Pedestrian Safety Is The Top Issue For Forest Hills Residents

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Residents of Forest Hills most frequently call their City Council members for help with pedestrian safety issues, according to data analyzed in a new report.

CouncilStat is a city database that Council district offices use to track questions and complaints from constituents, and The City recently analyzed data from 260,000-plus cases dating back to 2015, in order to find which issues are most regularly reported in each district, and how well each district’s council member responded to the concerns.

The analysis is one way for voters to see their incumbent Council member’s neighborhood track record, or to think about how a new candidate will handle one of the more mundane, but significant, parts of their job: responding to the concerns of constituents.

CouncilStat lists complaints by district number, and the number of recorded complaints varies between offices, in part since reporting is voluntary — a point that many incumbent Council Members stressed to The City in an effort to indicate that CouncilStat only shows part of their neighborhood track record.

In Forest Hills’ District 29, the most frequently listed complaint was about transportation — pedestrian safety, to be specific.

More than half of the reported pedestrian safety issues — 78 in total — came from the Forest Hills ZIP code of 11375, according to CouncilStat data.

Hopefuls in the District 29 race have bold platforms — including funding universal childcare and increasing the number of hospital beds in the borough — but to see how the candidates stack up in terms of their pedestrian safety platforms, consider reading through the Forest Hills City Council guide that Patch put together.

You can read the full article about CouncilStat on The City.