A Citi Bike rider was struck and killed by a truck driver on 11th Avenue in Midtown — a congested area that won’t see any traffic relief due to Gov. Hochul’s abandonment of congestion pricing.
According to the NYPD, the 32-year-old cyclist was struck at the intersection of 11th Avenue and 50th Street by the 27-year-old driver of a box truck at around 2:10 p.m. on Friday. The cyclist died at the scene, and the truck driver remained on hand. There were no immediate charges, according to the NYPD.
According to the Department of Transportation, the victim is the 11th cyclist to die on city streets so far this year. That number is down from 17 over the same period last year, but well up from the average of around five cyclist deaths by this point of the year in the Vision Zero era.
The DOT also said that 49 pedestrians have been killed so far this year, which is the second highest since 2016.
Cyclist Joshua Cork, 32, a resident of the area, heard about the crash and immediately thought about congestion pricing, which Gov. Hochul killed this week, just three weeks before its traffic-calming benefits were about to be felt in the neighborhood.
“One of the main goals of congestion pricing would be to cut down on so much of the traffic that can be the cause of crashes like this,” he said. “There’s so much traffic that people drive in the bike lane and on the sidewalk. And it’s noisy, so it’s hard to go to sleep, so it’s a quality-of-life thing for me too. It’s just unfortunate.”
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