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PUBLIC TESTIMONY

Testimony by Thomas Rheingold on Daylighting and Traffic Safety

4:52:55

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87 sec

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Thomas Rheingold provides testimony emphasizing the importance of implementing daylighting to prioritize human life over parking convenience. He argues that not enacting daylighting is equivalent to knowingly choosing to allow traffic deaths to continue.

Rheingold frames the issue as a trade-off between parking and safety, urging the council to prioritize life
He critiques the argument against daylighting due to parking concerns, stating it implies accepting deaths for the sake of mobility
Rheingold concludes by asserting that choosing not to implement known effective measures is essentially choosing death

Thomas Rheingold

4:52:55

Thank you.

4:52:57

I had some prepared remarks, but, they were redundant with things that other people said, so I'll say something a little bit different.

4:53:07

If we choose not to enact daylighting, it's because we place other things as a higher priority than life.

4:53:15

We make a trade off in this matter whether or not we realize it.

4:53:19

A trade off is like a seesaw.

4:53:21

One goes up, the other will go down.

4:53:23

I'm not saying we should make, parking a zero priority, but we can, reduce parking to the point where we are not knowingly and willingly endangering life.

4:53:39

It's not enough for people to say we don't want people to die.

4:53:43

No.

4:53:44

To say we can't enable daylighting because of the effect it would have on parking is to say that losing a few lives is a price worth paying for our mobility.

4:53:58

I I can't accept that.

4:54:00

The reason I object to this argument is that we're facing a choice where we know what the outcome will be, where we know that one of the choices is to allow deaths to continue or to rise.

4:54:12

This is not a choice we should make knowingly.

4:54:16

We know what works.

4:54:17

We can choose it.

4:54:18

If we don't choose it, we're choosing death.

4:54:22

Thank you.

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Testimony by Ayo Shanti, Member of the Public, on Universal Daylighting

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Testimony by Rachel O'Brien, Resident of Staten Island, on Intro 1138