Seven Steps to Save Our Health, Our Safety, Our Environment, and Our Economy by Making Better Use of New York City’s Streets
Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets’ Policy Platform for New York City Mayor-Elect Eric Adams
Introduction
As Mayor-elect Adams explains in his transportation platform, Moving Forward Together, New Yorkers need and deserve more transportation choices and a better use of public space. With both, we can all live longer, better, and more prosperous lives in a more equitable, healthy, and resilient city.
One pathway to reach these goals, as highlighted by the mayor-elect, is Transportation Alternatives’ NYC 25x25, which challenges New York City’s leaders to convert 25 percent of car space into space for people by 2025. This vision is endorsed by a coalition of more than 200 economic, educational, environmental, disability rights, labor, and public health organizations across New York City. With the reprioritization of street space laid out in NYC 25x25, every street can be a pathway to opportunity, and every New Yorker can live within a five-minute walk (about one quarter-mile) of a car-free bus lane, a protected bike lane, bike share, and new green open space. We are honored and grateful for Mayor-elect Adams’ endorsement of NYC 25x25.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams, together with the New York City Council and New York State legislature, will govern the City of New York in a moment of unprecedented challenges. New York City is struggling under, among other things, an ongoing pandemic, budget shortfalls, longstanding racial and economic inequities, rising traffic violence, increasing congestion and car-ownership, and the existential threat of climate change.
NYC 25x25 seeks to address these challenges by viewing our asphalt as an asset. Mayor-elect Adams will soon control the more than 6,000 miles of roads and more than three million free on-street parking spaces in New York City. These are assets that can and should serve the needs of far more New Yorkers than the minority who own cars. Mayor-elect Adams, together with the City Council and State legislature, can immediately improve the lives and well-being of every New Yorker, including drivers, by transforming car-filled streets into space for people — implementing innovative new ideas and scaling citywide the many successful pilot projects already making life better in select corners of New York City.
Seven Steps to Save Our Health, Our Safety, Our Environment, and Our Economy by Making Better Use of New York City’s Streets adds practical and specific policy proposals to the NYC 25x25 vision, marking seven waypoints on the road to converting 25 percent of car space into space for people by 2025.
Seven Steps to Save Our Health, Our Safety, Our Environment, and Our Economy by Making Better Use of New York City’s Streets
Reducing traffic violence, congestion, and the disastrous public health effects of car traffic on our city starts with shifting New Yorkers to healthy, green alternatives and equitable, safe, and sustainable modes of transportation, such as biking, walking, and public transit. Today, 75 percent of our street space is devoted to driving and private car storage even though cars are the least efficient use of street space, car owners are a minority of New Yorkers, and car drivers are an even smaller minority of commuters. By shifting our priorities, both in policy and in the practice of how we divide our roads, we can convert car space into space for people and improve the lives of all New Yorkers, including drivers.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Streets For Students, Not Speeders: Create “School Streets” by closing streets to car traffic adjacent to every New York City school, making drop-off and pick-up safer, encouraging parents and students to walk, bike, or take public transit to school, creating a bubble of cleaner air outside schools, and giving every school-age child in New York City access to new and safe public space for active play and outdoor learning.
Repeal Robert Moses: Recapture land lost to Robert Moses-era highway projects and ensure that this reclaimed land is given back to people as open space and public transportation infrastructure, as laid out in the mayor-elect’s Moving Forward Together plan. Teardown or repurpose aging highways instead of repairing or replacing them with new infrastructure designed for cars.
Standard Space for Strolling: Instruct the Department of Transportation to set and institute a minimum sidewalk width of eight feet, tied to zoning, and fund a program that widens existing sidewalks that fail to meet this minimum.
Parking Spot Swaps for Straphangers: Replace the parking spots closest to every subway station with a use of space more useful to the 99 percent of transit riders who walk or bike to their station, such as wider sidewalks, larger bus shelters, secure bike parking, bike share access, benches, trees, and public restrooms.
Clear the Corners: Make it safer to cross the street with universal daylighting of intersections, using physical infrastructure, such as curb extensions, benches, planters, Citi Bike stations, and bike parking, to replace parking spaces at every intersection, adding visibility and slowing vehicle turning speeds.
Stink Off the Sidewalk: Move trash collection off of the sidewalk and into on-street containers located at the curb, encouraging walking, easing accessibility, and controlling pests.
Car-Free Way to Be: Convert 1,000 (out of 19,000) lane miles into permanent Open Streets, which use traffic calming infrastructure to discourage driving and slow vehicle speeds, and which create expansive pedestrian-only zones in both the central business districts of every borough and on low-traffic streets in every neighborhood.
