City to Examine Park Slope Intersection After Two Kids Die
The city has pledged to examine the intersection of 9th Street and 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where a car ran through a red light and killed two children Monday.
"We are reviewing the area for any safety improvements," Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Gastel said in a statement. "Among the traffic-calming enhancements under consideration is a protected bike lane on 9th Street to complement the protected lane that DOT already plans to add this year along 4th Avenue."
Until Monday's accident, that particular intersection had not been slated for any attention by the De Blasio administration's Vision Zero initiative, which seeks to eliminate pedestrian fatalities through a lower speed limit, better street design and stronger enforcement.
Paul Steely White with the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives called on the city to add street safety enhancements every time it repaves a street, and not just as part of costly overhauls. "These are things the city can do very quickly with paint, flexible bollards and simple re-timing of traffic signals," he said at a rally across from City Hall.
The car used by the driver, Dorothy Bruns, 44, received 12 summonses in the past two years for parking and moving violations, according to a search of NYC Open Data. (She may have received other summonses but resolved them.) Those include four tickets for allegedly running a red light and four school zone speeding violations from the last two years. The Staten Island Advance first reported the total number of violations.
Police said Bruns was headed west on 9th Street when police said she ran through a red light. She struck several people before crashing into a parked car. The victims were taken to nearby Methodist Hospital, where two small children, Joshua Lew, 1, and Abigail Blumenstein, 4, were pronounced dead. Their mothers were listed in stable condition.
Abigail's mother, an actor who goes by the stage name Ruthie Ann Miles, won a Tony Award in 2015 for her role in the revival of "The King and I."
Earlier on Tuesday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio defended his Vision Zero initiative. He told the crowd even a redesigned street wouldn't have stopped the deadly crash, though he agreed the city had to do more.
"We need stronger laws, we need more consequence, we need better design, and we need more across the board," de Blasio said outside the Propsect Park YMCA, where dozens of residents had gathered to confront him on his way to his daily work-out routine. The gym, just steps away from where the two children were killed.
In January, de Blasio announced that 2017 had the fewest traffic fatalities since records were kept. But few people gathered outside the gym, chanting "Safe streets now" and carrying signs saying "#Fix9StreetNow," were soothed. Park Slope resident Victoria Doyle told WNYC that 9th Street, where Monday's crash occurred, is a known speed corridor. She said while the mayor's Vision Zero plan is a noble effort, she has yet to see any action in her neighborhood.
"Speeding and recklessness are incompatible with residential neighborhoods. We need speed bumps on every street and we need fewer cars," Doyle said.
Doug Gordon, a local parent and street safety advocate who organized the rally, told de Blasio that he needs to stand up to the community boards that oppose street changes.
"I want streets where a driver looks at it and says 'I'm the guest here,'" Gordon said. "The people who are crossing the street, the people who are biking, the people who are even just getting into their cars are the ones who need priority."
Among the advocates greeting the mayor with protests and placards was Amy Cohen, the mother of 12-year-old Sammy Glickstein, who was killed by a van just outside Prospect Park in 2015. She compared 9th Street to a highway running through the middle of the community, and said it needed pedestrian islands to make it safer to cross. Cohen is also calling for the state to allow the city Department of Transportation to install speed cameras to enforce the law.
"Their purpose is to change the culture of reckless driving, to remind people that speeding kills," Cohen said. "They're proven to work, and Albany's failure to give New York City permission to use those cameras is why they have blood on their hands today."
UPDATED: This article was updated March 6, 2018, at 6:40 p.m., with additional information from the New York City Department of Transportation and the Transportation Alternatives news conference.
WNYC is funded by sponsors and member donations
