FORT GREENE — New funding for the mayor’s Vision Zero plan to end traffic-related deaths will add 300 crossing guards to school intersections, making sure all of the city’s school crossing posts are covered, he announced Wednesday.
The city will hire 200 part-time crossing guards and 100 full-time crossing guard supervisors, as well as create a mobile replacement team to cover absences at crossing posts.
Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement at a Wednesday press conference at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, which is considered one of the borough’s most dangerous intersections.
Of the more than $400 million allocated for the additions, more than $25 million will go to hiring the new guards over the next four years, the mayor’s office said.
De Blasio was introduced by Doren Johnson, a 16-year-old who was hit by a car two years ago as he was walking to M.S. 51 in Park Slope. Three students at that school died in car crashes the previous year.
“Even though I got hurt, I consider myself lucky,” Johnson said. “Young people who are out traveling to and from school need extra protection.”
Along with hiring the new guards, the funding will go toward street redesign and improvements to crosswalks, signals and bike lanes.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) will receive $317 million in capital funding over the next five years for major street-safety reconstruction projects. These projects call for full reconstruction of roadbeds, sidewalks and underlying infrastructure.
Street markings and crosswalks will also be replaced more often under the plan, with streets getting repainted every 4.5 years instead of the current six. An additional 15 million feet of new markings will be added each year, the nayor said.
Additionally, the DOT will install left-turn calming measures — including raising medians and adding blinking yellow lights for approaching cars — at more than 100 “high risk” intersections, as well as adding better lighting to 1,000.
The NYPD will also be equipped with 120 additional radar guns to catch speeders, giving each precinct three instead of two.
Last year, the city saw 229 traffic-related deaths — the fewest number of fatalities in the city’s recorded history and a 23 percent decrease since before Vision Zero began in 2013 — the mayor said.
“Vision Zero is yielding real change,” De Blasio said. “The facts are clear — we’re saving lives.”
There have been 15 traffic-related deaths in the city so far this year, on par with the same time period last year, the mayor added.
