{"id":130964,"date":"2026-02-12T05:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/130964\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T05:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:18:10","slug":"report-pedestrians-are-at-risk-where-youd-least-expect-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/130964\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Pedestrians Are At Risk … Where You’d Least Expect It"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city Department of Transportation may be underestimating the number of pedestrians on outer-borough streets, due to a Manhattan-first bias that may end up putting pedestrians at risk, a new study finds.<\/p>\n

An MIT research group created<\/a> the first complete model of pedestrian activity in any U.S. city \u2014 and it revealed that intersections with the highest pedestrian injury risk are frequently outside Manhattan, despite that borough’s higher raw number of pedestrians.<\/p>\n

By examining injury risk per pedestrian, instead of total crash counts, researchers identified higher injury risk in low-income neighborhoods of eastern Brooklyn and southeastern Queens \u2014\u00a0and this could be because heavy car infrastructure such as wide streets or industrial zoning lingers in low-income neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

\"\"The charts show the total number of crashes involving pedestrian injuries between 2012 and 2023 (left), and the rates of pedestrian injuries (right),Graphic: MIT<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn this estimation, there is no specific indicator of like, ‘OK, this is a low-income neighborhood, or this is a neighborhood that depends on walking or public transit,’ [the finding] is suggestive that actually, on a per pedestrian basis, there are a bunch of relatively dangerous locations in these other boroughs outside of the highly foot-trafficked areas of Manhattan or Brooklyn,\u201d said Andres Sevtsuk, the associate professor of urban science and planning at MIT who led the study.<\/p>\n

Researchers also found that DOT’s categorization of streets, from roads with low pedestrian volume to the city\u2019s busiest, doesn\u2019t reflect the model\u2019s estimated pedestrian volumes. Based on the MIT study\u2019s pedestrian activity, around 5,256 miles of streets are “undercategorized,” meaning they’re busier than what the DOT found.<\/p>\n

Most undercategorized segments are in Brooklyn and Queens. These categorizations have real-world impacts, guiding pedestrian policy and likely impacting infrastructure investments and layout regulation, producing \u201cpalpable benefits for streets and neighborhoods that have more segments with higher classifications,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Sevtsuk said that DOT categorized the streets \u201cwithout really knowing how many people walk where,\u201d and that DOT didn\u2019t know the actual citywide pedestrian volumes and did \u201cthe best they could\u201d without that information. The researchers regularly communicated with DOT about the study and the department is aware of the research.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s actually plenty of very-high-foot-traffic corridors outside of Manhattan that are undercategorized today,\u201d Sevtsuk told Streetsblog. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain bias towards giving higher categories to streets that are inside Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

DOT determined street categories<\/a> considering pedestrian generators, including parks, tourist attractions, transit and more, as part of its Pedestrian Mobility Plan<\/a> released in 2020.<\/p>\n

\"\"Average pedestrian volumes during the weekday evening peak period (5-6 p.m.).Graphic: MIT<\/a><\/p>\n

A DOT spokesperson told Streetsblog that the department is \u201cactively exploring ways to collect better data\u201d and has been working with MIT on the study and future projects to \u201cbuild a more comprehensive model for predicting pedestrian activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

To create the model, researchers assembled a dataset of crosswalks, footpaths and sidewalks across the whole city, ignoring jaywalking and unmarked crossings. They calibrated the model using DOT\u2019s pedestrian counts from 2018 and 2019, covering as many as 1,000 sidewalk segments on weekdays and up to around 450 segments on weekends. They then tested the model against the city\u2019s pedestrian count data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the model calibrated, it could expand foot-traffic estimates beyond where pedestrian counts were observed and throughout the entire city. Looking at the city\u2019s 59 community districts during the busiest peak period, weekday evenings, average pedestrian volume in Midtown Manhattan is the highest, the Financial District is in a distant second and Greenwich Village is in a close third.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some areas in the outer boroughs, like University Heights in the Bronx or Sunset Park in Brooklyn, are busier than parts of Manhattan, such as East Harlem.<\/p>\n

The findings come with one major caveat: the modeling did not take into account tourist attractions, historic sites, land-use and institutional considerations, which the MIT authors admitted affect pedestrian volumes.<\/p>\n

With the new data that the model provides, Sevtsuk said that he\u2019d like to see the information about foot traffic levels throughout the city become institutionalized and used in policymaking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walking is the least understood and measured mode of urban travel, even though it\u2019s most prevalent. Sevtsuk thinks this is because walking is not monetized.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s earning revenue from people walking, so there\u2019s less business interest around that,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s an enormous industry behind driving, and therefore, there\u2019s lots and lots of research money and analysis at all levels behind driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historically, the Federal Highway Administration has relied on vehicle miles traveled to determine the amount of transportation infrastructure funding that states receive, what Sevtsuk called \u201cbasically counting cars.\u201d Until there is a comparable method for non-motorized modes, like bikes and pedestrians, he said, there can\u2019t be serious informed decision-making that can support walking and cycling.<\/p>\n

Sevtsuk hopes that the MIT study contributes to DOT\u2019s work and that further work is done to better understand pedestrian and cyclist behaviors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to see that we move towards this sort of future where the non-motorized modes are modeled and counted with the same kind of rigor that cars have been counted for decades already and that becomes the basis for informed decision making,\u201d Sevtsuk said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city Department of Transportation may be underestimating the number of pedestrians on outer-borough streets, due to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-130964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}