Winnie Hu

But don’t expect to see them traveling down Fifth Avenue anytime soon.

The cars have been corralled behind the gates of the sprawling Brooklyn Navy Yard — away from city streets teeming with cars, bikes and pedestrians.

The cars will begin shuttling people Wednesday around a loop that is just more than 1 mile at the yard, a 300-acre, privately operated manufacturing and technology hub.

They will run seven days a week to meet passengers going to and from a recently opened ferry landing. There is no charge for a ride and anyone can hop in.

Autonomous vehicles have been heralded as the next revolution in transportation, promising to move people and goods far more efficiently than cars dependent on drivers.

Advocates say the self-driving technology can be harnessed to increase the reliability and safety of taxis, Ubers and buses, as well as to make truck deliveries and to operate construction machinery. They also say it can reduce the need for personal cars and parking spaces in congested cities.

But some of this enthusiasm waned after a woman walking a bicycle on a street in Tempe, Arizona, was fatally struck last year by a self-driving car being tested by Uber. It was the first known pedestrian death involving a self-driving vehicle, though three Tesla drivers also have died in the past several years in crashes that happened after an autopilot driver-assistance system was activated.

And self-driving cars that rely on gas will still spew greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Still, autonomous vehicles continue to be tested in more than a dozen communities around the country, according to Samuel I. Schwartz, a transportation consultant and author of “No One at the Wheel.” He added that almost all of these self-driving cars are confined to enclosed areas, though a few have operated on a limited basis on public roads.

“In 2017, autonomous vehicles were two years away from hitting the street,” Schwartz said. “In 2019, they are at least five years away. Just about everybody that promised autonomous vehicles by 2019 has retrenched. It’s far more complicated than they imagined.”

In New York City, autonomous vehicles are likely a long way from being allowed on public roads.

For now, they are relegated to a fleet of six electric Polaris vehicles at the Navy Yard that have been retrofitted with laser scanners, cameras and a sophisticated computer system. Just look for the shiny mini tram with the “self-driving” sign.

“I think it’s absolutely cool, but anything can happen,” said Frank Davis, a fire safety engineer who was visiting the yard and plans to take a ride though he remains concerned about the overall safety of self-driving cars. “For a shuttle, it’s fine, but on the road, no. People fail, so does technology.”

The cars at the Navy Yard are operated by Optimus Ride, a startup company founded in 2015 by five graduates and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since then, the company has provided more than 20,000 autonomous vehicle rides, mostly around Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, where it is based, and also in a residential community in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb. The cars have supplemented local bus and train service by getting riders to stations.

Passengers on Optimus Ride vehicles are never onboard by themselves. A team of two people — a safety driver and a software operator — goes on every ride to take over the controls if needed, and to collect data to help develop a comprehensive driverless technology system.

The company has not had any accidents or injuries involving the driverless cars, said Ryan Chin, a co-founder of Optimus Ride and the chief executive.

“Most accidents are caused by human error,” said Chin, including people driving while texting or intoxicated, and falling asleep behind the wheel. “Those are all human characteristics we can actually program out of the vehicle. Our computers will never get tired as long as there’s power.”

Chin met David Ehrenberg, the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp., a nonprofit that manages the site, at a conference several years ago. The two started talking, and soon Chin was touring the yard where battleships like the Missouri were once built.

The yard has become a laboratory for urban technology, in part because fewer regulations and restrictions exist there than on public streets. It is a city within a city, with 400 companies and 10,000 workers. Citi Bike, the bike-share program, was first tried out at the yard before launching in Manhattan. Drones have also been used to inspect buildings.

“I said, ‘This is the perfect landing spot for an autonomous car in New York,’ ” Ehrenberg recalled telling Chin. “There is — we think — no better place than the Navy Yard to test and learn about new technologies.”

Ehrenberg’s organization contracted with Optimus for two years to provide shuttles for a recently launched city ferry landing — there have been 40,000 ferry trips since May — and to support local job development. It declined to disclose how much it paid, citing the confidentiality of the agreement. No public money was used.

