[
Photo Sunday by Pinhead]
On Sunday, the just-installed sidewalk shed collapsed outside the Salvation Army's former East Village Residence on the Bowery at East Third Street. No one was injured.
The incident prompted a discussion about the safety of sidewalk bridges among a few EVG friends and readers. One EVG reader pointed us to a article from Friday in
The New York World, which the Columbia Journalism School publishes, titled
"Shoddy sidewalk sheds pose risk amid faltering city enforcement efforts."
According to the paper's investigation:
● A special Scaffold Safety Team, created in late 2007 by the Bloomberg administration to monitor construction scaffolds and sidewalks sheds, has seen its staff reduced from 14 field inspectors in 2008 to 9 in 2013.
● The number of violations issued for faulty sheds has plummeted, from 855 in 2009 to 337 in 2013.
● At least 39 pedestrians and construction workers have been injured since January 2011 in accidents involving sidewalk sheds
You can find stats and the city's response in the article
here.
Meanwhile, here's Richard Miller, a structural engineer and owner of MRES Engineering PC, a private consulting firm: "I always cross the street to avoid walking under sheds. And I recommend others do the same."