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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Tony Malone, Member of Brooklyn Community Board Six
4:34:04
·
114 sec
Tony Malone, a member of Brooklyn's Community Board Six, testifies in support of universal daylighting, citing the urgent need to address traffic deaths and climate change. He argues that daylighting should be implemented citywide without requiring individual community board approvals.
- Malone criticizes the lack of enforcement against illegal parking and suggests using both physical barriers and increased enforcement to improve safety.
- He proposes creating incentives for New Yorkers to use alternative transportation methods and compares the potential success of universal daylighting to that of congestion pricing.
- Malone argues that making it safer and easier to walk, use transit, or ride bikes/scooters will encourage more people to live without cars, benefiting everyone.
Tony Malone
4:34:04
Hi.
4:34:04
Thank you very much for holding this hearing.
4:34:07
My name is Tony Malone.
4:34:09
I am a member of Brooklyn's Community Board six on the Transportation Committee, and, proud to say that, Community Board six has voted to support universal daylighting.
4:34:21
And I support it because we can't wait when there are two hundred fifty traffic deaths per year, and climate change is also not gonna wait for us to transition away from polluting cars.
4:34:33
We shouldn't have to go to every community board for approval for something as basic as universal daylighting.
4:34:39
The DOT said earlier in this hearing that daylighting without hard barriers can make intersections less safe, but they didn't point to the reason for that, that drivers in New York City will park anywhere, even on sidewalks or in the crosswalk, and the NYPD mostly looks the other way.
4:34:57
This has gotten worse in recent years.
4:34:58
When I owned a car years ago, I once got a ticket for parking 12 feet instead of 15 feet from a hydrant, but now I see cops drive right by when cars are parked in the crosswalk.
4:35:10
So I think we can do two things at once.
4:35:13
DOT can ramp up the installation of physical barriers that keep cars from parking where they shouldn't, and city agencies, including the NYPD, can work together to encourage better behavior by drivers.
4:35:26
We can use both carrots and sticks, creating incentives for New Yorkers to use transit or ride bikes, and increasing enforcement against drivers who refuse to follow the rules and put us all in danger.
4:35:37
And we've seen the success of congestion pricing, that a well designed program can benefit everyone and change people's behavior.
4:35:44
I think universal daylighting can do the same when we make it safer and easier to walk, to take transit, or to ride a bike or a scooter, then more people will feel comfortable living in our city without owning a car, and we'll all benefit as a result.
4:35:57
Thank you.