Low Traffic, High Happiness: Transform New York City’s Neighborhood Slow Zone program into a Low-Traffic Neighborhood program, modeled on the success of a similar program in London, by demarcating lower-traffic neighborhoods and redesigning streets to encourage healthy and sustainable modes of transportation, “self-enforce” slower speeds, and divert cut-through traffic to arterial streets.
Super Blocks for Super Safety: Pilot two “Super Blocks” in each borough, modeled on the success of a similar program in Barcelona, by using the grid to New York City’s advantage, redirecting cars and commercial vehicles to streets along the perimeter of each Super Block but allowing local residents to drive their cars at reduced speeds and park in designated areas, and allowing deliveries at less-congested times.
Playgrounds from Pavement to Keep Families in NYC: Use low-traffic streets to solve the playground desert problem by turning through-streets into cul-de-sacs and creating midblock playgrounds, giving families the playspace required to make staying in New York City make sense.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Commit to a goal of every New Yorker living within a five-minute walk (or one quarter-mile) of a car-free protected bus lane, a protected bike lane, and public green space; within a block of a bike parking space; and within the access area of a public bike share station.
Audit how street and sidewalk square footage is currently divided among people using different modes — how much space is provided for walking, biking, riding the bus, and driving cars and trucks. Instruct the Department of Transportation to use this audit to develop a plan to convert car space into more equitable space for people, so that every New Yorker can live within one quarter-mile of a car-free protected bus lane, a protected bike lane, and public green space; a block from a bike parking space; and within the access area of a public bike share station by 2025.
Launch a pilot to remove parking spots around the subway station in each borough with the highest foot traffic.
Our car dependence is the cause of an underlying unfairness that permeates New York City. This unfairness appears in racially and economically unequal outcomes in public health, traffic violence, and commute times. From asthma rates, to access to green space, to how the police enforce traffic laws, nothing about streets filled with car traffic affects New Yorkers in an equal way. Car-centric streets and highway-divided neighborhoods are more common in low-income neighborhoods and non-white neighborhoods. The City of New York has historically focused the vast majority of its budget for improving streets, via bike lanes, bus lanes, public plazas, and bike share access, in predominantly high-income and white neighborhoods. Health outcomes, active living access, and transportation efficiency all follow suit. Unfairness can also be seen in the very share of streets: while most New Yorkers are not car owners, most street space is given over to car owners. Even in communities where most New Yorkers walk or take the bus, pedestrian and bus space is secondary to space given to cars. Correcting these intersecting inequalities starts with reconsidering how we design our streets.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Move People Not Cars: On major arterial streets, charge the Department of Transportation with a mandate for spatial reallocation in all street redesigns, counting pedestrians, bus riders, car passengers, and cyclists, and allocating street space based on goals for mode-shift, climate resilience, and traffic-related harm reduction. Create a “People Level of Service” policy that prioritizes street space based on moving people, not cars, and that supports our mode shift goals. The busway, bus lane, and bike network goals in the Moving Forward Together plan are an important component of this spatial reallocation.
Finish the Job: Commit all necessary funding in the mayor’s executive budget to fully implement the Streets Master Plan, as required by law. Increase the staff of the Department of Transportation to meet the measure of this legislation.
Legalize Walking: Decriminalize jaywalking and repeal loitering laws, which are often used by police officers as a tool for racist harrassment for Black and Latino New Yorkers.
Clear the Air: Set goals to reduce asthma diagnoses, asthma hospitalizations, asthma-related school absence in the next four years, and develop traffic reduction plans to improve air quality in the neighborhoods with the highest asthma rates.
Lose the Loud: Set up decibel meters at 100 additional locations citywide and track noise pollution in the Mayor’s Management Report, with goals for noise pollution reduction focused on the low-income neighborhoods and non-white neighborhoods where sleep disturbances are more common. Instruct the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and the Taxi and Limousine Commission to track and report honking per mile traveled by the city fleet, taxis, and for-hire vehicles in the Mayor’s Management Report.
Plow for the People: Instruct the Department of Sanitation to clear snow from sidewalks, and around bus stops and subways, bus lanes, and bike lanes before car lanes, and fund the purchase of smaller-scale snow removal equipment, such as “multi-hogs.”
Pavement to Planting: Instruct the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Transportation, and the Parks Department to designate “Tree Cover Priority Districts” where asthma rates, air pollution, and summer surface-level temperatures are highest, and fund a tree planting campaign that fills all remaining tree pits and replaces 10 percent of all parking spots with trees in these areas.
High-Viz Means We Live: Mandate that all newly purchased trucks in the New York City fleet be high-visibility models by 2025, beginning with a pilot of 100 vehicles in the next year. By the same deadline, retrofit all existing vehicles to high-visibility standards with backup cameras and mirrors that are both larger and more in number. Immediately require that any new City contracts include a clause mandating that companies only use high-visibility trucks.
