In a bid to make sure the city that never sleeps is better lit, the City Council unanimously passed legislation Wednesday requiring NYC’s Department of Transportation to install streetlights along 300 commercial blocks each year.
“We are going to make the streets of New York City safer with one very simple intervention, more light. It’s relatively cost effective, and it is a smart and evidence-based approach,” Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), the law’s primary sponsor, told reporters ahead of Wednesday’s vote.
“This bill is going to make a major difference in making every single one of our neighborhoods safer places to live,” he added.
The law will require the city to install sidewalk lighting on 300 or more commercially zoned blocks annually until the roughly 10,000 such blocks in the five boroughs have “sufficient lighting” — one lumen per square foot for the length of the sidewalk.
“The Department of Transportation puts a phenomenal amount of effort and time, energy, regulation, data, [and] analysis, into lighting up our roadways,” Restler said. “But most New Yorkers don’t drive — we walk, and it’s critically important that we have bright light-lit up streets when we walk down the block.”
The 300-block annual requirement is down from the 500 blocks per year the bill first required when it was introduced last year.
The law also requires DOT to provide an annual update to the public and the City Council on its progress.
