Deadly Zones Surround Schools

As the toll of deaths and injuries around schools in Queens continues to mount, local officials and parents are beseeching the City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) to do more.
One politician, City Councilmember James Gennaro, even plans to provide funds to the Parks Department to plant a hundred trees on the street between two Briarwood schools to eliminate dangerous u-turning vehicles.
On Thursday, November 30, 2006, Mayor Bloomberg, along with DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Schools Chancellor Joel I.Klein announced the completion and releaseof “Traffic Safety Maps” for each of the city’s 1,471 elementary and middle schools.
In addition, Bloomberg said that the Cityhas already begun implementing $4 millioninfrastructural additions and upgrades - suchas speed bumps, traffic signals, bicycle lanes,medians and crosswalks - at 135 cityschools, designated as “priority schools,” -33 of which are in Queens.
So far, the DOT has added 32 crosswalks, 14 pedestrian crosswalks, and one traffic signal, as well as retimed two traffic signals around Queens “priority” schools. As for signage, the agency has put up 205 “AdvancedSchool” signs about a block away fromschools, 292 school signs with riders in front of schools, seven “No Standing” parking signs, and six “Yield to Pedestrian” signs aspart of the program. All of the implementations, completed in 2006, are part of the short-term recommendations. Long-term plans include capital projects.
“Keeping our children safe around schools is as important as keeping them safe inside schools,” Bloomberg said. “These new maps and crosswalks, combined with the new safety enhancements we have begun adding at many schools, will help make the trip to school safer for thousands of students, teachers, and parents throughout the city.”
The maps, which will be distributed in schools and available on the DOT website, are the result of an examination of accident histories around each school as well as comprehensive traffic safety reports for priority schools. The $2.5 million traffic study was state funded, according to the DOT.
By visiting the DOT’s website -ww.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/safety/safer-outes.html - Queens parents can view a “Map Locator,” which lists all the schools by borough, and links to a map of streets and safety devices around each school.
The “School Safety Engineering Project General Mitigation Measures Final Report” is also available. This 159 page comprehensivestudy, issued in 2004 lists dozens of things which can be done to improve pedestrian safety from the simple - remove sidewalk obstructions to the complicated - reengineer roadways. In a joint effort, the DOT and Board of Education have come up with acourse outline to teach children about traffic safety.
Nevertheless, the injuries and deaths continue. In mid-December, Roni Futoran, a 63-year-old teacher at P.S. 200, died of injuries sustained while crossing 164th Street in Electchester, in front of the school.
The reports and studies by the DOT make it very clear that the greatest danger to school children is no longer violence inside the schools, but the adults who drive near them. For children ages five to nine in NewYork City, being hit by a motorist is the number one cause of death and injury, according to the state Health Department, which found that the City has the highest rate of pedestrian death and injury in the state. The studies of the most dangerous schools are replete with chilling notations of death and injury caused by drivers.Speed surveys show some drivers goingover 30 miles per hour on side streets next to schools.
Some of the most dangerous schools ar ebordered by wide, two-way streets with traffic lights, others by narrow one-way streets. There have been fatalities at well-marked intersections, and in the middle of other blocks. More often than not, the driver “didn’t see” the victim.
The situation in Briarwood is so dangerous that Gennaro and Assemblymember Rory Lancman have been meeting with parents at P.S. 117 and J.H.S. 217 in Briarwood, which are across the street from each other, and calling on city agencies to act sooner rather than later.
“It’s insane,” Gennaro says. “The sidewalks are almost level with the street, and people make u-turns right over the side-walk. It’s like some broad driving plaza,and the kids have to dodge cars on the sidewalk.”
Gennaro, who chairs the City Council Environmental Protection Committee and sits on the Public Safety Committee, is frustrated with the DOT.
“They say they can’t raise the sidewalks to the proper height, and it would be too disruptive and expensive to lower the road bed. But Rory and I got a good idea from a parent at J.H.S. 217,” Gennaro told The Queens Courier exclusively.
“I’m going to give money directly to the Parks Department, and have the street between the schools lined with a hundred trees. It is not a cure-all but it is the quickestand easiest way to afford the kids some protection from people making illegal u-turns.
Sadly, it is often parents worried about their own kids, who create dangerous situations by parking right up to the intersections in front of schools, and often double parking on one or both sides of streets infront of them. This dangerous situation can be observed even in residential neighborhoods where there is ample parking within a block of a school.
Principals and Parent TeacherAssociation leaders are powerless to forceparents to avoid this dangerous practice, and there are not enough police and parking enforcement agents to monitor everyschool in the city to stop the traffic and parking violations.
In the final analysis, no amount of signage, or painted lines or classroom instruction are going to make children act like adults, and even if they did, they would have little defense against adults who act like children with motor vehicles.
As the old comic strip character, Pogoused to say, “We have met the enemy, andhe is us.”