Rush hour comes often on a desolate block in Park Slope.
At 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, traffic is backed up on Butler St. and Third Ave. A woman is waiting at the curb patiently with three young children, even as the traffic signal tells them it is safe to walk. But there’s something in the way. A compact machine is loading crates onto an 18-wheeler truck, blocking the crosswalk for several minutes. One of the younger children, decked out in swimwear on the hot summer day, grows impatient and almost steps off the wide curb before the woman jerks his hand and stops him. Two blue “SLOW ZONE” signs with illustrations of children serve as warning to drivers to approach the corner with caution.
Almost a decade ago, three young boys were memorialized at this same intersection after a series of deadly traffic accidents.
James Rice, 4, Juan Angel Estrada, 11, and Victor Flores, 12, were small in stature when they died. Now they are giants. Hanging over the border of Park Slope and Gowanus, they are reminders for cars and trucks to yield to pedestrians at the busy intersection. The title of the mural, “Not One More Death,” is a bold message that now rings true. Once a block plagued by consistent casualties, there have been significantly less deaths since the mural’s construction.
The placement of the bright mural is no coincidence. A direct route to the neighborhood’s Thomas Greene Playground, the commercial block is rife with active driveways, a gas station, and a car wash. It marks a central location where the boys were killed within a two-year span. In 2005, on their way home from school, Estrada and Flores were both run over by a dump truck on Third Ave. and Ninth St.
In 2007, Rice was struck and killed by a Hummer making a right turn onto Baltic St. The driver of the three-ton SUV was later given a ticket for failing to yield to a passenger, according to reports from the New York Daily News.
In both cases, the drivers said they had not seen the victims crossing the street.
Now the boys are hard to miss. In 2007, local community leaders and activist organizations collaborated to memorialize the young boys with a mural they hoped would propel the city to invest in pedestrian precautions on what had become known as an “avenue of death” in the neighborhood. Safety conditions have drastically improved, with only two pedestrian fatalities since 2009, according to Transportation Alternatives, a traffic safety advocacy group that partnered to create the mural. These are results that community activists hope will move to other “mean streets” in the neighborhood.
Groundswell Community Mural Project recruited young artists to construct a piece of art that would get city officials’ attention. At the dedication of the mural in late 2007, the New York City Department of Transportation announced that the city would follow through with investments in widening the sidewalks at various intersections along Third Ave., including at the site of the mural.
Christopher Cardinale, Groundswell’s lead artist for the mural, said that city officials made this promise years before the mural was unveiled, but nothing changed.
“The [NYC] DOT said they were going to implement a plan, and they didn’t,” Cardinale said. “After that, more people died.”
The NYC DOT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pressure from local officials and community activists helped move the project along, according to Caroline Samponaro, Deputy Director at Transportation Alternatives.
Almost ten years later, the corner is now marked with fluorescent yield signs and “Neighborhood Slow Zone” reminders. The speed limit is 20 miles per hour on the street, slower than the citywide default limit, which is 30 miles per hour. The intersection was also redesigned to include traffic-calming conditions, like “neck-downs” that shorten crossing distances and force drivers to make turns slowly.
According to data from Transportation Alternatives, since 2013, bike and pedestrian injuries decreased 34 percent in the 78th Precinct, which covers Third Ave. and most of Park Slope. Sampanoro said that the NYC DOT’s actions on that one corner had an “overall impact on driving behavior” in the neighborhood.
But the avenue has also seen its share of fatalities since the construction of the mural. In 2014, Felipe Castro, 27, was killed in a hit-and-run at the corner of Seventh St. In 2012, a motorist died a few blocks away.
Neighborhood residents feel that conditions for pedestrians may still need improvement. John Wyszniewski, who has walked past the “Not One More Death” mural every day for the last few years, said heavy construction along Third Ave., puts frequent walkers’ safety at risk.
“It’s desolate and sidewalks are often closed,” he said.
Lance Rutledge, who rides his bike along Third Ave., admits he feels safe but thinks that police should more strictly enforce city rules to protect cyclists.
“Cars are often parked in the bike lanes,” Rutledge, 64, said. “They aren’t ticketed.”
In 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced Vision Zero, a plan to help reduce traffic fatalities for pedestrians and bikers, which also cracks down on traffic enforcement. Since the founding of the program, the city’s default speed limit was reduced to 25 from 30 miles per hour. There are now more than 100 traffic cameras that have issued 1.5 million violations.
In Brooklyn, however, 25 percent of all deaths in 2015 were caused by fatal traffic crashes, according to WNYC’s “Mean Streets” database.
Nearly 10 years after the mural’s unveiling, the battle for safe streets has moved to another Vision Zero area, just a few blocks over. The triangular convergence of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth Aves., near the Barclays Center, is considered one of Brooklyn’s most dangerous crossings. There have been more than ten pedestrian and motorist injuries so far this year, according to the NYC DOT. More than half of the incidents involving pedestrians took place when the walker had the right-of-way.
Representatives from the NYC DOT organized a planning meeting alongside community members on Aug. 3rd in Park Slope, where neighborhood activists from various organizations, including Transportation Alternatives, proposed their own ideas to improve conditions at the intersection. The NYC DOT also presented a “comprehensive safety plan,” which included building more crosswalks and new medians at the crossing. They also suggested removing the multiple right-turn lanes, which they say increases risks for collision.
Other community members said the city needed to “think bigger.” Jonathan Cohen, a transportation architect, thinks the city should eliminate unnecessary turning lanes at the intersection entirely. At the meeting, he suggested constructing a “roundabout,” or a traffic circle.
“Right now, it’s a mess,” Cohen, a longtime Park Slope resident, said. “There is a ton of traffic going in different directions. It’s hard to figure out where cars are coming from and where they are going.”
A project like this would require research and extensive planning, which may take a bit longer than city officials are planning, Cohen said.
At the meeting, Rich Carmona, a project manager with NYC DOT, said concrete plans to make the intersection safer would be presented to local lawmakers at a later date.
For Khianni Ledan and her 4-year-old daughter, changes cannot come quickly enough. Ledan, a Park Slope resident, said conditions have improved since the city expanded sidewalks in 2011, similar to changes made at Third Ave., but it is still “very dangerous.”
“It’s not safe,” Ledan, 24, said, reaching for her daughter’s hand on a sidewalk near Atlantic Ave. on a Wednesday afternoon. She agreed with most community activists who said that reducing the “amount of turning” lanes would drastically help pedestrians.
As for Cardinale, the mural artist, he thinks that there has been a big effort by the city to “shift thinking” about pedestrian and bike safety. But, he said, Brooklyn residents should not wait on the city to improve conditions.
“People have to do more than leave it up to their elected officials,” he said.
His proposal? Grab a paintbrush.
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