The number of crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists on our roadways has increased in each of the last three years in Western New York. That’s according to data collected by the New York State Department of Transportation and complied by GObike Buffalo.
The number of crashes involving a pedestrian or cyclist has increased by 30% between 2020 through 2023 in the region, and the number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities has increased by 200% in the same timeframe, rising from 14 deaths in 2020 to 42 in 2023, according to GObike’s analysis.
The statistics have prompted State Senator Sean Ryan (D) and Assemblymember Jon Rivera (D) to introduce legislation called “complete streets” which aims to ensure more transportation projects are designed to be safer for all road users across New York State.
“All year, all summer, it's been one tragedy after another. It seems like this is happening more than it used to. That's because it's happening more than it used to,” Ryan said. “It’s become an epidemic in Western New York. But just like any other epidemic, it’s not going to go away on its own.”
A complete street is a roadway planned and designed to consider the safe and convenient access and mobility of all roadway users, on foot, on bikes, in wheelchairs and in cars. Design aspects of a complete street include features such as sidewalks, lane striping, crosswalks, ramps, bicycle lanes, bus bulb-outs and general traffic calming measures, according to GObike.
Ryan and Rivera both sponsored a bill (S.9718/A.1280A) in the last legislative session – Rivera in State Assembly and Ryan in State Senate – that introduces a law that goes further than New York’s existing complete streets policy established in 2011.
Current law only requires some roadway projects to incorporate complete streets principals and excludes projects that are classified as resurfacing and general road maintenance. Whereas the bill introduced by the local lawmaker duo expands the policy to include resurfacing and road maintenance projects - mandating municipalities to incorporate safer road design.
“The truth of the matter is, if you leave it up to local municipalities to build a road, they’ll just redo the same road that was already there,” Rivera said. “All they do is sort of repeat the same structure that was there before. They don't pause and think, ‘Well, is this the safest way pedestrians can cross?’”
Ryan has also introduced a separate bill in the Senate (S.100A) that would expand the complete streets policy to include all transportation projects that receive either federal or state funding. Currently the policy only extends to projects undertaken by the New York State Department of Transportation, or those that receive both federal and state funding.
Incorporating complete streets design principles is bound to cost municipalities more money, but GObike Executive Director, Justin Booth, says evidence suggests the financial cost to the community to address the fallout from crashes is also high.
“In Erie County from 2018 to 2023 there were 34,600 crashes resulting in injury or death, for an average of 5,717 per year,” Booth said.
Using the Erie County Department of Health’s own 2014 measurements of the cost of hospitalizations and emergency department visits due to crashes, Booth calculates the price tag to be more than $3.5 million each year between 2018 through 2023 spread across those affected.
“In comparison to what all these crashes on our dangerous roads cost the community, we can absolutely afford to make these investments in improving safety through infrastructure improvements,” Booth added.
