{"id":250481,"date":"2026-06-01T04:40:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250481\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T04:40:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:40:33","slug":"city-council-takes-another-swing-at-daylighting-bill-to-ban-corner-parking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250481\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council Takes Another Swing at ‘Daylighting’ Bill to Ban Corner Parking"},"content":{"rendered":"

City lawmakers are reviving legislation to ban parking at street corners, a design for better visibility known as daylighting<\/a>, after Mayor Mamdani wavered<\/a> on his campaign promise to implement the policy.<\/p>\n

Last December, former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and former Mayor Eric Adams teamed up to kill<\/a> a daylighting bill sponsored by Council Member Julie Won (D-Queens). Won now believes the current Council has a better chance at enacting the life-saving law under Adrienne Adams\u2019s successor, Julie Menin (D-Upper East Side).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to pass this law no matter what, because clearly, people change their mind, and once you legislate, it doesn\u2019t matter if they change their mind, they got to abide by the law,\u201d Queens Council Member Julie Won told Streetsblog at a rally outside City Hall on Friday morning. \u201cWe\u2019ve had conversations with [Speaker Menin], and we believe that she wants to make sure that it passes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Won\u2019s proposal, Intro 511<\/a>, prohibits parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk anywhere in the five boroughs. This is already the law in the rest of the New York State, but Albany has long exempted the state\u2019s biggest city from following it. The legislation would also require the Department of Transportation to install hard barriers at 1,000 corners per year, and advocates are pushing the city to earmark $15 million in this year\u2019s budget to fund that effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI voted for Zohran Mamdani, and he promised us universal daylighting,\u201d Won said at the rally ahead of a Council budget oversight hearing on transportation. \u201cI still have hope that the mayor will wake up today, will hear our voices, will see our beautiful faces on the steps of City Hall \u2026 and say that, \u2018All right, I remember again, I woke up from my amnesia, I do support universal daylighting.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislation has drawn 25 co-sponsors thus far \u2014 just short of a majority in the 51-member legislative body. If Mamdani continues to oppose<\/a> the measure, however, the bill would need a two-thirds super-majority to overcome his mayoral veto. Menin signed onto a previous version of the bill<\/a>, a spokesperson noted, but the rep declined to say whether the Council\u2019s leader supports the new one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council has proudly supported expanding the use of daylighting to make our streets safer and save lives from traffic violence,\u201d said Benjamin Fang-Estrada in a statement. \u201cIntroduction 511 was introduced in January and will go through the Council\u2019s legislative process, which allows for thorough public engagement and input.\u201d<\/p>\n

The previous bill died in the Council last year after then-Speaker Adams blocked<\/a>\u00a0the effort, despite garnering a majority of support among lawmakers. The top lawmaker cut the bill from a vote scheduled for the Council\u2019s final session in 2025, after the proposal had lingered in legislative limbo for more than a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Council battle followed a hard-fought, grassroots push<\/a> inspired by the deaths of several children. In 2023, drivers killed a 7-year-old girl<\/a> in Queens and a 7-year-old boy<\/a> in Brooklyn. Both died while trying to cross streets with poor visibility.<\/p>\n

Many of the city\u2019s\u00a0typically car-friendly community boards<\/a> subsequently passed symbolic resolutions for universal daylighting and\u00a0local politicians<\/a> signed letters demanding the same. Among the signatories was then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But DOT leaders have long\u00a0opposed<\/a>\u00a0universal daylighting, arguing that a corner is safer when a car is parked right up against the crosswalk, because it keeps drivers from making sharp turns \u2013 a supposed protection that evaporates any time a motorist leaves a corner spot empty. DOT officials have said they need to retain their power to add daylighting where they see fit, preferably with hardened infrastructure, like concrete blocks, bike racks and plastic bollards.<\/p>\n

As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani vowed to implement universal daylighting and\u00a0disregard this bureaucratic resistance<\/a>, but has so far\u00a0deferred<\/a>\u00a0to his DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn, who backed off on his boss\u2019s promise<\/a> of clearing corners citywide earlier this year.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0Hong Kong<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Hoboken<\/a>, other municipalities have shown that daylighting makes streets safer. That shouldn\u2019t be a surprise: Intersections are the deadliest part of the street for pedestrians, accounting for 59 percent of pedestrian deaths and 77 percent of pedestrian injuries, according to DOT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Even outside Hoboken police station houses, corners remain clear. Photo: Kevin Duggan<\/p>\n

\u201cDaylighting is simple, it works, and it saves lives \u2013 so don\u2019t tell me there\u2019s something Hoboken can do that New York can\u2019t,\u201d said the Council\u2019s Transportation Committee Chair Shaun Abreu at the rally ahead of a Council budget oversight hearing. \u201cEvery day we wait, another life is put at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Won\u2019s previous daylighting bill gained momentum last year, DOT officials released a report<\/a> that questioned the practice\u2019s safety benefits\u00a0in the absence of hardened protections like granite blocks or plastic posts. Agency officials testified that they found\u00a0increased\u00a0rates of injury at some intersections<\/a> that had hydrants near corners.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s report admitted that it\u00a0had \u201climitations,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and an internal Council review eviscerated<\/a> the study\u00a0for relying on shoddy data.<\/p>\n

\"\"The DOT admitted its report on daylighting is badly flawed. Graphic: DOT<\/p>\n

DOT also tried to scare politicians by adding a whopping $3-billion price tag<\/a> to the proposed law change, and \u2013 even worse for the city\u2019s car-focused pols \u2013 emphasizing that daylighting would reclaim 300,000 parking spots across the city\u2019s roughly 40,000 intersections.<\/p>\n

Under former Mayor Eric Adams, the city\u2019s Office of Management and Budget estimated the cost<\/a> of the bill at around $16.7 million per year to harden 1,000 daylit intersections, or about $17,000 per crossing. That includes $8.7 million for barriers and other materials and around $6.7 million in staffing. The Council separately estimated the cost at only $9.9 million per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hoboken, just across the Hudson River, daylit its intersections for as little as $1,500 each<\/a> by relying on paint and plastic bollards, which cost about $40 a pop. Planners could scale their designs up with bike racks for about $2,000 per intersection, or as much as $30,000 for a full rebuild with a concrete bumpout.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Won still holds out hope that Mamdani\u2019s DOT will abandon its opposition to universal daylighting. \u201cThe Department of Transportation is very against this bill for very silly reasons, which we debunked,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City lawmakers are reviving legislation to ban parking at street corners, a design for better visibility known as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-250481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250481","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=250481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}