Transportation Alternatives

The Mayor's Management Report, an annual summation of how well city agencies are doing their jobs, includes bad news for traffic safety and sustainable streets. In the last fiscal year, traffic fatalities were at their highest level since 2008, and NYPD moving violations summonses were at a 10-year low. Meanwhile, DOT missed its bike lane and bike rack goals for the year.

Manhattan's Fifth and Sixth Avenues are two of the busiest bicycle routes in the city, even without protected bike infrastructure to make cycling appealing to a broader range of New Yorkers. They are also major pedestrian thoroughfares in need of safety upgrades. While DOT's "6½ Avenue" project can help relieve some of the crowding, both avenues devote wide expanses to motor traffic and could use the kind of overhaul that the city has used to improve conditions for walking and biking on other major streets.

A new report from Transportation Alternatives finds that, while NYPD fails to rein in or punish reckless driving, the majority of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are caused by illegal behavior behind the wheel.

The husband of Clara Heyworth, the woman killed by a suspected drunk driver in Fort Greene last summer, filed a lawsuit today against NYPD and called on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to take responsibility for the department's failure to investigate traffic crashes.

A Transportation Alternatives event on Monday will again call attention to NYPD's shoddy crash investigation protocols.

In the midst of a 2004 petition drive and campaign, Transportation Alternatives hired me to produce a mini-film called "The Case for a Car-Free Central Park." It featured interviews with many prominent New Yorkers, like Columbia professor Ken Jackson and author Roberta Brandes Gratz, along with dozens of everyday park-goers testifying about how they felt about cars in the park.

Today is the first day of Bike Month 2012, and Transportation Alternatives has launched a comprehensive web site to make sure you don't miss a thing.

A study released today finds that two out of three motorists speed on Brooklyn's McGuinness Boulevard [PDF], a notorious Greenpoint thoroughfare where locals have for years called on the city to take action to prevent pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths.

The lawsuit filed by the family of Mathieu Lefevre against NYPD could change police procedure in the aftermath of fatal crashes, making it easier for grieving relatives to access crucial information.