Vision Zero

Electeds and advocates called for changes at the MTA and for Mayor de Blasio to focus street safety resources on northern Brooklyn after another pedestrian was killed by a bus driver this weekend.

At the first of what is sure to be many forums on Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero agenda, nearly 100 residents, advocates, city officials and elected representatives gathered in Manhattan last night to talk about what implementing the Vision Zero Action Plan will look like, including immediate actions from the city and longer-term efforts at the state level.

Yesterday's four-hour City Council hearing on Vision Zero featured testimony from families of traffic violence victims, discussion of NYPD's enforcement priorities, and Cy Vance's office weighing in on how district attorneys should be involved in traffic justice. But not all of the testimony fit neatly into a theme or narrative.

A marathon City Council hearing elicited some new details about Mayor Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero agenda and brought out the raw emotion of New Yorkers mourning loved ones killed on city streets.

Nearly 100 people gathered yesterday afternoon on the steps of City Hall to launch Families for Safe Streets, a group of New Yorkers who have lost loved ones to traffic violence. Families for Safe Streets are demanding an accelerated timetable for the Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities within a decade.

John Petro is a policy analyst for New York City affairs and the co-author of "Vision Zero: How Safer Streets in New York City Can Save More Than 100 Lives a Year."

Bhairavi Desai may not believe speeding by cab drivers is a problem in NYC, but for someone whose job is to look out for cabbies' best interests, there should be a lot to like about Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero proposals.

At PS 75 on the Upper West Side today, just blocks from where 9-year-old Cooper Stock was struck and killed by a turning taxi driver last month, Mayor de Blasio released the blueprint [PDF] for how his administration will achieve Vision Zero, its goal of eliminating traffic deaths within a decade.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and several of his agency commissioners released the administration's Vision Zero report at a school on West End Avenue this afternoon. Streetsblog's Stephen Miller will have more from the mayor's event later today. In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of the major takeaways from the report [PDF], which outlines both an ambitious multi-agency approach to reducing traffic violence that City Hall can pursue on its own, and a legislative agenda that asks Albany to let the city control its speed limits and traffic enforcement methods.