With state legislation allowing local control of vehicle speeds going into effect next month, speed limits around New York City are expected to soon fall.
“I think we drive too fast in this city,” Mayor Adams told reporters Tuesday. “I do believe, as New Yorkers, we need to slow down.”
The law, colloquially known as “Sammy’s Law,” is named for 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was killed by a driver near his home in Brooklyn after chasing a soccer ball into the street in 2013.
The legislation was passed last month as part of the state budget.
It empowers the City Council to lower the base citywide speed limit to 20 mph and allows the city’s Transportation Department to set lower limits on individual streets — as low as 10 mph, depending on the street design.
The lower individual street limits could only be applied to roads with fewer than three lanes, according to the law, and the legislation institutes a 60-day public comment period in advance of any such changes.
Roads of three or more lanes outside of Manhattan would remain at 25 mph, according to the law.
Adams said Tuesday that he appreciated the law’s public comment provisions.
“I like the way this bill is put in place, where the local communities will have [the ability to] weigh in,” he said.
Adams has previously halted street redesign projects — including a bus-route redesign on Fordham Road in the Bronx and traffic calming measures on Underhill Ave. in Brooklyn — citing a perceived lack of community input.
“This has been a long time coming,” Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations, said Tuesday. “We have a Vision Zero goal [of zero traffic fatalities], but we’re not at zero.”
This year is on track to be the city’s deadliest for pedestrians and motorists since the de Blasio-era traffic policies went into effect.
“This is not a problem that goes away on its own, and it doesn’t necessarily go away with education,” Joshi said. “We actually have to redesign our streets and reformulate the laws that apply to people that drive in our city.”
As of Monday, 80 people had been killed on the streets of New York City in traffic incidents so far this year, the highest number to date since 2013.
Of those killed, 36 were pedestrians, 25 were in a car or SUV, 17 were on motorized two-wheeled vehicles, and two were on traditional pedal-powered bicycles.
It was not immediately clear in how many of those deaths officials considered speed a factor.
Neither Adams nor Joshi proposed a target speed limit Tuesday. Joshi said the proposed speed limits would be based on “a deep dive of DOT looking at the data that we have, looking especially at intersections, and [at] what the current street designs are.”
The law is set to go into effect on June 19.
With Michael Gartland and Tim Balk
