Public Safety

MANHATTAN — Before Sunday morning’s scaffolding collapse in SoHo, City Councilman Ben Kallos called for changes to the city’s scaffolding regulations.

“I don’t want to say the sky is falling, but literally, the scaffolding is now falling,” Councilman Kallos said in an interview with PIX11 News.

“I introduced legislation in the City Council that anytime you put up scaffolding, you have seven days to start the work, get the work done within 3-6 months, and then get the scaffolding down, otherwise the city steps in.”

Kallos says the legislation he introduced has been debated amongst City councilmembrs and now he’s in negotiations with the Mayor’s office to push for final approval.

“Every New Yorker is tired of scaffolding. It’s one of the top issues that people just hate about the city,” Kallos said.

Real estate industry executives say it's not cost effective to erect scaffolding, then take it down all while they continue to develop a property.

Five people were hurt Sunday afternoon after scaffolding collapsed in Manhattan, police officials said.

"I turn around and you just see scaffolding coming down, some steel beams on the floor," witness Jon Sgouros said. "I thought it was a bomb or something, it was so loud."

FDNY Deputy Chief Chris Boyle said the 40-foot sidewalk shed collapsed onto the corner of Broadway and Prince Street in SoHo around 11:36 a.m.

The high winds appeared to have caused the scaffolding to collapse, which trapped multiple pedestrians, the FDNY said.

On Manhattan’s East Side, the number of traffic collisions involving cyclists is on pace to continue on a downward trend: to date, there have been 228 collisions involving cyclists in 2017, down from 350 in 2016 and 373 in 2015, according to NYPD data. The number of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians injured in collisions on the East Side dropped over the same period.

Since 2012, 1,194 cyclists have been injured in collisions with motor vehicle on the East Side, but none have been killed, according to an analysis of NYPD data covering East Side zip codes from 26th to 96th Streets performed by the office of Council Member Ben Kallos. Thirty-nine pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles over the same period, along with 2,722 injured. Since 2012, no pedestrians have been killed in collisions with bicycles in the East Side zip codes covered in the analysis.

Police in the 17th and 19th precincts have issued 1,557 summonses to bicyclists so far this year, mostly for running red lights and failing to give pedestrians the right of way. Motor vehicle operators received nearly 16,000 summonses in the two precincts over the same period, including 1,541 to drivers for not giving the right of way to pedestrians.