In a bid to verify the town that by no means sleeps is best lit, the Metropolis Council unanimously handed laws Wednesday requiring NYC’s Division of Transportation to put in streetlights alongside 300 business blocks every year.
“We are going to make the streets of New York City safer with one very simple intervention, more light. It’s relatively cost effective, and it is a smart and evidence-based approach,” Councilman Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), the legislation’s main sponsor, advised reporters forward of Wednesday’s vote.
Councilmember Lincoln Restler throughout a Metropolis Council press convention on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. (John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
“This bill is going to make a major difference in making every single one of our neighborhoods safer places to live,” he added.
The legislation would require the town to put in sidewalk lighting on 300 or extra commercially zoned blocks yearly till the roughly 10,000 such blocks within the 5 boroughs have “sufficient lighting” — one lumen per sq. foot for the size of the sidewalk.
“The Department of Transportation puts a phenomenal amount of effort and time, energy, regulation, data, [and] analysis, into lighting up our roadways,” Restler stated. “But most New Yorkers don’t drive — we walk, and it’s critically important that we have bright light-lit up streets when we walk down the block.”
The 300-block annual requirement is down from the five hundred blocks per 12 months the invoice first required when it was launched final 12 months.
The legislation additionally requires DOT to offer an annual replace to the general public and the Metropolis Council on its progress.
