Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today announced an expansion of the City’s Neighborhood Slow Zone program, which reduces the speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour in residential neighborhoods and adds traffic calming measures to reduce speeding and improve safety on local streets. The program builds on the City’s aggressive efforts to curb speeding, which helped bring traffic fatalities to the lowest levels in recorded history in 2011 and made the last four years the safest period in city history. The 13 new areas have been preliminarily selected for implementation of Slow Zones. The locations, which currently are in the design and approval process, were all initially requested by local applicants and were evaluated based on crash history, community support, proximity of schools, senior centers and daycare centers, among many additional criteria. The city’s first-ever neighborhood Slow Zone was installed in November 2011 in the Claremont section of the Bronx. The Mayor and Commissioner made the announcement today in Corona, Queens, a community with significant pedestrian traffic that speeding drivers often use as a short-cut, where they were joined by NYPD Chief of Transportation Bureau James Tuller, Borough President Helen M. Marshall, Assemblymember Francisco P. Moya, Council Member Julissa Ferreras, Council Member James Vacca and Giovanna Reid, District Manager of Community Board 3, which unanimously supported the implementation of the Slow Zone in a vote last Thursday.
“We’ve driven fatalities and injuries down to record lows through innovative traffic engineering, aggressive enforcement and an unwavering commitment to finding new ways to make our streets safer, as even one fatality is too many,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “We are continuing our assault on the number one traffic killer: speeding. We’ve seen success already where we have installed Slow Zones and we expect safety will improve as speeding is reduced in these communities.”
The 13 locations preliminarily selected for implementation of a Slow Zone are: Mt. Eden, Baychester, Eastchester and Riverdale in the Bronx; Boerum Hill in Brooklyn; Inwood in Northern Manhattan; Corona, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights/East Elmhurst and Auburndale in Queens; and New Brighton/St. George, Dongan Hills and Rosebank on Staten Island.
Slow Zones are marked by a prominent blue gateway at all streets entering the area, with signs noting the 20 miles per hour speed limit, and with speed bumps and the stenciling of “20 MPH” eight-foot-long letters on the street to make clear that motorists are in a reduced speed area.