How restorative justice can amplify the voices of those affected by traffic violence and help break the cycle of dangerous behaviors in our communities.
“I was on my bicycle stopped at a traffic light in Bay Ridge, waiting for the light to turn green, when a black SUV rounded the corner on the wrong side of the street. It hit me and broke my leg into five pieces,” Jeffrey Heller recounted.
While he has thankfully overcome the worst of his physical injuries, Heller has found true healing more elusive.
“As a victim, you want the perpetrator to realize what they…
Results are a wake-up call to 2021 candidates: Reimagining streets isn’t just good policy, it’s good politics too.
Taken together, streets are the largest public space in New York City, adding up to an acreage nearly twice the size of the Bronx. More than three-quarters of that streetscape is dedicated to moving and storing vehicles. But for all the space given over to cars, only a minority of New Yorkers own one, and less than one in three trips citywide involve a car. This inequity is stark. The status quo must end.
A new poll, commissioned by Transportation Alternatives and…
30 Percent of New York Voters Have Been Injured in a Traffic Crash; 70 Percent Know Someone Who Has Been Injured Or Killed
In New York City, a person is killed in a traffic crash every 36 hours. These are pedestrians trying to cross unsafe streets, drivers and motorcyclists navigating urban avenues built to encourage speeding, and cyclists relying on bike lanes that are unprotected, disconnected, or entirely missing.
The victims of traffic violence are parents, children, spouses, and elders. They are our neighbors, our friends, our teachers and nurses, and the workers who deliver our food. …
Micromobility For Tomorrow and Today
Why Shared Bikes, Scooters, and E-Bikes Are the Future of Cities
A Partner Post from our friends at Spin
The case for micromobility is made every day in cities across America by countless people choosing to ride scooters, bikes, and e-bikes. It is high-time for city streets to evolve to support the demand for more diverse mobility options.
At the turn of the 20th Century, as cars became a more intrinsic part of convenience and capitalism, streets were taken over by larger and larger vehicles — not the communal spaces for people they once were.
2020 was hard. But we learned a few things.
We are at the end of an unprecedented and impossibly trying year. As we cope with all those we have lost and prepare for an unstable future in New York City, at Transportation Alternatives, we wanted to try and add some optimism to this year’s end. Even in the darkness, we see a few reasons for hope on our streets.
Chief among our reasons for hope is what the coronavirus pandemic has revealed — both in the fragility of our transportation network and in the creativity we can muster to support our neighbors and our recovery.
It is not all…
This is the story of how a group of families who lost loved ones in traffic crashes fought to change the speed limit in New York City, and won
Families for Safe Streets is an advocacy organization made up of crash survivors and loved ones of people killed in traffic, founded in New York City. Six years ago today, with the help of activists and organizers from Transportation Alternatives, Families for Safe Streets convinced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to sign into law a bill that would reduce the New York City speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour. Backed by research that proves the fatality rate of crashes directly corresponds to vehicle speeds, their campaign was as sensible as it was arduous.
As the world adopts smart lights, smart homes, smartphones, and smart cars, the real question we need to ask is this: Today’s cities are “smarter” than ever, but are they safer?
By Dave Braunstein
Safer cities are often associated with crime rates, but this fails to include an integral aspect of public health and safety: our roads. Transportation is an overlooked but important determinant of how safe a city is. Road safety is not just limited to car crashes and aggressive driving but includes near-misses, as well as motorcycle, bicyclist, and pedestrian collisions that cost life and limb and billions of dollars in medical care, property damage, and lawsuits each year. In the United States alone, traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in people aged 54 and below. To…
Car Ad Executive Turned Bike Advocate Tells All
By Tom Flood
For many years, I worked in the automotive sector of the advertising industry. Then, I started riding a bike with my kids to school and finally stopped drinking the car culture Kool-Aid.
But what I learned making and selling car ads has value. The Vision Zero movement could learn a lot from the marketing practices of the auto industry. As we seek to transform streets and drive traffic deaths down to zero, we can take cues from how cars are sold.
Car Ads Are Targeted
Car ads arrive on our screens in a non-stop onslaught. These messages are impossible to avoid…
The good news is that the number of people killed inside cars is going down. The bad news is that the number of people killed while walking and biking is skyrocketing.
By Emiko Atherton and Beth Osborne
In the past decade, the number of people killed inside cars has plummeted, while the number of people struck and killed while walking increased by 35 percent. Though overall roadway fatalities decreased slightly in 2017, the last two years on record (2016 and 2017) were the most deadly years for people killed by drivers while walking since 1990. Between 2008 and 2017, 49,340 people — 13 people per day, or one person every hour and 46 minutes — were killed while just walking on streets all across the United States. It’s the equivalent of…
Inside the Car-free Livability Program that transformed Norway’s capital
By Terje Elvaas
Putting people first makes cities work better for everyone. It is not an easy task, but Oslo, the capital of Norway, has done important work to show that it is possible. In 2019, Oslo achieved Vision Zero. Reaching that goal was bigger than just saving lives — Oslo had to build a happy, healthy, attractive city. While disagreement and conflict are a part of the story, there is also a lot of common ground to be found. Working together is the only way to make that a Vision Zero a reality.
Make The Streets Where You Meet People
“Our main objective is to give…
TransAlt
Transportation Alternatives is your advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit in New York City. We stand up for #VisionZero & #BikeNYC.
