Monday’s Headlines: Tonight is School Streets Night

Attention all people who care about school safety: Tonight, Open Plans, the parent company of Streetsblog will host a webinar to introduce its first-ever “School Streets Toolkit,” a handy guide to navigating the tricky rules and guidelines of a city safety program that not too many schools are utilizing.

And it’s sad because kids are much more likely to be injured on their way to school because of drivers. As Jesse Coburn reported last year, there are 57 percent more crashes and 25 percent more injuries per mile on streets near schools than on the city’s other streets. And being struck by a car is the leading cause of injury-related death for New York City children (as Charles Komanoff recently reported).

So why do so few schools participate in the school streets program? For one thing, it’s tough to navigate all the possible roadblocks. Thankfully, the Open Plans toolkit provides:

• A step-by-step guide to the application process.
• Best practices for building a successful application.
• Guidance on collecting relevant data and application materials.
• Advice on how to diversify methods of communication to gain community support and how schools can use to secure and gather resources for their Open Street.

Tonight’s 6 p.m. webinar features Council members Chi Osse, Erik Bottcher, Shekar Krishnan and Lincoln Restler. And it’s FREE, so register here.

In other news from a slow weekend on the livable streets front:

• Like us, the New York Post covered the lawsuit against the NYPD by a man who says he was harassed by officers for making 311 service requests.
• Gig worker shuffle: Subway cleaners got thrown out like the trash, the City reports.
• Meet the city’s oldest cab driver. (NY Post)
• The city turned pavement into a plaza in Brooklyn. (amNY)
• The MTA is under fire for removing the graffiti from a celebrated subway tunnel under Washington Heights. (Gothamist)
• The City looked into Steve Cohen’s casino obsession.
• Finally, from the assignment desk: DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez will join MTA and local elected officials in showing off the completion of what the agency calls “major improvements in bus service at the Pelham Bay Park subway station.” It’s at 10 a.m.