Gov. Hochul wants to ban parking at intersections at city elementary schools to provide more visibility for pedestrians and drivers, even though the state already prohibits car storage 20 feet from an intersection but allows the city to exempt itself from the life-saving street design known as "daylighting."
The governor will announce the plan in her State of the State address on Tuesday, Gothamist first reported earlier in the day. But advocates were quick to point out that it's a tiny change, given that the state could pass a new law to simply stop allowing New York City from enabling parking at all intersections.
"Schools are a fantastic place to start because the streets surrounding them are so dangerous, but it’s a bit of a backpedal when its already state law to daylight every intersection," said Jackson Chabot, director of Advocacy and Organizing at Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "We want more, but we’re still celebrating that daylighting is getting this kind of attention and we hope this just one more step to getting the universal implementation New Yorkers are asking for."
The state-granted exemption allows cars to block visibility at many of the city's roughly 40,000 total intersections.
And streets outside schools are uniquely dangerous, an in-depth Streetsblog investigation previously revealed, and other street safety measures are often tied to locations close to the educational facilities, like the placement of speed and red light cameras.
But Hochul's proposal stops short of full school daylighting, calling for a parking ban at corners in front of elementary schools only, depriving older kids of the safety benefit, while also not making roadways safer for all kids once they walk a block away from their schools. It also leaves out other vulnerable populations like older pedestrians, who disproportionately die in crashes, according to DOT.
"To be clear, every New Yorker deserves to be safe and comfortable crossing the street," wrote Sara Lind, co-executive Director at Open Plans, in a thread on X. "We shouldn’t have to worry we’ll become one of the hundreds of people killed on NYC streets every year because our leaders were too afraid to turn a few free parking spaces into daylighting."
Even as Gov. Hochul offers a morsel of change, there are full meals being presented at both levels of government to completely end that carveout, thanks to a groundswell of grassroots activism to bring daylighting to the City that Never Sleeps, galvanized by a push from community boards and local politicians.
A December bill in the City Council to force universal daylighting has been gaining support, with 19 politicians signed on, while state lawmakers introduced similar legislation back in May. That movement started in earnest after a driver killed 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun in 2023 at a Queens intersection that would have had daylighting under the state law that the city refuses to carry out.
After an NYPD tow truck driver killed a 7-year-old boy at an intersection with poor corner visibility in Brooklyn later that year, Mayor Adams pledged to daylight 1,000 intersections a year, but it's unclear whether that ever happened, and the Department of Transportation fudged its numbers in an August progress report.
DOT has repeatedly denied requests to provide its latest daylighting figures to Streetsblog.
The Adams administration has been hesitant to get behind full daylighting, with DOT leaders worrying that drivers could cut corners faster if there's no car there to obstruct them.
However, other jurisdictions — including Hoboken as well as car-friendly havens like Los Angeles County — have adopted the well-established street redesign on a mass scale. The Square Mile City in the Garden State has not logged any traffic deaths since 2017.
For a glimpse at what's possible, take a look at how Paris has been able to pedestrianize scores of school streets.
Hochul's office did not immediately respond for comment. The city DOT said it would "review" the governor's proposal.
