Transportation Alternatives

Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, speaking, with Daniel Squadron and Scott Stringer at last year’s rally for Hayley and Diego’s Law. To Squadron’s right are Wendy Cheung, Hayley Ng’s aunt, and Jon Adler, representative for the families of Ng and Diego Martinez. With the state legislative session underway, Albany will soon turn its attention to business … Continued

Spurred by the recent hit-and-run deaths of three pedestrians, Transportation Alternatives led a protest on Sunday calling for new measures to keep unlicensed drivers from getting behind the wheel. On the steps of City Hall, advocates were joined by David Sheppard, fiance of Sonya Powell, and City Council Member Larry Seabrook.

The Department of City Planning proposed new rules last week that should keep sidewalks safer and reduce conflicts between pedestrians and cars. The zoning regs, if approved, would also cut down on the proliferation of "parking pads" -- off-street spaces paved over front yards -- in some parts of the city. Overall, the amendment includes some much-needed measures to keep the pedestrian environment from deteriorating. But not all the news is good: The amendment also creates a new rule, reinforcing parking requirements for residential buildings.

As you may know, Transportation Alternatives put on a red carpet premiere Tuesday night for the "Biking Rules" PSA competition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The contest pitted video entries against each other in two main categories: "Why Biking Rules" and "Street Code."  

The biggest sustainable transportation story in New York right now is how DOT and the MTA plan to design Bus Rapid Transit corridors for the East Side of Manhattan. Will we get world-class avenues that attract more riders to the bus, relieve the jam-packed Lexington subway line, make cycling safer, and enhance the pedestrian environment? If so, the city will improve life for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and set a tremendous precedent in sustainable street design. If not, the standard for BRT corridors will be set low as the city starts rolling out up to a dozen more routes.

Mayor Bloomberg has already shown how much his administration can accomplish in just a few years. Since Janette Sadik-Khan's appointment to head the DOT in 2007, the city has striped hundreds of miles of bike lanes, reclaimed acres of street space for pedestrians and improved bus travel for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. "More of the same" is no longer a dirty phrase when it comes to local transportation policy. During the next four years, the mayor needs to accelerate this progress, and introduce a few key innovations to maximize the value New Yorkers get from their new streets.

Jessie Singer has a great feature in the latest issue of TA's Reclaim magazine (now available online), examining the NYPD's failure to curb dangerous driving. After pushing down violent crime rates so effectively based on data-driven analysis, she asks, why don't police use the same techniques to tame the life-threatening hazards of New York City traffic?

Safe streets advocates are understandably excited by the prospect of a Manhattan district attorney with an interest in holding dangerous drivers accountable for the death and destruction they impose upon the city every day. But few, if any, expect radical change right away. As attendees at Tuesday's legal symposium on vehicular crime learned, even prosecutors who pursue the cause of traffic justice are often stymied by weak laws and courts that tend to be forgiving of motorists who maim and kill.

New York's trusty single-space parking meters are a dying breed. They've served commercial corridors admirably, but they're rapidly giving way to muni-meters (which are much better suited for innovations in curbside pricing, like DOT's PARKSmart program).