Community Organizations

The Harbor Ring Committee, a coalition working to complete the missing link in a route around New York Harbor with a bicycle and pedestrian path across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, has released a map of the bike route, a 50-mile loop across four boroughs and Hudson County, New Jersey. Meanwhile, advocates are trying to get the MTA to firmly commit to a feasibility study they hope could pave the way for building the bridge path.

Transportation Alternatives has launched a series of surveys asking Citi Bike riders what they think of the bike-share program. The aim is to better inform TA's activism and introduce the advocacy group to bike-share users who may not already be familiar with ways they can help improve cycling in New York.

This morning, Transportation Alternatives released the results of surveys it sent out to mayoral and City Council candidates. While council candidates expressed a wide variety of opinions, mayoral candidates primarily hammered home positions most of them have already discussed during the campaign, while revealing a few new details on their transportation and street safety policies.

In the wake of a string of pedestrian fatalities, more than 100 people gathered on the steps of City Hall this morning at an event organized by Transportation Alternatives to demand that mayoral candidates step up to address street safety.

The 2009 MTA funding package passed by Albany included a plan to increase fares and tolls every other year. The most recent of those fare hikes, implemented in March, increased fares 8.4 percent, with the MTA anticipating another increase in 2015. If this pattern continued for the next decade, fares would rise 50 percent, to $3.75 per ride, according to an analysis by the city's Independent Budget Office requested by NYPIRG's Straphangers Campaign [PDF]. Unless city and state leadership act, fares will drastically outpace the inflation rate, even as crossing the East River bridges and driving to the most congested, transit-rich part of the city remains toll-free.

The Bronx is the most dangerous place for pedestrians age 60 and older in New York City, and Bronx County has the third highest fatality rate for older pedestrians in the region, according to a study by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The report found that people age 60 and up throughout the region are significantly more likely to be killed by motorists while walking than are younger pedestrians.

Beginning next week, Central Park's north loop will be closed to cars for two months, DOT announced today.

The lawyer who spent a good chunk of 2011 deceiving the press and the public about the safety effect of the Prospect Park West bike lane is back in the news.

Transportation Alternatives observed nearly nine in ten Brooklyn motorists breaking the speed limit while compiling data for its new report on dangerous driving [PDF], but enforcement from NYPD remains almost non-existent. In fact, TA says it clocked more drivers speeding in 12 hours than NYPD ticketed in all of 2011. That's why speed cameras are necessary for city streets.