Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper | | |
Crash Course
Lower Manhattan is a Perilous Place to Perambulate – But It Could Be Worse
| | The scene at West and Albany Streets in January 2024, when a pedestrian was struck by a car that police say ran a red light. The dark area on the pavement is the remnants of blood stain that had been washed away a few minutes before this photograph was taken. | | |
Two sources of data document that the streets of Community Board 1 (an area between the Hudson and East Rivers, bounded by Canal, Pearl, and Baxter Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge) are a hazardous place to walk, cycle, or drive.
The NYC Crash Mapper online database (operated by the non-profit pedestrian advocacy group, CHEKPEDS, using municipal Open Data) documents that in the 12-month period ending in February of this year, there were 266 total crashes in Lower Manhattan. These entailed no fatalities, but did cause 300 injuries, divided among 130 motorists, 86 pedestrians, and 70 cyclists (along with nine victims who were uncategorized).
Accord to Crash Mapper data, the five most dangerous local intersections appear to be West Street near the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel (with four crashes and seven injuries), West and Chambers Streets (also four crashes and seven injuries), Reade Street and West Broadway (four crashes, six injuries), Reade and Chambers Streets (four crashes, four injuries), and Church and Chambers Streets (also four crashes, four injuries).
The five most commonly cited contributing factors in these crashes (after “unspecified” in 185 cases) were driver inattention/distraction (101 cases), failure to yield right-of-way (27), pedestrian or bicyclist error/confusion (18), improper passing or lane usage (18), and traffic control disregarded (13).
That noted, Crash Mapper says CB1 ranks lowest for any Community Board in Manhattan, both for the overall number of crashes and the tally of injuries during this period.
| A skateboarder hit by a car near P.S. 89 in November 2023 was taken to the hospital. | | |
A second compendium, from the City’s Vision Zero online database, provides monthly updates. In January (the most period recent available), CB1 was the scene of 21 total injuries, divided among ten motorists, six pedestrians, four cyclists, and one uncategorized victim. (Vision Zero specifies the number of injuries, but not the total number of crashes.)
In a related development, City Council member Christopher Marte continues to push the City’s Department of Transportation to complete a long overdue pedestrian study of the Financial District, for which $500,000 in funding was earmarked a decade ago but never spent. This analysis is intended to study mobility and pedestrian safety solutions, such as shared streets, for an increasingly congested Lower Manhattan. This would be a reprise to similar studies conducted by the agency in 1997 and 2010 that were completed but never implemented.
In the intervening years, multiple local organizations have commissioned and completed their own studies, including one by the Downtown Alliance and another by the Financial District Neighborhood Association (FDNA).
The FDNA proposal, titled “Make Way for Lower Manhattan,” seeks to reclaim large swaths of Lower Manhattan’s streetscape for pedestrians under a program that would widen sidewalks, take down construction scaffolding, put trash in its place, decrease traffic, ban parking (especially by official vehicles), and create new public plazas. With the ultimate aim of creating new pedestrian and cycling arteries throughout the Financial District, the Association wants, as a first step, to focus on creating a “slow-street district” between Broadway and Water Street, from City Hall to the Battery, within which vehicular traffic would be subject to a ten mile-per-hour speed limit.
The Alliance’s plan, “A More Welcoming Wall & Broad: A Vision for Improving the Stock Exchange District,” envisions transforming the area through a series of innovations, such as creating curb-less “shared” streets, surfaced with historical contextual paving materials. The plan also would create a distinct sense of place by erecting “gateway” structures at entrances to the zone. These interactive sculptural installations would display text offering way-finding directions and historical background. Elsewhere, the Alliance proposes installing stone street furniture, which would act as bollards and security barriers, but also double as benches and planters. The Alliance plan also contains logistical improvements, such as a consolidated delivery center for all packages, which would consist of a centralized drop-off point for delivery trucks from which parcels could be distributed using hand trucks or cargo bikes.
Matthew Fenton
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Seeking to Avert an Al Fresco Fiasco
Community Board Opposes Bills that Aim to Enable Outdoor Dining
With the return of warm weather, outdoor dining will resume in Lower Manhattan in the form of sidewalk cafés, regulated by the City’s Department of Consumer & Worker Protection, and roadway cafés on streets adjacent to restaurants, overseen by the Department of Transportation. Read more...
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Maybe You Can Fight City Hall?
Mamdani Administration Reconsiders Site for FiDi Amazon Hub
After Community Board 1 criticized a proposal by the City’s Department of Transportation to create a “microhub” – an open-air delivery center, where Amazon trucks offload cargo to couriers pushing carts or riding bikes – in the South Street Seaport neighborhood, that agency modified its plans, moving the facility to a nearby location. Read more...