Measure What Matters: Expand the data collected in the Mayor’s Management Report to include more metrics that benefit people, and not cars, such as the percentage of bike lanes painted green, bus lanes painted red, average number of days until bus and bike lane bollards are replaced, and average number of days until tree requests are fulfilled, all broken out by borough, neighborhood, and racial and economic make-up of the areas served.
Right-Size Fines: Work with the New York State legislature to create an income graduated fine program for all parking and traffic-related offenses and convert what fines the City can control to income-based fines. Expand the recently passed Driver’s License Suspension Reform Act so that all parking and traffic violations are income-based.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams' First 100 Days
Audit annually traffic-related harm, including reporting on asthma rates and hospitalizations, green space access, traffic violence, air quality, and the effects of congestion by borough and neighborhood based on racial and economic make-up.
Commit in that annual report to reductions in all harmful metrics and equalization efforts to improve access to healthful metrics.
Pilot an air quality improvement program specifically related to reducing car-related emissions in the neighborhoods in each borough with the worst air quality and asthma rates, starting with a pilot program that outfits children’s backpacks with air quality sensors to measure pollution on their trips to school.
For decades, the City of New York has tried to reduce traffic crashes, asthma, and congestion, and to improve bus speeds, air quality, and public space. The reason that the City of New York has made little progress towards these goals, and in some cases, gone backwards, is that we fail to connect the dots between these many problems and the source of harm: cars. To improve public health, to make bus commutes efficient, and to save lives, we must reduce the number of New Yorkers who use cars and the number of cars that enter New York City daily. By discouraging driving and incentivizing people to choose quick and easy alternatives to driving, we can help all New Yorkers, including those who need to drive. When all New Yorkers drive less, those who must drive — essential workers, delivery workers, taxi drivers, people who are disabled or ill, or contractors who commute with heavy equipment — will benefit from quicker and less onerous time on the road.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Begin with a Baseline: Start tracking the car-related behavior of New Yorkers in the Mayor’s Management Report, including the number of New Yorkers who own cars, their vehicle-miles-traveled, and the number of New Yorkers who shift from driving to a more sustainable mode. Set immediate goals for these metrics, marking the annual desired decline in car-ownership and driving, and rise in mode shift.
Count Your Miles: Require all city agencies to lower drive-to-work rates and release an annual report tracking each agency’s progress, consistent with the Moving Forward Together plan’s stated goal of reducing placard abuse.
Go After the Big Guys: Convert vehicle-use taxes for passengers to a weight-based system, consistent with the majority of counties in New York state, reflecting the greater impact of heavier cars on road surfaces, crash fatality rates, and carbon emissions. This would raise an estimated $36 million, according to a 2018 analysis by the New York City Independent Budget Office.
Rid the Parking Min: Require a 10 percent reduction in free on-street parking spots annually, and repeal the burdensome minimum parking requirement rules, which increase costs for developers, renters, and home buyers, and which are a top contributing factor for the purchase of new vehicles.
Make it Metered: Use demand-based metering to meter 25 percent of New York City’s three million free parking spaces, starting with all spaces immediately outside the Congestion Pricing zone and in New York City’s wealthiest commercial corridors. Similar efforts have been shown to decrease parking search times, citations, double parking, congestion, vehicle miles traveled, and emissions, and to increase public transit speeds and activity at local businesses.
Clear the Car Clutter: Allow for revocation of any business license that repeatedly illegally parks cars in the public way, such as on sidewalks, in crosswalks, or in bike lanes, a common and extremely dangerous practice.
Focus on the Fleet: Start tracking the use of the City fleet in the Mayor's Management Report, including the number of miles traveled by the City fleet and the number of City employees shifted to more sustainable modes while on the clock. Set immediate goals for these metrics, marking the annual desired decline in miles traveled by the City fleet and rise in mode shift.
Root Out the Rot: Crack down on car registration and insurance fraud, which unfairly increases costs for those following the law, diverts fees out-of-state, creates more work for state and local agencies to summons drivers, and prevents the City from getting dangerous drivers off our streets.
Sweeten the Deal: Encourage passage of the Transportation Benefits Equity Proposal in the City Council, which could also provide free Citi Bike memberships to all City employees who forgo driving to work.
Unlock the Grid for All: Ensure that congestion pricing is instituted with no additional carve outs.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Audit the financial costs of car-ownership to the City of New York, including the cost of road repair, property damage, and tort-related costs.
Commit to increasing mode shift to sustainable means of transportation and reducing residential car ownership, City fleet size, and vehicle miles traveled on city streets with annual benchmarks, starting with lowering residential car ownership to at least 2011 levels (about 200,000 fewer cars in New York City) and shrinking the City fleet by 25 percent over the next four years.
