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DOT to add bike lanes, take away car space on Staten Island street after fatal crash
By
Brittany Kriegstein and
Clayton Guse
New York Daily News and Transit Reporter
•
Jul 11, 2022 at 5:36 pm
Major changes, including new bike lanes, are coming soon to a busy Staten Island street where three teens were killed in a horrific high speed crash Sunday night, city officials announced.
City Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez on Monday said his team would move forward with an aggressive overhaul of Hylan Blvd. on the borough’s South Shore, and that work would start in the coming weeks.
Hylan Blvd. near where it intersects with Richard Ave. in Staten Island. (Brittany Kriegstein)
The redesign aims to knock out a lane for car traffic in each direction, build bike lanes in each direction and add left-turn lanes in an effort to improve safety at the intersection along the 1.2-mile stretch between Satterlee St. and Page Ave.
“We’ve been working on a plan for this area for months, and the last time our borough commissioner went in front of the community board was weeks before, in June,” Rodriguez said at a news conference. “We will continue working towards that plan.”
Sunday’s fatal crash at Hyland Blvd. and Richard Ave. is a block east of the planned redesign. The wreck left three dead, including two siblings — a 15-year-old brother and his 16-year-old sister — after the Ford Mustang in which they were riding crashed into a GMC Yukon that was making a left turn, cops said. Occupants in the SUV suffered minor injuries.
DOT officials said they would explore making additional changes to the intersection where the deadly crash unfolded.
Representatives from Staten Island’s Community Board 3 said they were opposed to the redesign — and in 2019 told DOT officials they would not support a similar plan to build bike lanes on the street.
Graphic showing planned changes to Hylan Blvd. from Satterlee St. to Page Ave. on Staten Island. (DOT)
“We are a car community whether people like it or not,” said the community board’s chair Frank Morano. “The only people they’re making happy are the recreational riders who use bikes. Our main concern is moving people to jobs and to retail.”
Roseann Caruana, the Staten Island borough commissioner for DOT, said narrowing space for cars would make Hylan Blvd safer for everyone, adding that her grandparents were killed in a car crash on the street in the 1950s.
“The statistics for Hylan are just shocking,” said Rodriguez. “On the southern 1.2-mile section between Page and Satterlee, the killed- or seriously injured rate is 7.5 people per mile, which is nine times higher than the rest of all of Staten Island, and 2.5 times higher than the rest of all of New York City. It has one of the highest crash rates of any street in all the five boroughs.”
The announcement of the redesign comes three weeks after DOT officials announced plans to ban cars from a stretch of Broadway in Manhattan where a taxi driver sparked a gruesome crash that injured five people, including a woman whose leg was severed.