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Canal Street ranks as one of city’s deadliest
I am just catching up to a couple of studies — one from Transportation Alternatives and one from trial lawyers Antin, Ehrlich & Epstein — that rank Canal Street among the deadliest, if not THE deadliest, streets in the city. I wanted them recorded here, as we witness the city’s attempt to redesign the street and as new (welcome) developments continue to rise.
The city’s own data — part of its presentation for redesigning Canal Street — shows that 26 people were killed or severely injured in the five years between 2020 and 2024, most of them east of Broadway. (See maps below.)
Antin, Ehrlich & Epstein, the personal injury firm, has the following data compiled for 2024:
- 11,902 crashes in Manhattan
- 4,875 with injuries
- 44 people killed in traffic accidents
- Seniors account for roughly 41% of pedestrian deaths in Manhattan despite making up about 14% of the population
- Wide avenues with long crossing distances and short signal timing put older pedestrians at extreme risk
Canal Street ranked as their #1 most dangerous corridor in the borough, above Times Square, the FDR Drive and the Henry Hudson Parkway.
In its report last July, Transportation Alternatives called on the city to take immediate action after a speeding driver coming off the Manhattan Bridge killed Kevin Cruickshank and May Kwok. Just a year later, in mid-September, Jun Ye Ting, 77, was killed at nearly the same spot. The report also noted:
- 5,000 children live within .25 miles of Canal Street
- 10,000 seniors, significantly higher than the citywide average, live within .25 miles of Canal Street
- 2 out of 3 residents living within .25 miles of Canal Street are nonwhite
Community Board 1 responded to the city’s proposal for changes to Canal in July, noting that while the improvements are welcomed, they 1) are not permanent (and should be); 2) the city needs to deal with the counterfeit vending on Canal and adjacent streets if not for any other reason than it obstructs the pedestrian path of travel and business entrances; 3) they work on all the intersections to cue people with disabilities; 4) consider no left turn off of Canal onto West Broadway or Greene; 5) consider a two-way bike path on Spring instead.
There are also plans afoot for Church between White and Canal, some of which have been implemented. And the board asked for an update on that.
I know this is just a dump of material, but I want it here as a tool for our future discussions…
3 Comments
Comment:
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There needs to be an MTA crosstown bus route added on Canal Street.
As for widening sidewalks, likely just more street vendors…
all sorts of things could be done to the entrance/exit ramp to the Manh bridge.This is def one of the intersections that needs a four-way pedestrian crossing exchange. Maybe speed bumps or something to slow cars that floor it on the green when entering the bridge from Canal – crossing the east side of the bowery/canal intersection is a death race. Also, the entrance ramp from Bowery, driving north to the bridge, has *just a stop sign* for pedestrians to negotiage. Most cars blow though it.
No surprise. I’ve almost been run over multiple times by red-light running speeders.
There should be:
– speed bumps
– cameras to detect speeding, red-light running, and also loud NOISE
– enforcement of “don’t block the box”
– enforcement against blocking the crosswalks
– enforcement against blocked or modified license plates
– enforcement against placard abuse, which also causes traffic jams by blocking up no parking lanes and no parking hours
– perhaps more expensive parking tickets (I heard a plumber say it’s cheaper and more convenient to park illegally and pay the occasional parking ticket, than to pay for a parking lot space or meters…!)
– tickets for non-emergency horn-honking (imagine the income!)
– ticketing for loud vehicle music or loud motors
– obviously enforcement over the counterfeit criminals, who have become a total menace (one pushed a neighbor of ours who had to stop on his market blanket to get through the overcrowded sidewalk, another threatened a different neighbor recently, saying “I know where you live”, etc.)
– new laws (as in Europe) making it illegal to buy counterfeit
– obviously, actual enforcement of those new laws
As for cost of all this enforcement: The tickets should surely pay for it.