City Council speaker halts ‘jaywalking’ bill amid further talks on amended language

September 13, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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CITYWIDE — A BILL THAT WOULD HAVE DECRIMINALIZED JAYWALKING was nixed from the floor vote agenda after having advanced from the NY City Council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Tuesday, Sept. 10, reports Gothamist. That bill, whose text document Intro. 346, indicates it was sponsored by Brooklyn Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse (D-46). Council Speaker Adrienne Adams didn’t advance the bill to a full vote before the chamber on Thursday, on the grounds that it still had to undergo legislative process and unresolved aspects of the bill were still in discussion. The bill was halted days after Council members amended the bill with language that would have still gotten jaywalkers in trouble if they fail to “yield to other traffic that has the right of way.” The new version also included a clause requiring the NYC DOT to create a street safety education campaign.

Councilmember Narcisse, a Haitian-born nurse, asserted that racial bias was a major factor in who gets penalized for jaywalking. During a June 25 committee on several traffic safety bills, she had pointed out that “most every New Yorker jaywalks regularly, certainly more than 450 or the summons cited, but enforcement disproportionately overwhelmingly and unfairly targets Black and Brown New Yorkers, over 90%.”

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