you studied New York City which doesn't actually have universal daylighting.
2:50:52
The study should have included other cities in Europe and San Francisco and others or even in Jersey that have universal daylighting to actually study the effects of it.
2:51:01
So I don't think your study is actually accurate in a comprehensive way to say how effective it is and just using paint and plastic barriers is not enough.
2:51:10
We've had multiple children die.
2:51:12
The chair has been Chair Brooks Powers has been a huge advocate of daylighting, and we need to make sure that we're doing the right thing.
2:51:18
So we're gonna need more than more than a hundred barriers per year for the next thirty four years.
2:51:24
Thank you.
Ydanis Rodriguez
2:51:26
And one thing that I want to highlight to everyone is that with the hardening of daylighting plus all the work that we do around Vision Zero, which is made by the three e.
2:51:37
The first e is the e of engineer.
2:51:39
The second e is the e of educational.
2:51:42
And the three e is the e of enforcement.
2:51:45
But today, we have the lowest numbers of traffic fatality when we are compared to any other year for the last one hundred thirteen years.
2:51:57
We hope to continue seeing these numbers as low as today.
2:52:01
We are proud of the work that we do with hard dining, creating pedestrian island, redesigning our streets to make it safe for pedestrian, for cyclists, and even for drivers.
Julie Won
2:52:11
I also want to just put on the record that the DOT study doesn't even include the before and after analysis of New York City's intersections with daylighting.