Taxi and Limousine Commission

The office of Ydanis Rodriguez says he is aiming to get several traffic safety bills passed in the near future, while others that were taken up by his transportation committee at a Wednesday Vision Zero hearing may be held up.

The City Council transportation committee has a full docket of traffic safety bills on the agenda for its April 30 meeting. We'll have more on some of these bills in future posts, but for now here's a summary.

What if taxi and livery drivers in NYC received letter grades to reflect their safety records, the same way restaurants get grades from the health department? Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors raised the possibility at last night's Vision Zero town hall in Park Slope, and found a receptive audience in new TLC Commissioner Meera Joshi.

Two cab drivers fatally struck 22-year-old Kelly Gordon last night as she crossed York Avenue with her sister and a friend. Gordon was at least the fifth person killed by a city cab driver in the last 12 months, and the second this year, after 9-year-old Cooper Stock and his father were hit on the Upper West Side in January.

The Vision Zero town hall roadshow returned to Manhattan last night with a well-attended forum at John Jay College. Elected officials, agency representatives and the public gathered to discuss the city's plan to eliminate traffic fatalities and to offer suggestions for the initiative. Like last week's forum in Astoria, some new details came out over the course of the evening about the city's next steps for Vision Zero -- including hints from NYPD about opening more data to the public. Another highlight: Livery drivers offered their own suggestions to stop the carnage on city streets.

Here are more highlights from Thursday's City Council transportation committee budget hearing.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and several of his agency commissioners released the administration's Vision Zero report at a school on West End Avenue this afternoon. Streetsblog's Stephen Miller will have more from the mayor's event later today. In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of the major takeaways from the report [PDF], which outlines both an ambitious multi-agency approach to reducing traffic violence that City Hall can pursue on its own, and a legislative agenda that asks Albany to let the city control its speed limits and traffic enforcement methods.

An analysis by the Post confirms that cab drivers who injure and kill pedestrians in NYC rarely face sanctions from the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The most basic flaw in the New York State traffic justice system is that in most cases it fails to hold motorists accountable for deadly recklessness. Unless a motorist is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, killing someone with a car is usually not considered a crime.