Metrics drive good governance. They quantify an initiative’s progress, validate its design and demarcate between aspirational and empirical.
Few initiatives concern the bodily well-being of on a regular basis New Yorkers greater than their metropolis’s site visitors security program.
Final month, town Division of Transportation (DOT) launched information evaluation displaying a document, seven % downward development in fatalities for early 2026, affirming town’s Imaginative and prescient Zero technique to finally remove all site visitors deaths and accidents on metropolis streets.
But the gleam of success metrics can distort our notion. It could actually slacken priorities, and – significantly regarding for a life-and-death situation like site visitors security – it could blind us to missed alternatives and pressing subsequent steps.
Worse, it usually obscures the human tales that bridge advanced authorities packages and real-world influence.
I may let you know about Nishat Jannath, who lived in my Queens district, in a number of methods: Nishat arrived in New York from Bangladesh at a younger age. She was a CCNY pupil. And as typical of CUNY college students, she juggled faculty and a job, working as a cashier at a parking storage. At nineteen, she was the second oldest of 4 daughters. She lived close to Baitul Janna Mosque in Woodside, the place her father serves because the Imam.
However maybe she is finest described as an enormous sister who doted on her youthful siblings, ages 9 and 5.
On the evening of March thirtieth – simply two days earlier than the DOT report was launched – Nishat was fatally struck by a personal rubbish truck whereas crossing Roosevelt Avenue. She often got here straight dwelling from her cashier job however had stopped to select up a birthday cake for her little sister. She died, a number of blocks from her ready household, with that cake nonetheless in her fingers.
Her father, Imam Helal Ahmed, advised me: “I brought my family to New York because it is a place of hope and new beginnings. Like many parents before me, I wanted peace and prosperity for my children. To lose one of them in this manner is unimaginable.”
Nishat’s dying has bereaved her household and galvanized our neighborhood – significantly my Bangladeshi American constituents.
Throughout the district, in neighborhoods like Woodside, streets are designed for pace moderately than security. Slender sidewalks, blocked crosswalks and underlit crossings mix with massive vans on busy streets to jeopardize pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.
In 2025, town recorded its lowest variety of site visitors fatalities on document, with pedestrian deaths additionally declining. Nonetheless, there have been multiple hundred pedestrians killed and dozens extra injured whereas strolling citywide. Queens alone noticed fifty-seven site visitors deaths final 12 months, the second‑highest of any borough. Additionally in April of this 12 months, a supply truck struck and killed Jenny Maribel Chacho Sanchez whereas she was in a crash-prone Ridgewood crosswalk.
I’ve pushed laws to additional stop tragedies earlier than they happen. They embody increasing automated curb enforcement to scale back harmful violations like double-parking and blocked crosswalks, which create blind spots and power pedestrians into site visitors.
Moreover, I had partnered in 2024 with neighborhood leaders and fellow elected officers on a seven-point avenue security plan to higher shield residents. The plan had pressed for putting in everlasting, brighter lighting at darkened pedestrian crossings, exactly the kind of walkway the place Nishat was killed.
After this tragedy, which occurred minutes from my own residence, I’m recommitted to pushing even tougher.
I stand rededicated to doing way more. As a result of success metrics imply nothing to a small baby who misplaced an enormous sister on her birthday.
We – metropolis and state leaders, DOT officers, neighborhood stakeholders – should do extra. As a result of we can’t console a grieving father or mother with a optimistic development announcement.
As her father, Imam Ahmed, requested me to share with lawmakers and the DOT: “Nishat should not merely be a statistic on your reports. She was beloved, by her family, by her community. There are immediate steps you can take. Please do everything in your power to save other families from the pain visited upon us, from the hole in our hearts, from the unbearable silence at our table.”
A two-term incumbent, Meeting Member Steven Raga represents sections of Woodside, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Maspeth.
