Open Letter Urging Next City Budget to Fully Fund NYC Streets Plan

Dear Mayor Eric Adams, NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, Speaker Adrienne Adams, Finance Chair Justin Brannan, and Transportation & Infrastructure Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers:

The NYC Streets Plan is a bold, forward-thinking blueprint to improve the accessibility, equity, and sustainability of our streets. This legislation is what New York City needs if it is to meet its climate goals, achieve Vision Zero, reduce car dependency, and bring reliable transit service to more neighborhoods. However, NYC DOT is in danger of missing the plan’s required benchmarks without dedicated funding from the City of New York to make the Streets Plan a reality.

After years of advocacy from local activists and elected leaders, the previous City Council — with overwhelming support — passed the legislation requiring DOT to create a master plan every five years, with an estimated cost of $1.7 billion over ten years, or $170 million annually. The undersigned 60+ groups urge the Adams administration and City Council to commit this funding in the upcoming budget to meet the legislative mandate of the Streets Plan so its benefits can be brought to communities across the five boroughs. 

As outlined in the legislation, DOT is required to build hundreds of miles of new protected bike and bus lanes, upgrade thousands of bus stops, create 1 million square feet of pedestrian space, and invest in thousands of intersection improvements over the next five years, with annual benchmarks to meet.

These investments are bound to be popular with voters. Recent polling by DOT found that 64 percent of residents support allocating street space to protected bike lanes, and 66 percent support street space for bus lanes. Additional polling conducted by the Siena College Research Institute found similar support, with 68 percent of New York City voters — including majorities in all five boroughs — supporting more protected bike lanes in their neighborhoods and 85 percent of voters supporting improving crosswalk safety. These results had higher support from lower-income New Yorkers than from New Yorkers who make over $100,ooo annually. The Streets Plan is a key way to deliver investments to communities that have long been underserved by the City of New York.

Today, New York City’s buses are the slowest in the nation, and the New Yorkers who could most benefit from quicker, more affordable commutes, and access to more jobs are often relegated to buses trapped behind car traffic. Dedicated bus lanes and busways would get buses out of traffic, moving more people more quickly to jobs, schools, and other transit connections.

With the Streets Plan’s investments in protected bus lanes, we can improve the efficiency of our buses and attract new riders. For example, converting driving and parking lanes on 14th Street in Manhattan into the 14th Street busway brought a 47 percent reduction in bus travel time and a 17 percent increase in ridership in just two months, and adding bus lanes on the M60 bus line in Manhattan reduced travel times by 36 percent — with no increase in congestion for car drivers.

When both bus and protected bike lanes were added to First and Second Avenues in Manhattan, bus speeds improved by 18 percent. The benefits were immense for pedestrians and cyclists, too. Traffic injuries fell by 21 percent while the corridors saw a 177 percent increase in cycling. Funding the Streets Plan will ensure these benefits are extended to neighborhoods in every borough, and is more important than ever as deadly traffic violence continues to rise on the heels of the deadliest year on our streets since 2013. 

With a requirement to create 1 million square feet of pedestrian space, the Streets Plan will expand plazas and open space to all corners of the city. This pedestrian space will be transformative in parts of the city with less access to parks and green space. In New York City, communities of color, including in the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn, are more likely to live in neighborhoods that are prone to extreme temperatures. But these deadly temperatures decline in neighborhoods with more green space. Converting asphalt to green space and planting more trees can directly reduce the urban heat island effect.

To meet our climate goals, our city must incentivize affordable, sustainable, and healthy forms of transportation. With one car emitting about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, and transportation being the second-highest cause of emissions in New York City, reducing driving is also key to reducing air pollution and childhood asthma. Our city has some of the highest rates of hospitalizations and deaths from asthma, with Black New Yorkers and Latinos accounting for more than 80 percent of the cases. But Black and brown communities have received inequitable investments in infrastructure that encourage zero-emission transportation, such as protected bike lanes. Equitable investments from the Streets Plan will help shift New Yorkers to more sustainable transportation. 

To become a more accessible city, our city must also create car-free open spaces so people who use wheelchairs and mobility devices can move around without competing for scraps of space on our sidewalks and without fear of traffic violence. With a requirement to install or upgrade pedestrian ramps at 3,000 intersection corners, the Streets Plan will make moving around the city easier for countless New Yorkers. The Streets Plan also requires the installation of accessible pedestrian signals at 500 intersections a year that will help New Yorkers with limited vision cross the street safely. 

These are just some of the benefits the Streets Plan would bring. The investments required by the plan also align with NYC 25x25, supported by more than 200 local organizations, which aims to reclaim space from cars to build streets for people and create a fairer, more sustainable city.

To do all of this, the NYC Streets Plan needs dedicated funding in the city budget. Our opportunity to improve the efficiency and equity of our streets cannot be unfunded. We look forward to working with you to ensure the Streets Plan receives the necessary funding to be implemented and we urge you to include funding of at least $170 million annually for the NYC Streets Plan in the Fiscal Year 2023 budget.

Thank you,

Transportation Alternatives

Riders Alliance

350 NYC

American Institute of Architects New York

BRAKES

BetaNYC

Bicycle Film Festival

Bike Hudson County

Bike JC

Bike New York

Bike South Brooklyn

Bronx Health REACH 

Bronx Progressives

Brooklyn Greenway Initiative

Brooklyn Immigrant Community Support

Brooklyn Spoke

BuroHappold

The Center for Zero Waste Design

CHEKPEDS 

CNU NYC (Congress for the New Urbanism)

Court Square Civic Association

Design Trust for Public Space

Electric Avenue

Families for Safe Streets

Financial District Neighborhood Association

Four Freedoms Democratic Club

Friends of Cooper Park

Gehl

Green Map System

Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce

Institute for Transportation & Development Policy

The Harbor Ring Committee 

Harlem Run

Harlem Zero Waste Initiative

Humanos LLC

Kidical Mass NYC

Lime

Lyft/Citi Bike

Lower East Side Ecology Center

Major Taylor Iron Riders Cycling Club

Make Brooklyn Safer

Marvel

Mechanical Gardens Bike Coop

Metro Transportation Management & Design, Inc.

Mijksenaar USA

Nancercize

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest

NY League of Conservation Voters

NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign

North Brooklyn Neighbors

Numina

Open Plans

Pakistani American Youth Society, Inc

Project for Public Spaces

Pure Strength NYC

Redbeard Bikes

Regional Plan Association

Right Of Way NYC

RISE (Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability & Equity)

RiseBoro Community Partnership

Sixth Street Community Center

StreetsPAC

Street Plans

Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Trust for Public Land

The Urban Conga 

WE Bike NYC

Worldview Films

WXY Architecture + Urban Design