Optimus opened an office at the yard and hired 18 local operations workers with salaries ranging from $20 to $65 an hour, including recent engineering graduates of the New York City College of Technology, which is part of the City University of New York. It is also working with a high school at the yard to create an internship program.

The driverless cars arrived in April for test runs and are impossible to miss.

“It’s a self-driving machine, I’ve never seen one before,” said Quinn Castillo, a security officer at the yard. “When is it going to start taking passengers?”

But Julia Janicelli, who works for a fashion company at the yard, said she did not find a driverless car all that appealing. Would she try it? “Maybe if I’m really bored at lunch one day but I wouldn’t seek it out,” she said.

Matt Cortright, an architectural designer who rides his bike to work (the cars have a bike rack), said that a driverless car is still a car. “My general perception is we have too many cars already and adding cars without drivers doesn’t solve the problem,” he said.

Plus, he added, “If I get hit by a car, I want to be able to sue the person driving it.”

On a test run recently, Greg Zborowski, a systems engineer for Optimus, slid behind the wheel and pressed a green button. The car started and then accelerated. It is programmed to go no faster than 15 mph and to obey all traffic rules.

At a stop sign, it came to a full stop. It inched forward to clear a blind spot, and made a left turn followed by a quick right. Later, it swerved around a driver opening his car door.

“No hands,” Zborowski said, holding up his arms. “At no point am I interacting with it.”

Ruijie He, the vice president of engineering for Optimus, sat beside him with a laptop that was connected to the dashboard. The screen showed the car’s real-time calculations as its sensors registered other cars, pedestrians and cyclists.

Not long ago, He hit the brakes when a man on his phone darted in front of the car. The car is programmed to stop on its own, but He said he did not want to take any chances.

This time, there was no excitement. The car rolled to a stop and the ride was over.

“Pretty uneventful, but that’s what we’re trying for,” He said. “It should be boring.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/nyregion/driverless-cars-new-york-city.html" id="0a2879ee-3620-3197-a382-04375488c5ae">The New York Times</a>.

Poised to Take the Wheel At the Navy Yard: No One

NEW YORK — Driverless cars have rolled into New York City, finally.

But they did. Two more cyclists were hit and killed Tuesday — one in Brooklyn and another on Staten Island — and another struck Wednesday morning in Queens was reportedly in critical condition.

The growing toll of 17 biking fatalities this year — seven more than all of last year — has provoked an outcry from cyclists and transportation advocates and ratcheted up pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat running for president, to better protect cyclists at a time when biking is booming across the city.

In response, de Blasio plans to unveil a $58.4 million bike safety plan this week that will try to make cycling safer by rapidly installing more protected bike lanes, redesigning intersections to make turns safer for cyclists and hiring 80 new city transportation workers dedicated to bike improvements.

De Blasio’s signature transportation policy, Vision Zero, has sought to make city streets safer.

“This year, we’ve seen a dangerous surge in cyclist fatalities,” de Blasio said. “No loss of life on our streets is acceptable. Last year was the safest year on record, and we have to keep pushing the envelope and increasing our efforts.”

Under the new plan, the city will increasingly focus on creating a citywide network of protected bike lanes; currently the city has 1,243 miles of bike lanes, of which 480 miles are protected, meaning barriers physically separate cyclists from vehicles.

The city will now add 30 miles of protected bike lanes a year, up from an average of 20 miles a year over the past three years.

In addition, city officials will also expand bike lanes — including protected lanes — in 10 designated “bike priority districts” in Brooklyn and Queens that have relatively few bike lanes but have had large numbers of serious injuries and fatalities involving cyclists.

These districts will cover neighborhoods including Corona, East Elmhurst and Jackson Heights in Queens; and Bay Ridge, Midwood, Sheepshead Bay and Brownsville in Brooklyn. This year, 12 of the 17 cycling fatalities happened in Brooklyn.

City transportation officials also plan to redesign 50 intersections to make cyclists more visible to turning motorists by using measures such as bike boxes, where cyclists wait in front of vehicles; and bike lanes painted green to provide more of a visual cue.

They will also expand a pilot program known as the “green wave” that adjusts the timing of green light signals so that all traffic — including cyclists — going about 15 mph can pass one green light after another in a corridor. It reduces the temptation of running a red light and also slows down traffic.

