The local paper for the Upper East Side MAKING A SPLASH IN TIMES SQUARE ◄P.21
WEEK OF NOVEMBER
16-22 2017
RAISING THE ROOF AT CHAPIN DEVELOPMENT The elite East Side girls’ school has embarked on its second skyward expansion in 10 years to fulfill its academic mission and keep students “under one roof” — but trash, rodents, truck traffic and highdecibel jackhammering have irked the neighbors BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
NYPD collision and injury data indicates that bicycle safety has improved on the East Side in recent years. Photo: Michael Garofalo
MEASURING BIKE SAFETY SAFETY Stats show drop in East Side cyclist and pedestrian injuries BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
There are more bikes than ever on the city’s streets. About three-quarters of a million New Yorkers ride a bicycle regularly, according to the city’s Department of Transportation — over 250,000 more than five years ago — but data indicates that cyclists’ safety is improving even as their numbers increase. Though annual bike fatalities citywide have remained relatively flat in recent years, when increased ridership is taken into account by measuring on a per-trip basis, the fatality rate for cyclists dropped 71 percent between 2000 and 2015, according to a recent DOT study. 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.
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Every morning, author and Upper East Side character Susan Cheever follows the same routine: She leaves her home on East End Avenue to walk her dog in Carl Schurz Park, always turning left, toward East 85th Street, never right, toward 84th Street. Why? The memoirist and biographer does not want to encounter what she deems the loud, disruptive, unsightly construction site a few feet to the south, where the Chapin School is in the throes of a noisy, multiyear expansion project. Again. Cheever, the daughter of the late short-story writer John Cheever, has lived around the corner since 1992, and she describes a nightmarish scenario. “What they’ve done to that sleepy beautiful Upper East Side crossroads is not to be believed,” she said. “They completely ruined what was once a very beautiful Manhattan block.” The exclusive all-girls private school has occupied the same building at 100 East End Avenue since 1928, and every decade or so, going back to 1971, it has enlarged or reconfigured its original footprint — at times growing internally, at times horizontally, at times vertically. But every single addition has been in keeping with the vision of Maria Bowen Chapin, the educator who founded “Miss Chapin’s School” in 1901 and believed that her young charges — then
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The three faces of the Chapin School are in evidence in a recent photo looking west across East End Avenue: At the base is what remains of the original Georgian-style building. Atop that is the first vertical addition, built in 2006, and the crane at Jewish women and girls light up left is being used to construct the second vertical addition, which will add three new the world by lighting the Shabbat floors to the existing eight-story school. candles every Friday evening Photo: Serene Green 84 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, November 17th – 4:18 pm. For more information visit CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 www.chabaduppereastside.com
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