Death on Canal Street Renews Call for City to Finally Make the Street Safer

The intersection of Lafayette and Canal, where advocates are calling for a number of safety improvements, including widened curbs and no parking regulations near corners. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Transportation safety advocates have renewed their call for pedestrian safety measures on Canal Street following the hit-and-run death of a man at the intersection of Lafayette Street in the early morning of March 5.

“We are devastated and angry to learn that a hit-and-run driver killed a pedestrian earlier this morning on Canal Street, Manhattan’s own Boulevard of Death,” Transportation Alternatives [1] executive director Danny Harris said that day in a statement.

“City Hall knows that Canal Street is one of the most dangerous in our city,” Harris added, “but has refused to fix it despite death, serious injury, and repeated calls for a comprehensive redesign by [Transportation Alternatives] and others. Every traffic death and serious injury must be a call to action, and let this be another call to the City to fix Canal Street.”

At the Canal and Lafayette intersection, they say, the wide roadway encourages speeding, curbs have yet to be widened to make for shorter crossings, and visibility is blocked by vehicles parked close to corners.

According to the advocacy group, three pedestrians have been struck and killed by cars on Canal Street in the past five years, and four cyclists and one pedestrian were seriously injured on Canal in the last two years. Transportation Alternatives complains that the city has made no improvements since the group launched its Fix Canal [2] campaign in 2018, calling for a redesign of the street, including widening sidewalks, making crossings safer, prioritizing mass transit, and adding greenery. 

In a statement, the Department of Transportation said it has been “actively studying the corridor and looks forward to sharing safety recommendations with the community this year.” The DOT would not say more specifically when that study, announced in 2022, would be completed, or respond to a question about whether actual improvements can be assured after it is released. 

“We’re using this moment to say, we need it now. Like, we can’t lose any more lives,” said City Councilman Christopher Marte, who recently went on a Transportation Alternatives-sponsored walking tour of the street. With seemingly “every single avenue in Midtown being tackled” by the Department of Transportation, Marte noted, “why are they waiting [for Canal Street] when the community has been asking for years to at least release a plan so we have a timeline in understanding what can be done in the short term and what can be done in the long term.”

Studies for improving Canal Street are hardly new. A federally funded 8-year analysis, the Canal Area Transportation Study by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council [3], released in 2011, called for widened sidewalks, fewer left turns and new stop light patterns among other changes. Another study report, which included Canal Street, was issued in 2021 and the next year the DOT released a report on its Canal Street Visionary Project [4], which was a survey that asked the street’s users about their concerns and suggestions for improvements.

“We’ve been waiting for nearly two years without any safety improvements on the most dangerous street in Manhattan. We don’t need more studies to tell us what we already know: Canal is dangerous, it’s deadly, and it’s killing us,” Emily Jacobi, Manhattan Organizer for Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement. “DOT must prioritize and begin a full, comprehensive redesign of Canal Street, meeting this moment with the action and urgency it demands.”