The city finally redesigned this intersection on 9th St after a cyclist was killed in 2023. But at the victim’s vigil, both her family and transit advocates said the changes didn’t go far enough. 

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

When Sarah Schick was hit and killed by a box truck two years ago while riding an e-bike at the intersection of Ninth Street and Second Avenue, the tragedy ignited a firestorm of local activism. A week later, nearly 100 people staged a mass ‘die-in’ at the crash site, sprawling in the street as vexed drivers jeered at them to clear the way. At the same event, advocates with all-caps posters confronted the Department of Transportation’s head, Ydanis Rodriguez, demanding to know why safety measures had been delayed despite years of community complaints, and skewering the agency’s “terrible track record.”

On Friday evening, at a vigil commemorating the second anniversary of Schick’s death, the scene was more muted. And it offered glimpses into the parallel stories of how families, neighborhoods, and the city itself engage with a tragedy as time wears on.

2023 marked a 24-year high for the number of bicyclist deaths, the majority of which involved e-bikes, even as the fatality rate has steadily decreased, an indicator that biking in the city has become safer on the whole.

In Northwest Brooklyn, Ninth Street is notorious for dangerous traffic — at its junction with Fifth Avenue, per public data, 15 cyclists and pedestrians have been injured by collisions with cars since 2011. In 2018, a driver with multiple sclerosis ran a red light at the same intersection, killing two children and causing the mother of one victim, the Tony Award-winning actor Ruthie Ann Blumenstein, to later miscarry.

In the wake of that incident, Rodriguez and the DOT took action, as the agency had in 2004, after two boys were struck and killed by a truck on Ninth Street and Third Avenue. Back then, the artery was redesigned to include a protected bike lane starting at Prospect Park West, but construction stopped short at Third Avenue, leaving the remainder of Ninth Street up to Smith Street unchanged.

The logic went like this: that stretch, a mostly grey swath of Gowanus, was less residential and therefore lower priority. Yet in the subsequent 2018 redesign, even as the area gentrified and its population rose, the gauntlet below Third Street was spurned again.

“We shouldn’t have to wait until the bridge is broken or someone falls before we fix the bridge,” said State Senator Andrew Gounardes, who shared at Schick’s memorial that his family had also lost someone to a crash, albeit 70 years ago. (“That pain still lives with us to this day, and we never forget it,” he said. “We just channel it to create a better place for us all.”)

A law called the NYC Streets Plan mandates that the city install at least 50 miles of protected bike lanes each year from 2023 to 2026, and a total of 250 miles from 2022 to 2026. Yet only 24 of the 50 were installed in 2024, leaving the DOT behind pace: it currently sits at a mere 85 of the 250 miles of protected lanes the law asks for by next year.

It took Schick’s death in 2023 to force the DOT’s hand on Ninth Street, creating enough public pressure to actualize the long-awaited extension of protected bike lanes down to Smith Street.

“The current design of this corridor is safer than it was before,” states a joint letter from Transportation Alternatives, Families for Safe Streets, CM Shahana Hanif, Brooklyn CB6, and Maxime Le Mounier, the widower of Schick, to Mayor Eric Adams and DOT Commissioner Rodriguez. “But there is room for improvement.”

What would it take to make Ninth Street safe in its entirety, then? The letter, which was distributed at the event, outlines over 20 targeted fixes. The primary suggestion is to beef up physical barriers to shield the lanes, which it notes were promised in the 2023 update but remain absent for about 75% of the corridor. Flimsy ‘flex-posts’ were earmarked for replacement during a public forum two years ago; that has yet to happen. The most effective change, the signees argue, would be to harden all barriers using metal bollards, jersey barriers, or planters.

Another ask is to hold traffic and parking violators accountable on a more consistent basis. The letter calls out local business Ferrantino Fuel by name, which it says contributes to the chronic blocking of bike lanes. And in the long run, those present advocated for cracking down on cars parked in bikers’ throughways while working to connect the protected lanes as part of a larger, borough-wide network.

“We know that there are tools — high quality networks of protected bike lanes, daylighting, and adequate enforcement — that can keep tragedies like this from ever happening again,” said Ben Furnas, the newly-appointed executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “We’re calling on the city to take these steps to improve Ninth Street.”

The DOT signaled it was open to further discussion, without naming specifics. “Safety is our top priority, and we’re laser focused on making it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get around our city,” said a spokesperson by email. “We will review Transportation Alternatives’ concerns and continue to monitor the success of the safety enhancements we have already made at this intersection.”

At the vigil, activists, elected officials, and family and friends formed a united front on the street corner outside a Tesla dealership, speaking to a small camera crew. Yet after the initial public statements, the gathering split into separate camps: officials and nonprofit reps talked shop, while mourners speaking French hovered by the candlelit shrine.

That division reflected the sometimes complementary, occasionally awkward nature of the event — both a rally for policy change, and a memorial for a person whose life and influence extended far beyond the tight-knit world of transportation advocacy.

“It has been two years since we have been living in slow motion: laughing on the outside but crying on the inside,” Schick’s father said, via a text read aloud by a family friend. “We still don’t have the words to express our immense grief.”

“Everywhere on this planet and throughout time,” the text continued, as trucks and bikers whizzed by the shrine, oblivious, “there are always stars shining in the night. Maybe they are not stars but rather openings in the sky where the love of our departed loved ones shines down on us to let us know they are happy.”