The bulk of the money for the bike safety program will be used to hire more city transportation workers to carry out the improvements, adding to the 110 workers the city currently employs.

Police officers will also step up enforcement of traffic rules at 100 high-crash intersections, specifically targeting trucks. This month, police had already discontinued a widely criticized practice of issuing tickets to cyclists breaking traffic rules at a site after a fatal crash.

“I think the things we are proposing here are things we know work,” said Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner. “Building out protected infrastructure, safer intersection designs and targeted enforcement of dangerous driving behaviors.”

The mayor’s plan drew cautious praise from some cycling advocates, who said the measure would help the city — and the mayor — focus their attention on bike safety.

“We think on paper it looks good — we need more protected bike lanes,” said Jon Orcutt, communication director for Bike New York, an education and advocacy group. “But the devil is in the implementation.”

To really safeguard cyclists, Orcutt said, the new bike lanes would have to connect to other protected bike lanes instead of ending and forcing cyclists into traffic lanes.

He said the barriers should also be placed close together and be sturdy enough to keep cars from crossing into the bike lanes. Cars have driven through or right over flexible plastic rods that currently run alongside some lanes.

Cycling has exploded in New York as Citi Bike, the bike-share program, has expanded and growing frustration with subway and bus delays have pushed more commuters to take to two wheels.

About 460,000 bike rides take place in the city every day, up from about 180,000 bike rides in 2006, according to the city.

At the same time, the city’s streets have become more congested than ever as Uber, Lyft and ride-app services have proliferated and truck traffic has surged from Amazon and online grocery deliveries.

“We have a toxic mix on the street with more cars, more trucks and more bikes,” Orcutt said. “I think that’s catching up with the city.”

Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who is chairman of the City Council’s transportation committee, said the mayor’s plan was a step in the right direction but far more needed to be done. He has called for the city to build 100 miles of protected bike lanes a year over the next six years.

“We have seen larger numbers of New Yorkers are using bikes as a mode of transportation,” he said. “We need to plan for that growth.”

Several cyclists said they welcomed more bike lanes as the city’s streets have become more congested and harder to navigate.

Nevada Griffin, 35, who lives in Brooklyn, said he has almost collided with cars and delivery trucks numerous times.

“Anything that moves the city toward a more pedestrian-friendly, bikeable city is a good thing,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/nyc-bike-safety-deaths.html" id="661df5c4-ff14-3e0f-ab54-8c4796118b0e">The New York Times</a>.

More Bicyclists' Deaths Spur a New Safety Plan in New York

NEW YORK — Things could not get much worse in early July after three cyclists were killed in just more than a week on the streets of New York City.

But he does more than just count money and make change. He gives directions to lost drivers, offers hotel and restaurant tips and keeps watch for vehicles wanted by the state police. Regular commuters know him by name.

Soon he will lose his job, yet another casualty of advancing technology.

Flint will be replaced next year by a cashless tolling system that automatically charges vehicles equipped with an E-ZPass reader or snaps a license-plate photo to bill by mail.

The technology has meant the end of a way of life for more than 1,200 toll workers along the length of the New York State Thruway.

“As long as there have been toll roads, there have been toll collectors,” Flint, 60, said. “It’s a shame that the job is going away.”

Toll collectors were once the sentries of the country’s roads, but they are rapidly disappearing as New York and other states embrace technology that makes tollbooths obsolete. Nearly half of the nation’s 336 tolled highways, bridges and tunnels have only cashless tolling, according to the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, an industry group.

State officials and transportation experts say cashless tolling is more convenient for drivers, reduces traffic and pollution from idling vehicles, and improves safety because there is no need to slow or jockey across lanes to pay at a tollbooth.

It has also allowed highways to better manage traffic flow by using variable toll pricing that can change by the minute to charge higher rates for traveling at peak times.

New York City will rely on cashless tolling to help fine-tune its traffic management when it becomes the first U.S. city to use congestion pricing to charge drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan.

“There are a lot of good reasons to go to cashless tolling,” said Pat Jones, executive director of the bridge, tunnel and turnpike association.

