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Entries tagged: Trans Alt

Transportation Alternatives (T.A.)has published two extensive reports on traffic safety and enforcement, quantitatively tallying the level of lawless driving and documenting the failure to create deterrence from dangerous driving on New York City streets.  Executive Order:  A Mayoral Strategy for Traffic Safety examines the broken system of enforcement of traffic crimes, describing the deadly consequences of dangerous driving, the lack of moving violation enforcement, and the loopholes in traffic crime prosecution. Using sampling data and yearly totals of NYPD summonsing activity, Executive Order presents staggering statistics that reveal how often dangerous drivers evade enforcement and delay justice.  The report was released to wide acclaim, with coverage by every major New York City news organization and both Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly commenting on its findings.  A follow-up study, From Chaos to Compliance:  How the NYPD Can Grasp New York City’s Traffic Safety Problem develops the methodology for measuring the state of New York streets, and employs these techniques to prove the pervasiveness of traffic law violations. 

T.A. has also launched an advocacy campaign, based on the comprehensive recommendations of over 30 experts in Traffic Safety and Law Enforcement, to change government policy towards street safety and create true deterrents to dangerous driving in New York City. In the coming months, T.A. will push the NYPD to adopt these methods to understand how best to approach the problems of dangerous driving. These reports and efforts were made possible in part by an Alliance for Biking & Walking Advocacy Advance Grant.

Download the reports:

Executive Order: A Mayoral Strategy for Traffic Safety

and

From Chaos to Compliance: How the NYPD Can Grasp New York City’s Traffic Safety Problem

On August 6th, New York City’s Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) released a new report titled Streets to Live By: How livable street design can bring economic, health and quality-of-life benefits to New York City. According to T.A., the report, “compiles and analyses the most recent data on the benefits of great streets.  The study reveals outcomes of livable streets projects around the world. According to T.A., the report “finds that street designs that make people comfortable and draw them in are, in fact, the very groundwork for a healthy community and local economy. The study also details the benchmarks of livable streets, including physical activity, better air quality, more social cohesion and increased economic activity; benchmarks that City agencies can use to measure the livability of any given street or neighborhood.”

Download a copy of the report…

Thousands of New Yorkers turned out to participate in the first two installments of Summer Streets, a ciclovía-style event presented by the City of New York. A temporary street closure spanning 90 consecutive blocks, Summer Streets provides a car-free, recreational route between Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge. Along this car-free route, the Department of Transportation and sponsors host art, dance and fitness classes, musical performances and bike-related activities. Many adjacent side streets host citizen-organized activities ranging from double-dutch tournaments to scooter races.
Summer Streets is the culmination of a season of unprecedented pedestrian-oriented street events, spearheaded by community coalitions and Transportation Alternatives, and made possible by City agencies. While raising the profile of public space is a primary goal of Summer Streets, the timing for this event has much to do with the City’s interest in reducing motor vehicle traffic, improving public health through urban design and meeting its own sustainability goals, and bringing us some summer-time fun too.

Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) held its fourth annual Tour de Brooklyn fundraising ride on May 25th. According to T.A.’s StreetBeat, “Close to 3,000 riders celebrated the Brooklyn Bridge’s 125th birthday with a sun-soaked 18-mile bike ride that started in DUMBO, stopped for a snack in Bushwick, sailed through the Navy Yards and finished up at Walt Whitman Park.  It was a perfect day made even better by thousands of smiling faces, hundreds of helpful volunteers, scores of skilled marshals and the beautiful borough of Brooklyn.”

View video from the ride from StreetFilms.org.