City Stepping Up Traffic Safety Efforts
Updated 10/22/2010 at 7:30am
NEW YORK (1010 WINS / WCBS 880) -- The city is stepping up its traffic safety efforts by targeting red light runners, speeders and wrong-way bikers, 1010 WINS' Juliet Papa reports.
The Department of Transportation announced the new initiative on Thursday and said that the efforts will create safer New York streets, especially at one of its ten hot spots: the intersection of West 71st, Amsterdam and Broadway.
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"Anyone who knows this location knows how much of a challenge it can be to cross these streets," DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said.
The city will also be installing countdown clocks and creating more pedestrian walkways.
"And these signals will help us to continue the downward trend of traffic fatality in the streets of New York," Sadik-Khan said.
One Upper West Side resident is thankful for the upcoming changes.
"People don't pay attention, just like this guy," she said, referring to a truck making a turn that came within inches.
In addition to motorists, police are also targeting cyclists.
"That's by going through red lights, by going against traffic," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
