City Was Asked For Safety Study Months Before Cyclist Died: Pols

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — As a crowd gathered for a vigil to the cyclist killed in Sunset Park, many couldn't help but wonder if they would be mourning at all had the city kept its promises to the community.

Artist and yoga teacher Em Samolewicz, 30, was hit by a tractor trailer on Third Ave. Monday morning after a car door swung open in her path, sending her veering into traffic on the busy corridor and making her the 18th cyclist to lose her life on New York City streets so far this year.

Her death sparked anger among local elected officials and advocates who have long demanded safety improvements for Third Avenue, which has eight lanes of traffic and no bike lanes.

Perhaps the most frustrating, Community Board 7 Chair Cesar Zuniga said, is that a request had been made for a traffic study on the corridor several months ago.

"For over a year we have been ignored and my question to the city is, 'How many more people have to die before we undertake a truck study?'" Zuniga said Tuesday.

"We have been asking and we have been asking, and we have been ignored and this is not sustainable. We've seen a lot of changes in the last five years that we need to know and we need to understand."

Zuniga told Patch at Tuesday night's vigil that Community Board 7 hasn't gotten any response from the city after repeated requests for the study of Third and Second avenues from 65th Street into South Slope.

The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to questions about the traffic study requests, but a spokesperson said it was looking at ways to improve Third Avenue for pedestrians and cyclists. "East-west connections" were added on the corridor in 2018, officials said.

But even aside from safety improvements on the avenue itself, elected officials also wondered if Samolewicz would have been on Third Avenue at all if the city had answered other pleas for a completed bike lane on Fourth Avenue.

That bike lane, meant to extend from Atlantic Avenue to 65th Street, is only about a quarter of the way done, even though it was supposed to be fully completed last year, Council Member Brad Lander said. The completed portion doesn't include the 36th Street block where Samolewicz was riding.

"We'll never know if it had been completed, whether Em might have been riding on that safe, protected bike lane instead of here on Third Avenue," Lander said. "But we will know for sure that the reason she did not have that as an opportunity is because we were not urgent enough in demanding that it get done and in getting it done."

The dragging bike lane installation, Lander contended, is a metaphor for how New Yorkers and the city agencies alike fail to treat safe street infrastructure as a matter of life and death. Transportation officials have said that the Fourth Avenue lane stalled because of MTA work in the same area and that its installation between First and 38th street will wrap up this year.

Thane Terrill, who said he has been cycling through Queens and Brooklyn for decades, said he was almost "doored" like Samolewicz was on the way to the vigil Tuesday. Had the Fourth Avenue lane been available, he would have taken that route instead of Third Avenue, he said.

"(Third Avenue) has always been unsafe," he said. "The road conditions are ghastly."

Terrill agreed with advocates that one of the problems is large structures that hold up the Gowanus Expressway overpass, but the road also has an unsafe amount of trucks and is so noisy from the highway it is hard to hear audio cues.

Tuesday's vigil brought together family and friends of not only Samolewicz, but many of the other 17 cyclists who have died this year, too.

The vigil began with reading each of the 18 cyclists' names through a megaphone and the crowd holding up cards with their names for a moment of silence.

Staff from Jaya Yoga Center, where Samolewicz worked, remembered her as a "gentle spirt and kind soul." Samolewicz had planned to start training for her own yoga practice this week, the teachers said.

Council Member Carlos Menchaca said he remembers talking with Samolewicz every time he would come for a class at the yoga center.

"I'd come in with a lot of anxiety...and she would sit there and listen and look at me and smile and say, 'Isn't it all better that you're here now?" he said. "So I'm asking all of us, isn't it all better that we're here right now?

"Let's keep this energy moving forward. Let's change some laws, let's change some streets and let's change some hearts and minds — and let's do that in her spirit."