traffic manager president edition makes traffic worse

Yet for some reason, the department’s rank-and-file - and many laymen bike critics - still spread the lie that bike lanes or other street safety improvements prevent first responders from arriving quickly at emergencies. “Response times matter when people’s lives hang in the balance.” Cassidy lost his job after crashing his city vehicle while drunk driving. “Traffic in New York City is becoming more and more of a challenge for New York City firefighters,” Steve Cassidy, the then-union president, said at the time, when Uber and Lyft rides were at just about 200,000 per day instead of the 750,000 today. The increase is mostly due to the rise of Uber and Lyft - and the ex-president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association warned about it back in 2016, when he predicted that the city’s constant gridlock would pose a real risk to New Yorkers who are counting on their emergency responders to arrive quickly. And since January, 2016, the total number of daily taxi trips in the city are up from roughly 675,000 in January, 2016, to roughly 1,095,000 by March, 2019 - an increase of 62 percent. Car ownership in New York City is up 9 percent since 2010, Streetsblog reported previously. Specifically, the average response time by fire companies to all emergencies, which includes only the FDNY dispatch and travel time, now takes five minutes and 15 seconds - 25 seconds longer than it did in fiscal year 2015, which ran from July 2014 through June 2015.īut the main reason is all the cars on the road, which consistently double- and illegally park, and the onslaught of construction projects going on all over the city, which together block vital arteries for emergency vehicles, according to the FDNY. Response times for both fire trucks and ambulances are the highest they’ve been in years in every category, including responses to structural fires, life-threatening medical emergencies, and all emergencies by fire companies, according to the report. “Everything regarding the increase in response times is noted in the mayor’s management report,” FDNY spokesman Myles Miller said.īut the bike lanes! (Video I was able to take on my bike safely moved out of the way for the ambulance stuck in traffic behind cars) /qyImTikH1r Opponents of bike lanes have long argued that safer routes for cyclists have the unwanted effect of slowing down cars, so Streetsblog reached out to the FDNY to make sure the agency wasn’t forgetting Steve Cuozzo’s obsession.Īnd that still remains true - Streetsblog asked point blank if bike lanes play a role in slowing down emergency response times, but a spokesman for New York’s Bravest didn’t bite. Traffic, population growth and a construction boom is slowing down the FDNY's response time, data shows: “Travel time increases may be partly attributed to continued population growth, with more vehicles on the road and more construction,” says the report, which was released late Tuesday. The FDNY says there are three reasons why its emergency response times are up 25 seconds - or 8.6 percent - since 2015: An increase in population, and more construction and congestion - caused specifically by an increase in cars, according to Mayor de Blasio’s annual management report.

Traffic manager president edition makes traffic worse