Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at street fatalities in the first six months of 2025, which fell to a number not seen since 2018. We’ll also get details on Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic primary, which is now official.
To city transportation officials, 2025 looks a lot like 2018. So far, anyway.
In the first half of this year, 87 traffic deaths were recorded on New York City streets. That was the same number as in the first six months of 2018, which went on to become the safest year since the city began keeping records on traffic fatalities 115 years ago, with 206 deaths on city streets.
As that total suggests, the statistics may look different by the end of the year. Crashes and collisions typically rise in the summer, and the second half of a year usually outpaces the first.
But for now, city officials are encouraged, with Ydanis Rodriguez, the transportation commissioner, saying in a statement that the city’s streets are “are safer than ever” for everyone on them — pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. The 87 deaths from January through June compared with the 128 reported in the first six months of last year, which ended with 251 fatalities in all.
Of the 87:
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51 were pedestrians, compared with 63 in the first half of last year.
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15 were drivers or passengers in cars or S.U.V.s, down from 29 in the first six months of 2024.
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20 were people on what the city calls “motorized two-wheelers,” a category that includes e-bikes, scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. That was down from 33 from January to June a year ago.
So far in 2025, one cyclist on a conventional, nonelectric bike has been killed. There were three such deaths in the first half of 2024, six in the comparable months of 2023 and 11 from January to June 2019.
As for the death toll so far this year, it included two deaths from Saturday. Shortly after 5 p.m., an 8-year-old was hit by an S.U.V. as he crossed Albany Avenue at Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. The driver was identified by the police as Mordechai Keller, 69. The police said that he had not been arrested, but their investigation is continuing.
The other fatal crash occurred around the same time. A 31-year-old motorcyclist, Nathaniel Martinez, was killed when he was hit by an S.U.V. as he turned onto an entrance ramp to the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx.
City officials attribute the declines so far this year to programs begun under the Vision Zero initiative, including adding protected bike lanes, redesigning intersections and lowering maximum speeds on e-bikes to 18 miles per hour. Last month the city slowed e-bikes down a bit more, to 15 m.p.h.
But 2025 comes with an asterisk. Sarah Kaufman, the director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University, noted that congestion pricing in Manhattan, a program managed by the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had reduced vehicle traffic in the zone where drivers have been charged $9 since early January. “Along with less traffic comes fewer accidents and less road rage,” she said. “If you’re angry behind the wheel, you’ll make rash decisions that could hurt pedestrians.”
The city cited automated speed cameras and red-light cameras as helping to make streets safer. The speed cameras, positioned near schools, will continue through mid-2030 under a bill that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law on Monday. “It’s simple: Speed cameras save lives,” she said.
The city also credits a police crackdown on so-called ghost cars with reducing fatalities because a disproportionately large number of crashes and collisions involved such vehicles. The police said in December that they had seized more than 20,000 ghost cars since 2022 — cars with fake license tags or license plates that were obscured by camera-proof screens, stickers or tape. Some drivers had also scraped letters off their plates to try to make them unreadable by automated cameras.
The city says that under Vision Zero, it has made e-bikes safer, which in turn has made streets safer. The Department of Transportation says one initiative that has contributed is its effort to install protected bike lines, with some 87.5 miles completed in the last three years. But Transportation Alternatives, a mass transit advocacy group, says that the city under the Adams administration has fallen short of the mayor’s promise to build 300 miles of protected bike lanes by the end of his term.
The city also credits redesigned streets with reducing traffic deaths, a point echoed by Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at N.Y.U. and a former director of the Rudin Center. “We’ve shrunk the space for cars — in many places, it’s one car lane and one bus lane,” he said. “That has not only slowed down traffic enormously, but it has an effect on fatalities because the cars have less space. This has reduced the chance of having an accident.”
Weather
Expect clouds, rain and thunderstorms in the morning, with the temperature reaching 84. In the evening, clouds will persist, along with a drop to about 72.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Friday (the Fourth of July).
The latest New York news
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A partial verdict in the Sean Combs trial: The jurors said they had reached a verdict on all but one of the charges, but the court did not announce what they had decided. They said they had deadlocked on a racketeering conspiracy charge. They will continue deliberating today.
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Ballot measures for November: A special panel appointed by Mayor Eric Adams is moving forward with a plan to put at least five measures on the November ballot that would limit the City Council’s power and move local elections to even-numbered years, when voters are more likely to go to the polls.
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Columbia calls cyberattack politically motivated: A university official said the attack appeared to be the work of a “hacktivist,” a hacker who also stole student data with the apparent goal of furthering a political agenda.
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Man who killed a paramedic is sentenced: Peter Zisopoulos, who was convicted of stabbing a lieutenant with the New York City Emergency Medical Services more than 20 times as she returned to her station in Queens in 2022, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
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André Bishop takes a final bow: After 33 years, hundreds of shows and 15 Tony Awards, the longtime producing artistic director of the Lincoln Center Theater is moving on.
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Ask The Times: Have questions about New York City’s mayoral race or politics in the city? We want to hear them.
Ranked-choice tally gives Mamdani a 12-point margin
It’s official: Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor, widening his election-night lead once the ranked-choice tabulations were completed. Mamdani ended up winning 56 percent, defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 12 percentage points. On election night, he had led by seven.
There won’t be as many names on the ballot in November as there were in the primary. But the campaign could be more contentious, with three independent candidates — Mayor Eric Adams; Cuomo, at least for now; and Jim Walden, a former prosecutor. Also on the ballot is Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels and is the Republican nominee.
The confirmation of Mamdani’s victory was greeted by sharp attacks from the conservative media and Republicans, including President Trump. After a reporter mischaracterized Mamdani as a “communist” and said that he had promised to “defy ICE,” Trump said, “Well, then, we’ll have to arrest him.” Trump also said that “a lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.” Mamdani, who is an American citizen, later posted a lengthy response on social media, saying, “We will not accept this intimidation.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Long climb
Dear Diary:
In summer 1980, I moved into my first apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up on Spring Street off West Broadway.
My furniture, a collection of used and found items, included an extremely heavy pullout couch that was going to be my bed.
Three friends and I tried unsuccessfully to maneuver it up the tight turns of the building’s stairway.
Stuck at the second floor, we were about to give up when a woman appeared in a doorway, assessed our situation and called to her husband.
A large man with an impassive expression emerged from the apartment, waved us aside, positioned himself under the sofa, carried it on his back up the remaining three flights and returned to his apartment without saying a word.
Later, I asked his wife to explain how he had done it so easily.
“Oh, that was nothing,” she said. “He’s a Castro Convertible delivery man.”
— Dave Bett
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post The Streets Are Safer This Year for Drivers, Cyclists and Pedestrians appeared first on New York Times.
