New York talks traffic safety ahead of Smart City Expo USA

Keith Kerman is the Chief Fleet Officer, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), New York City. Kerman will be speaking at Smart City Expo USA 2023, October 4-5^th in New York City, focused on building smart, equitable, and sustainable 21st century cities for all.

What are some of your current initiatives to help end traffic injuries and fatalities in NYC?

NYC has committed to Vision Zero, ending fatalities and major injuries on our roadways. The NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) is charged with lowering speed limits, installing bikeways, and re-designing roadways. DCAS is complementing this work with a focus on the redesign of the vehicles themselves. DCAS has implemented the largest programme of truck safety side-guards in the nation with more than 4,000 in use. These common-sense rails are standard in Europe, but uncommon in North America. Truck side-guards prevent pedestrians, bicyclists, and children from being struck or killed by the back wheel of trucks in side turns. DCAS is also leading the nation in installing Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) on city vehicles. With ISA, vehicles cannot accelerate above the speed limit wherever the vehicle is located. This effective technology has enormous potential for reducing crashes. DCAS is also expanding use of surround cameras and pedestrian alerts to safeguard our large work trucks while advocating that trucks be redesigned as high vision to address visual impairment.

DCAS has partnered with the US DOT Volpe Center on the Safe Fleet Transition Plan (SFTP) initiative to comprehensively re-design City of New York cars and trucks for safety. Through SFTP, DCAS has installed over 75,000 safety improvements to City fleet vehicles since 2017. Safe Fleet Transition Plans have also been prepared for the commercial waste industry and school buses.

Can you talk about NYC’s fleet sustainability successes? And what about efforts for the future?

DCAS manages the New York City Fleet which operates over 28,500 vehicles including critical emergency response vehicles for NYPD, FDNY, and DSNY. Over 20,000 of these use some type of alternative fuel including electric, hybrid, biofuels, and even solar. This is one of the largest alternative fuelled fleets in the nation. DCAS has rolled out nearly 5,000 electric vehicles (EVs) to date and over 1,700 charging ports, both the largest programmes in NY state. The charging network includes 212 fast chargers and the nation’s largest programme of free-standing solar carports. In the last year, DCAS has introduced all-electric units for police patrols, electric street sweepers, and over 300 electric cargo vans. Our first set of 150 electric pickups is being placed into operation now.

In the NYC Clean Fleet Plan, DCAS committed to 50 percent greenhouse gas and fossil fuel reduction for the fleet by 2025. We are on pace to achieve this with a major expansion of biofuel use for diesel trucks, use of hybrids, and plug-in hybrids for emergency service units, including police cars and ambulances, continued growth of up to 1,000 EVs per year, and installation of over 500 additional EV charging ports per year.

What are a few of the recent tech innovations in fleet safety? What innovations are you particularly excited about for New York City?

DCAS manages one of the nation’s largest rollouts of live tracking and telematics for vehicles with 28,500 City fleet units monitored at all times through our DCAS Fleet Office of Real Time Tracking (FORT) here at the NYC Municipal Building. Telematics is a critical tool for safety, enabling us to alert supervisors to speeding or reckless vehicles in real-time and allowing us to prepare risk reports for every single vehicle. DCAS has reduced excessive speeding in half so far through telematics alerts. Our goal is that no City vehicle operates at a high or moderate risk level. Telematics has also been a key tool in reducing the fleet by over 850 vehicles in 2022 as part of Mayor Adams fleet efficiency initiative. DCAS utilises usage reports and maps to identify under-used or poorly deployed vehicles.

Telematics also plays a major role in operations analysis, theft prevention, and monitoring actual, on the road, fuel economy. Telematics helps DCAS and the Department of Investigation ensure that City vehicles are not misused. DCAS also shares telematics data with DOT to assist street planning efforts.