Only when Preston Martin charged across six lanes of rush-hour traffic did she follow behind him. He waved at cars to keep them at bay. He watched over her until she reached the other side of the street.
After too many close calls, Vespermann, 38, a baby sitter, does not like to cross by herself anymore. “He helps, always,” she said.
New York City’s increasingly frenetic streetscape has become a gauntlet for pedestrians. It is Martin’s job to make sure no one gets run over.
The city’s traffic has become so perilous that even grown-ups need crossing guards. Officially known as pedestrian safety managers, they are vigilant escorts across some of the city’s busiest intersections.
They are not the traffic police; they cannot hand out tickets and their focus is not on keeping cars moving. Instead, they are bodyguards for pedestrians. As soon as the walk sign flashes, they are the first ones into the crosswalk.
So far, they are a fixture in just one Manhattan neighborhood — Hudson Square, a fast-growing commercial hub that is about to become even more crowded with Google planning a $1 billion campus for up to 7,000 workers.
The pedestrian managers stand guard over one of the city’s worst choke points: where Varick Street feeds into the Holland Tunnel. An average of 40,742 vehicles go through the tunnel every weekday to New Jersey and beyond, often backing up onto Varick.
The stretch of Varick between Houston and Spring streets has become one of the most dangerous in Manhattan. Though there have been no deaths, 119 people — including 40 pedestrians and nine cyclists — were injured in crashes from 2012 to 2016, the most recent year available.
Ellen Baer, president of the Hudson Square Business Improvement District, came up with the idea for pedestrian managers in 2011, after seeing traffic managers expertly move people around a construction site at the World Trade Center.
Now, the business district has expanded the operation from three weeknights to every weeknight, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
It costs $300,000 a year, or as much as other neighborhoods spend on street cleaning and trash pickups.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.