A decade-old effort to pass a Vision Zero plan and tap into a pot of federal money that may be drying up has stalled in Syracuse — and everyone is finger-pointing.
Syracuse has long had a road violence problem. According to federal stats covering 2019 through 2023, there were 567 car crashes in the city, causing 42 deaths and 608 serious injuries. Nearly half of the fatal crashes involved a pedestrian or bicyclist. Syracuse’s fatality rate (deaths per year per 100,000 residents) is 7.27, which is 40 percent higher than the state’s rate and 150 percent higher than New York City’s below-3.0 rate.
“People are dying,” said Alex Lawson, a cyclist and the chair of Moving People Transportation Coalition, a volunteer group that advocates for a better regional transportation system. “Why aren’t we doing everything we can to fix it?”…