But the technology has drawn criticism over privacy concerns that cashless tolling is another way to track people. Drivers have also complained about being charged in error, or being billed thousands of dollars in late fees and penalties that far exceed the actual tolls. In April, three drivers in western New York sued the Thruway Authority over billing issues after the Grand Island bridges switched to cashless tolling.

It has also increasingly displaced toll collectors, the largely unsung contributors to the transportation network. They squeeze into tight spaces, endure exhaust fumes and constant honking and, sometimes, fend off unwanted advances from drivers. Some even keep their own money handy to bail out drivers who don’t have enough.

“Toll collectors need their jobs,” said Linda Henderson, 62, a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey since 2002. “And people are happy to see us out there. They need us.”

Thousands of toll collectors used to work across the New York region in the 1990s, but their ranks have shrunk over the years as E-ZPass lanes have proliferated.

Still, unlike store cashiers and other private-sector workers who have lost jobs to automation, many toll collectors are represented by labor unions that have often helped them move to other positions in the same agency.

By 2017, all nine tolled bridges and tunnels under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had switched to cashless tolling. The bridge and tunnel officers who used to collect the tolls as part of their duties now focus on other things, including ensuring safety and security, responding to emergencies and managing traffic.

There are still toll collectors on some of the region’s busiest crossings — the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels — but the agency that oversees them, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has also been moving to cashless tolling. It has already switched over two of its Staten Island bridges and plans to shift the third later this year.

There are 158 toll collectors working for the Port Authority, down from 450 in 1997. For many, toll collecting was a steppingstone to other opportunities. They moved up to become security guards, operations supervisors and managers.

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has not announced plans to phase out toll collectors, but the numbers are shrinking. There are 884 toll collectors on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, down from 1,680 in the 1990s.

Facing an uncertain future, some have already left the booth. Kevin Epps, 55, started as a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway in 1993 but moved to a highway maintenance job in 2002, as he saw more and more E-ZPass lanes. “I saw the change,” he said. “The security blanket was leaving. They — like everyone else — were going for the technology.”

Tolls, like taxes, were once thought to be constant, and the job of collecting them guaranteed for life. Though not physically demanding, the job can be hard mentally, toll workers say. They have to make change quickly while other drivers are waiting and honking. They memorize directions and exits to local airports and attractions. They learn to defuse confrontations with drivers who curse, yell and throw money at them.

Henderson said a man once got out of his car and stuck his head into her booth to complain that his E-ZPass was not working. “I jumped out of my seat,” she said. “Anybody can come up to you.”

Both women and men said they have faced unwanted advances. Theresa Braun, a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway, has found a way to deal with it. When drivers ask for her phone number, she writes on their receipt: 867-5309 from the hit 1981 song “867-5309/Jenny.”

Braun, 58, a mother of six, started as a toll collector in 1996. At first, her hours were 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. She eventually worked her way up to the morning shift. Her salary also improved, from about $9 an hour to more than $24 an hour, plus a pension when she retires in two years.

She is a fixture at the Barnegat toll plaza. She has seen children in car seats grow up and take the wheel themselves. She has called 911 when drivers turned up at her window with chest pains. Her regulars will wait at her tollbooth even when there is no line in the E-ZPass lanes. “They want the human connection,” she said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the move to systemwide cashless tolling on the New York State Thruway 19 months ago. By then, the number of full-time toll collectors had already shrunk to 170 from 789 at the peak in 1991, two years before E-ZPass was introduced in the state. There were also 1,153 part-time collectors.

The youngest toll collector is 18 years old, and the oldest is 82, according to the Thruway Authority. Just over half are women. The salaries range from $13.63 an hour for a part-time toll collector to $24.35 an hour for senior, full-time employees.

“The Thruway Authority’s toll collection workforce has been the backbone of our organization for more than five decades and will continue to be through the transition to systemwide cashless tolling by the end of 2020,” said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The agency has offered outreach and training programs to help toll collectors find other jobs, including sessions on resume writing and interviewing, and tuition assistance to those returning to school. A total of 38 toll collectors, managers and administrators have moved to other jobs within the agency.

