Transportation Alternatives

Following up on its report highlighting NYPD's lack of meaningful traffic enforcement and a street safety forum featuring former police commissioner Bill Bratton, Transportation Alternatives released a report yesterday [PDF] outlining case studies of effective traffic enforcement. The report gives Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his next police commissioner a broad strategy to help achieve de Blasio's stated goal of eliminating traffic fatalities within 10 years.

At a Transportation Alternatives forum this morning on reforming the agency's approach to traffic enforcement, former NYPD commissioner (and current contender for his old job) Bill Bratton said street safety deserves more attention from the police. The former chief was followed by a panel discussion featuring one of the creators of the "broken windows" theory of policing Bratton is credited with executing, who argued that the approach should also be applied to traffic violence.

City Council reps and members of the public spoke unanimously today in support of a bill to lower speed limits to a life-saving 20 miles per hour in neighborhoods citywide. But if the council adopts the measure, it will do so over the objection of DOT, which said the proposal would create conflicts with state law.

DOT is drawing up plans for a dedicated bike lane on the Pulaski Bridge, according to the office of Assembly Member Joe Lentol, and should have a final design ready before the end of the year

In the latest issue of “StreetBeat,” Transportation Alternatives shares the results of the first in a series of online “flash polls” of Citi Bike riders. The polls are intended to gauge how members use the system, and how they’d like to see Citi Bike, and city streets, made better. Over 2,200 people responded to the first poll, TA reports.

Yesterday, Transportation Alternatives released a report [PDF] highlighting the mismatch between what causes fatal and serious crashes, according to NYPD crash reports, and what police choose to prioritize when it comes to traffic enforcement.

A poll released by Transportation Alternatives today [PDF] sheds some new light on how NYC voters feel about street redesigns and automated enforcement when the policies are framed in terms of safety benefits.

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.