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Wednesday, March 11
1pm
Downtown Beats Chorus
200 Rector Place
Learn contemporary and classic songs, and perform at community events throughout the year. Free.
2pm-4pm
Figure Drawing
6 River Terrace
A model will strike poses for participants to draw. Educators will offer constructive suggestions and critique. Materials provided. Registration required. Free.
6pm
Round Up the Usual Suspects
Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street
Book reading and signing by author Elizabeth Crowens.
6pm
Brahms Requiem
Trinity Church and livestreamed
Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem is one of the most profound choral masterworks ever composed. In this performance by Downtown Voices, NOVUS, and soloists Moriah Berry (a former Trinity Choral Scholar) and Brian Mextorf (Trinity Choir), Brahms’s setting of biblical texts unfolds in waves of grief and consolation, embodied in expressive orchestration and choral melodies. Unlike traditional requiems, Brahms’s masterpiece is not a mass for the dead but rather a work for the living, offering reassurance and solace. Free.
6pm-8pm
Community Design Workshop: Manhattan Borough-Based Jail Facility
Surrogate’s Court Lobby, 31 Chambers Street
Representatives from the NYC Department of Design and Construction, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, Department of Correction, and the project’s design-build team will summarize how previous community feedback was incorporated into the
design and collect additional feedback. Topics of discussion: the public realm, architecture, interior public spaces, interior secure spaces. Open to all.
6pm-7:30pm
BPC Resiliency Community Update
Livestreamed
Virtual community update and feedback session to provide project status, coming work and to take comments. Open to all.
6pm
The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class
Words on Warren, 52 Warren Street
A night of trivia about The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class with four of the authors of the series Tracey Baptiste, Eliot Schrefer, and Kyle Lukoff. Prizes awarded to all participants.
7pm
Minister Without Portfolio
McNally Jackson, 4 Fulton Street
Hooman Majd presents his memoir, in conversation with Ann Curry. The son of a high-ranking diplomat in pre-Revolutionary Iran, Hooman Majd grew up in the upper echelons of Iranian society and in cosmopolitan diplomatic enclaves in San Francisco, London, and Washington, DC. $5+.
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Thursday, March 12
1pm-3pm
Fiber Art Crafts Studio
200 Rector Place
Bring your projects, which can include—but are not limited to—knitting, crocheting, embroidery and small-loom weaving. Free.
2pm
Films at the Museum: “Liliana”
Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place
Liliana is a documentary by Ruggero Gabbai that retraces the testimony of life senator Liliana Segre linked to her arrest, deportation and poignant final farewell to her father. The film is based on juxtapositions, cross-references and contrasts between the historical account and the contemporary portrait of one of the most important women on the Italian scene. $10 suggested donation.
6pm
ASL Tour: Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk
Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place
Curator-led tour of the exhibition, Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk, presented with ASL interpretation and designed for Deaf adults.
6pm
Murder at 30,000 Feet/Blade
Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street
Book reading and signing by authors Susan Walter and Wendy Walker, in conversation with Kristin Thorvaldsen.
6:30pm-8:30pm
Immigrant Stories: A Serious Man
6 River Terrace
Immigrant Stories is a collection of films that illustrate the immigrant experience as it progresses along the generations. Free popcorn will be served, and a discussion will follow the screenings. In A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009, 106 minutes), a mild-mannered Jewish physics professor named Larry Gopnik seeks guidance from three rabbis as his life collapses under an increasingly absurd and biblical series of misfortunes. Free.
7pm
5th Footprints Dance Festival
Amanda Selwyn Dance Theatre, 412 Broadway
Dance festival that celebrates the work of emerging and established choreographers. Curated by Amanda Selwyn, this festival showcases dance works with a strong theatrical aesthetic. Through March 14. $20+.
7pm
In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man
McNally Jackson, 4 Fulton Street
From two-time National Magazine Award winner Tom Junod, a searching, brilliantly stylized memoir about a charismatic, philandering father who tried to mold his son in his image. $5+.
7pm-9pm
Passwords: Kay Gabriel on Bernadette Mayer
Poets House, 10 River Terrace
Writer and organizer Kay Gabriel focuses on the cult-favorite downtown poet Bernadette Mayer’s maximalism, frequently expressed in her compulsion to write “everything.” $10 suggested donation.
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FROM THE BROADSHEET ARCHIVES | | March 2014 © Robert Simko | | | | |
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Top banner photograph by Cora Fung.
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