Jeanne Marie Litts, 56, who manages toll plazas in the Hudson Valley, said she delayed her own retirement to help toll workers through the transition.

Litts, who followed her mother into toll collecting in 1984, recalled that before electronic tolling, the lines to pay cash tolls at the old Tappan Zee Bridge — replaced today by the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge — used to back up for miles. She would sometimes sleep on a cot in a nearby employee locker room to make sure she was not late for her shift.

“That’s how bad that was before E-ZPass,” she said. “I think technology is the right thing to do here.”

Still, Joseph Decheine, 35, a toll collector in the Buffalo area, said the Thruway should keep some tollbooths — and toll collectors — to help drivers. “It’s like a checkpoint for people,” he said. “You know you get to that point and you can ask for directions or somewhere to eat.”

Flint started as a part-time toll collector near Albany, New York, in 1979, earning $4.73 an hour to help pay for college, where he studied accounting. But he graduated to a tight job market and decided to stay on. He never left.

Now as tollbooths are being closed, he doesn’t know what he will do next.

“This was a very stable job; you didn’t have to worry about things like that,” he said. “If you wanted to stay here, you could.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/nyregion/automated-toll-collectors.html" id="fd40882e-afad-3555-a707-370f7365b3ab">The New York Times</a>.

Gerry Flint has collected tolls for 40 years on a 570-mile highway that crosses New York state.

The Last Toll Collectors

<h1>NEW YORK — The French have Versailles. The British, Buckingham Palace. And Spaniards, the Alhambra.</h1>

Not to be left out, New Yorkers have a castle of their own, too. Maybe not as grand or lavish or old. But still revered.

Belvedere Castle has risen above the meadows and woods of Central Park since 1872, like an aging sentry keeping watch over a swathe of Manhattan’s grandest and most coveted real estate. It was built not for royalty — there are no Belvedere aristocrats — but for anyone with the energy to climb up a rocky summit that is the second highest in the park.

Now, this fairy-tale lookout point has been restored to its original luster.

It reopened to the public recently after a $12 million, 15-month renovation by the Central Park Conservancy, which included rebuilding a wooden tower, replacing worn stones and opening up views that had been partially blocked by cloudy window panes and decorative grillwork.

The main selling point of the Belvedere — which means “beautiful view” in Italian — is its three layers of terraces, one higher than the next. The castle itself, totaling just 1,820 square feet, is really more of a mini castle. In fact, it did not even have doors or window panes in the beginning.

Built in the Romanesque Revival tradition, the castle was known in architecture as “a folly" — a building meant more for decoration than practical use. It was intended to draw people into the park for a closer look, and to give them a respite from urban life without actually having to leave the city, according to conservancy leaders.

Today, the mysterious stone castle with the turret still draws big crowds — about a million people a year. (Versailles, in contrast, gets nearly 10 million visitors a year.)

“American visitors are really intrigued with the notion of a castle in Central Park,” said Steve Cohen, 65, who volunteers as a park tour guide.

Still, he added, not everyone is as impressed with the castle as with the panoramic views. “Some Europeans who are used to castles say, ‘So this is it. … ’”

Paulo Kim, 24, who was recently visiting the city from Argentina with her husband, Damaris, said they had to check out the castle after spying it on a park map. “If there’s a city that has a castle in the park, it has to be New York,” she said. “Who else?”

Belvedere Castle has endured for more than a century even as the world around it changed. In 1919, it was turned into a weather station. Doors and window panes were installed. Meteorologists and their scientific instruments replaced parkgoers.

Then, in the 1960s, it was the meteorologists who were replaced by automated systems that no longer required them to be on site to take readings.

The castle was emptied and boarded up because there were no resources to take care of it.

In the 1970s, as the city was hit by a financial crisis and crime soared, squatters would break into the castle and set fires. Stones were kicked out of walls, leaving gaping holes. Graffiti was everywhere. Raccoons also made themselves at home.

The crumbling castle, once a crown jewel of the park, became a glaring symbol of the hard times facing New York.

“It was like the ruins of Rome,” recalled Adrian Benepe, a former city parks commissioner who at the time was an urban park ranger patrolling the park. “I despaired it would ever come back.”

