Mayor Bill de Blasio released the biannual Mayor’s Management Report Monday, providing a detailed look into city agencies’ progress in reducing crime and traffic-related deaths.
According to the report, between the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years major felony crime in the city dropped 6.3 percent while traffic fatalities declined 10.6 percent.
The mayor said he hopes the data, which has been released for the past 40 years under requirements in the City Charter, would help city agencies set benchmarks and keep them transparent.
“As New Yorkers strive to deepen the progress we’ve made together, the need for strategic, data-driven decision making has never been greater,” he said in a statement.
Several agencies showed improvement in their operations during the 12-month period, according to the report.
The NYPD, for example, saw a decrease in end-to-end emergency response times by 29 seconds from 10:35 to 10:06.
The city has made several changes to reduce traffic deaths and injuries under its “Vision Zero” initiative, such as a reduced city speed limit and more fines for speeding drivers, and it appeared to have paid off, according to the statistics. Traffic deaths involving motorists and passengers dropped 25 percent between the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, going from 84 to 63.
In other transportation areas, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission made strides in meeting its goal to make half of its cabs wheelchair-accessible by 2020. The number of active medallion taxis that are accessible increased 112.3 percent from 876 in the 2016 fiscal year to 1,860 in the past fiscal year, according to the MMR.
The report did show areas that need improvement, particularly when it comes to legal cases against the city.
Although the number of new court cases dropped by 1,366 between the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, the city has been paying out more in judgments and claims. In the past fiscal year, it paid out more than $722 million, a nearly 10.1 percent jump, from the 2016 fiscal year total of approximately $656 million.
