BY SIDDHARTHA HARMALKAR
WOODSIDE — Woodside is still reeling from the death of Nishat Jannath, a 19-year-old student at the City College of New York who was fatally struck by a sanitation truck in the neighborhood just before midnight on March 29. The accident occurred on Roosevelt Avenue, while she was crossing a marked crosswalk on 62nd Street on her way home from work.
“I didn’t know Nishat Janat, but I think I was going to,” said Reilly Owens, Community Board 2 transportation committee chair, at this month’s board meeting on April 9.
“Her sister is in my daughter’s fifth grade music class. They’ve been practicing for months for battle of the bands. They’re in the same band. I think when they play next month, Nishat would have been there. We would have celebrated a joyful occasion. But now that family will try to muster up what joy they can.”
In 2024, 16-year-old Jael Zhinin was struck and killed by a truck in Sunnyside outside her school on the last day of school, in a crash that also injured her younger sister as the two girls were crossing a crosswalk on 46th Street at 47th Avenue.
“These tragic deaths make ripples in our communities. Families are devastated for generations. It’s important that we take a moment to say the names of people we’ve lost because we haven’t prioritized their safety,” said Owens.
He urged the mayor and DOT to move urgently in their efforts to make streets safer. “We’re losing our grandparents and our families, our friends, and our communities.”
“And in this case, because we’ve asked for so many safety improvement measures in that area, it hits me and the committee particularly hard.”
Owens said that Community Board 2 has been advocating for safety-related infrastructure upgrades in the area for years, including a redesigned Q70 bus stop and a comprehensive redesign of Roosevelt Avenue.
“It doesn’t have any safe cycle infrastructure. It doesn’t have any pedestrian improvements like enhanced crosswalks, shorter crossings, and daylighting,” he said.
Council Member Julie Won’s office has been working with DOT to conduct safety studies and provide safety and infrastructure improvements to the area, said Neily Vera Martinez, Won’s deputy chief of staff, at the Community Board 2 meeting.
She pointed to Council Member Won’s introduction of a bill to prohibit standing or parking a vehicle within 20 feet of a crosswalk at an intersection and require the Department of Transportation to implement barriers to block cars from doing so at 1,000 intersections per year.
A year-long community outreach effort by Council Member Won and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams in 2023 showed that residents who live along Roosevelt Ave and Northern Blvd list traffic safety as one of their major concerns, and called for improved sidewalks with safer pedestrian crossings as their top priority across both streets.
“My belief is this crash was a combination of a culture of reckless driving in the commercial waste industry and the unorganized chaos of Roosevelt Avenue, which has not been redesigned to accommodate its large numbers of pedestrians at all hours,” said Owens.