But even at its worst, the little castle was not entirely forsaken. Tom Smith, 55, an actor in Midtown Manhattan, recalled that he used to climb on the castle with his college friends at night in the early 1980s. The city lay at their feet. “We loved it,” he said. “There were beautiful views.”

Not long after, the castle was rescued by the conservancy, a nonprofit group that restores and manages the park. Conservancy workers cleaned up the castle and opened it in 1983 with a visitor’s center and gift shop inside. Tours, exhibits and other public programs were added.

The castle looms over a favorite summer destination, the Delacorte Theater, home to Shakespeare in the Park productions. After all, what better backdrop for swordplay and palace intrigue?

“You’re looking at a castle onstage — and there’s a real one right there,” said Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president. “It adds drama and legitimacy to the production.”

The Belvedere also had its own drama. It once hosted an opening-night party for the musical “Hair” at the theater, only to have rain pour down. The paper goody bags — with yellow Bumble and bumble shampoo bottles inside — fell apart and hundreds of the bottles went rolling onto the floor and down the steps.

“I’ve never seen so much shampoo in my life — everywhere you looked,” Brewer recalled. “It was a Belvedere party to remember.”

The castle has become a beloved playground for generations of New York families. Many were introduced to the castle as the spooky home of the count on Sesame Street. “When I first started working here, I was like ‘Wow, this is where the count lived,’” said Robert Dixon, 48, a visitor services representative for the conservancy who grew up in Harlem.

For years, Dixon was stationed on the terrace at the top of the castle. Visitors jockeyed to take selfies. Couples got engaged. There were even a few guerrilla weddings — they are not allowed up there — with the bride and groom saying hurried vows.

Children clambered up the spiral staircase to see if there was a princess in the tower. “I tell them to be quiet, you don’t want to wake her,” Dixon said.

The latest renovation of the castle is the most extensive, and focuses on its roots as a lookout point, said Elizabeth W. Smith, the president and chief executive officer of the conservancy. Windows of crystal-clear glass now frame the views.

A wooden tower that was once part of the pavilion on the main terrace was rebuilt from historical drawings. The castle was modernized and made energy efficient; a geothermal cooling and heating system was installed by drilling 400 feet into its rocky base.

New lights were added to illuminate New York’s castle against a glittering skyline of skyscrapers.

“All I can say is you can light up Midtown as much as you want,” Smith said. “And nothing is going to compare to looking at the Belvedere at night.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/nyregion/central-park-belvedere-castle.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Central Park's castle gets a $12 million fairy-tale makeover

Now, this fairy-tale lookout point has been restored to its original luster.

City officials say they have led to fewer injuries and crashes.

Now the city is sharply expanding the use of such cameras to nearly every neighborhood. It is part of a far-reaching effort to enforce speed limits, including on busy streets with no schools and at times when classes are out — at night, on holidays and during summer vacation.

The result will be the nation’s largest urban network of automated speed cameras, with a nearly tenfold increase to more than 2,000 cameras deployed in 750 areas within a quarter-mile radius of a school, effectively blanketing the city.

“It’s going to mean you’re going to have to drive at a safe speed in New York where our fellow New Yorkers are walking, biking and using the streets,” said Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner.

But critics are accusing the city of “policing for profit,” saying the speed cameras are simply a way to raise money at the public’s expense.

When a camera catches a vehicle going more than 10 mph over the speed limit — 25 mph on most streets — a $50 fine is mailed to the registered owner.

“New York City is going to become just one big speed trap,” said Shelia Dunn, a spokeswoman for the National Motorists Association, a grassroots advocacy group that opposes speed cameras. “Making every street in New York into a school speed zone is not really going to protect people.”

Even some supporters of the cameras said the city needs to do much more to protect pedestrians than simply adding more cameras, such as redesigning streets to make them safer.

Others have questioned whether the campaign to broaden the school-camera program, which was approved by the state Legislature, was misleading and went too far.

“They’re not saying we’re going to crack down on speeding,” said Greg Smith, 55, a finance executive on the Upper West Side. “They’re putting it under the pretense of, ‘We’re increasing school safety.’ And I think that’s disingenuous.”

He added, “Who would be against keeping our children safe from speeding drivers?”

Across the country, the spread of automated traffic-enforcement cameras has drawn protests from many drivers and has fueled a backlash — especially against cameras that have been widely used in hundreds of places to catch drivers running red lights, which far outnumber speed cameras.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas recently signed a new law banning red-light cameras, joining at least seven other states that have done so. New York was the first city in the country to roll out red-light cameras in 1993, but they are a relatively modest presence on streets, operating at 150 intersections.

Speed-camera programs, which date to at least the 1980s, have nearly doubled in the past decade to 141 cities and municipalities, including Washington, Chicago, Denver, Portland and Seattle, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Many cameras are restricted by state laws to specific areas and hours.

Speed cameras reduce crashes as well as injuries and deaths, and research data have also shown that they act as speed deterrents, said Jenny O’Connell, a program manager for the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Most drivers who are caught once do not get caught again.

“These cameras are really, really effective, and could be even more effective if states would allow cities to expand their deployment, both in terms of number of locations and number of hours in use,” she said.

But Dunn said speed cameras can actually contribute to gridlock and fender-benders when drivers, upon spotting a camera, suddenly slow down. The cameras also provide a false sense of reassurance because they do not eliminate dangers from other obstacles, such as jaywalkers or cyclists running red lights.

“It’s an illusion of protection. It cannot prevent an accident or prevent someone from being hit by a car,” she said. “It’s everybody’s responsibility to follow the safety rules.”

New York began testing speed cameras on a limited basis in 20 school zones in 2013, and the next year was authorized by the state to expand them to 140 school zones. Now 239 speed cameras are operating in 169 school zones.

City transportation officials oversee the program, selecting camera sites and reviewing violations before fines are mailed. It is part of a three-year, $176 million contract with a company, Verra Mobility, to install and maintain enforcement cameras that also catch vehicles that run red lights and block bus lanes.

State law had required speed cameras to be placed within a quarter mile of a school on streets where there was a building entrance or exit. The camera hours varied by school, but generally ran from one hour before to one hour after the school day.

Even this limited use was too much for critics. Last year, the program became tangled in partisan politics when the Republican-led state Senate refused to renew it unless it was tied to other measures opposed by the Democrat-controlled Assembly.

The cameras effectively went dark last summer until Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, stepped in with an executive order to reactivate them.

This year, with Democrats now controlling both chambers, state legislators voted not just to renew the program, but to make it far more expansive. For the first time, cameras can now be installed along high-crash streets even if there is no school. Camera hours will more than double and operate year-round, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every weekday.

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, D-Brooklyn, who led the campaign, said the changes allow the cameras to protect students and families walking to and from schools, and cover activities outside of regular school hours, such as play rehearsals and summer camps.

Around schools that already have speed cameras, the number of crashes dropped an average of 15% to 2,442 a year, down from 2,870, according to a city analysis of data from 2012 to 2016. During that time, fatalities fell an average 55%, dropping to eight from 18 a year; severe injuries fell 17%, to 134 from 162 a year.

The cameras also led to a reduction in speeding, with an average of 104 violations issued each day for a typical speed camera in the first month compared with 51 violations a day by the end of the first year. More than three-fourths of vehicle owners who were fined did not receive a second violation.

More than 5.2 million violations have been issued — totaling more than $228 million in fines — through last year.

City officials have authorized the installation of new cameras and expect to have 300 cameras operating in 215 school zones on July 11 when the expansion takes effect. They plan to add between 40 and 60 cameras a month through the end of 2021.

Still, though the cameras have made school zones safer, the city as a whole may be getting more perilous.

Traffic fatalities have decreased overall since 2014, but they have recently started creeping up again. This year, 97 people have been killed in crashes as of June 27 — 14 more than the year before — including 50 pedestrians, 12 cyclists and nine motorcyclists, according to the city.

“We have a public health crisis with traffic fatalities,” said Marco Conner, a top leader at Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group, which has called for the city to redesign streets with safety improvements such as protected bike lanes and pedestrian islands.

Donna Ganson, a retired marketing executive, said a speed camera could have prevented the crash that devastated her family a decade ago. Her husband, Hutch, was walking their daughter to the subway in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when he was struck by a speeding car in a crosswalk. He survived but suffered severe brain injuries that have left him permanently disabled.

“It would have made a difference,” she said. “I think they really do change people’s behavior — not everybody — but people don’t want to get a ticket so they slow down.”

On the Upper West Side, a new traffic camera has been placed on a stretch of West End Avenue that is packed with families and older pedestrians.

Olga Klein, 75, said she welcomed the new camera because she had been cut off by cars racing to turn through a nearby intersection. “You get so shocked you don’t move,” she said. “It’s very scary.”

Linda Corman, 67, a freelance writer, said that while she was wary of any surveillance camera that could lead to a Big-Brother state, in this instance, “This is a good use of it.”

“It’s not just school zones that need it,” she said. “Any pedestrian is vulnerable to cars that are going too fast.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/nyregion/speeding-cameras-nyc.html" id="c0054143-4aa1-3e40-ad89-ede90900cec3">The New York Times</a>.

2,000 Cameras will be watching how you drive in New York City

NEW YORK — Cameras have stood guard outside New York City schools for years to keep children safe from speeding cars.

But the city’s plans were thwarted Friday when a judge temporarily blocked the restrictions after residents and block associations in the area filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation.

The groups argued that the plan, aimed at speeding up bus service, would divert car traffic — along with noise, pollution and vehicle vibrations — from 14th Street onto smaller residential streets nearby and would hurt the quality of life in their neighborhoods.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Arthur Schwartz, who lives on West 12th Street and is a lawyer representing the residents suing the city. “This was an egregious example of the city thumbing its nose at the opinions and the impacts on local residents in the name of a ‘good idea.’”

He said that Justice Eileen Rakower, in issuing the temporary restraining order at the hearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, had said the city had not sufficiently analyzed the environmental impact of the plan on local residents. He said that she also cited residents’ concerns about increased traffic.

Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the transportation department, said that the restraining order would affect thousands of bus riders and that the city remained committed to the plan for 14th Street as a centerpiece of its efforts to increase bus speeds and reliability.

He said the city expected to prevail at the next court hearing, scheduled for Aug. 6. “We are confident in both our traffic analysis and that the court will recognize that we followed all correct procedures — allowing this critically important safety and mobility project to proceed,” he said.

The city plans to turn the 1-mile section of 14th Street, between Third and Ninth Avenues, into a transit corridor to speed up sluggish crosstown bus service. Trucks and emergency vehicles would be allowed to drive across — but not cars. About 21,000 vehicles a day travel on 14th Street.

Under an 18-month pilot program, passenger cars would be largely restricted to making deliveries or picking up and dropping off passengers from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. They could travel only a block or two and then would have to turn right off the street. No left turns would be allowed.

The 14th Street transit corridor had been part of the contingency plans for the total shutdown for the L train, which was averted after officials opted to make the repairs largely at night and on weekends.

City officials and transportation advocates say the 14th Street proposal is necessary to reduce gridlock and improve the struggling public bus system.

Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group, criticized the decision to halt the transit corridor from going forward.

“The 14th Street hypocrisy has got to stop,” he said. “There’s no way neighbors can claim they care about their fellow New Yorkers while also throwing up endless barriers to faster, more reliable commutes.”

He added that affluent residents of the area were exerting undue influence. “New York’s working people can’t afford to litigate their right to decent bus service.”

Schwartz said residents had protested the planned changes for 14th Street for more than a year. He said that city transportation officials, including Polly Trottenberg, the transportation commissioner, had not taken their concerns seriously.

It is not the first time the city has had to go to court to defend its transportation policies.

A congestion surcharge on taxis, Ubers and other ride-hail services in Manhattan, which was supposed to begin Jan. 1, was temporarily blocked at the last minute after a coalition of taxi owners and drivers sued the state and city to stop it. The surcharge was allowed to go into effect a month later.

New York had a plan to speed up buses A judge just blocked it

NEW YORK — The city was prepared to impose a major transportation plan Monday to tackle gridlock — it was going to severely restrict cars along 14th Street, one of Manhattan’s busiest crosstown routes.

Winnie Hu

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