Pilot a “cash-out” benefit program for City employees who do not drive to work.
No matter where one stands on the role of armed police officers in the enforcement of traffic laws, it is undeniable that a police officer simply cannot catch every traffic violation. It is also true that, too often, routine police traffic stops can turn violent or deadly. For these reasons, we should invest in streets that “self-enforce.” The combination of automated enforcement and traffic calming infrastructure is more effective at controlling reckless driving 24 hours a day, catching violators, and reducing the risk of bias or harm. A majority of New Yorkers prefer camera enforcement to police enforcement and the data on the effectiveness of “self-enforcing” streets is undeniable: traffic-calming redesigns reduce speeding, crashes, injuries, and deaths in an unbiased and 24/7 way that’s unmatched by armed police enforcement.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Rebalance Our Streets: Require the Department of Transportation to add permanent traffic-calming infrastructure on the most dangerous residential streets, including the use of bulbouts, chicanes, raised crosswalks, mid-block crosswalks, sidewalk widening, and swapping parking for bioswales, and to report to the public on the degree and effectiveness of self-enforcement gained by the citywide use of each intervention type.
Let the People Lead: Install universal “Leading Pedestrian Intervals,” expanding the massively successful pedestrian-crossing prioritization program at every intersection in New York City.
Build Better Barriers: Use immovable and inflexible bollards to protect bike and bus lanes to prevent, rather than simply discourage, drivers from traveling in and blocking these lanes.
Disarm Traffic Enforcement: End armed NYPD traffic enforcement, creating an unarmed safety enforcement wing of the Department of Transportation and dramatically expanding the capacity of New York City’s Traffic Enforcement Agents, and redirecting funding to follow suit, so that the enforcement of moving violations is separated from armed policing.
Ditch Dangerous Driving: Give teeth to the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program, pushing the City Council to amend the law back to the original language of the bill, lowering the threshold for an enforcement response to receiving five automated red light camera or speed camera summonses in any 12-month period, as well as requiring the booting, impounding, or seizure of the offending vehicle, and creating a penalty for repeat offenders who have already taken the safety course.
Red Lights, Cameras, Action: Lobby the State Legislature to increase the percentage of intersections with red light cameras from one percent to 10 percent by 2025.
Boot the Bus Blockers: Expand the number of bus lane cameras to all bus routes with bus lanes.
Slow It Down: Advocate for the New York State legislature to pass Sammy’s Law, empowering New York City to control its own speed limit and granting the ability to lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour, an idea that most New Yorkers support.
Keep It Automated, Keep It Safe: Advocate for the New York State legislature to pass legislation expanding automated speed safety and bus lanes cameras, and authorizing the use of new automated enforcement cameras to protect school buses letting off children, crosswalks, and bike lanes, including “failure to yield” cameras that protect pedestrians in the crosswalk and “blocking the box” cameras that deter motor vehicles from clogging intersections.
Eyes on the Street: Lobby for the City Council to pass a law permitting civilian reporting and enforcement of illegal parking on sidewalks and in bus and bike lanes.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Pilot new safety technology in select locations around New York City, including failure to yield, blocking the box, school bus passing, and bike lane enforcement cameras, and “self-enforcing” traffic-calming infrastructure on the five most dangerous residential streets in each borough.
Audit the effectiveness of the current red light, busway, and bus lane camera enforcement programs and calculate the potential safety benefits of their expansion.
Commit to the expansion of these programs alongside the automated speed camera program expansion effort underway in the New York State legislature.
Vision Zero is guided by the belief that nothing can be more important in the design of our roads than protecting human life — not commerce, not moving traffic, not the ire of a New Yorker who once got to store their car for free on a public street and no longer can. Vision Zero is also meant to be grounded in a “Safe Systems” approach — the idea that to prevent injuries and deaths on our roads, we must employ a variety of tactics that reduce harm. This is why Vision Zero traditionally prizes engineering and road design over enforcement and education. A protected bike lane reduces the potential harm of a crash, as does a traffic-calming chicane, as does the presence of an automated enforcement camera, and these systems work in tandem to create safety. While these guiding beliefs and grounding approaches were present when Vision Zero began in New York City, in implementation, these all-important ideas have fallen to the wayside — which is why early Vision Zero gains have been all but lost in recent years. To scale the successes of Vision Zero, we should elevate the Department of Transportation as the City’s Vision Zero agency leader, and provide the funding and political will to match a mandate of prioritizing the protection of human life above all else.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Time Crisis: Immediately declare traffic violence an epidemic and a public health crisis, and instruct all city agencies to report on how each can contribute to reaching Vision Zero.
Recommit to Real Change: Instruct the Department of Transportation to treat the Vision Zero Street Design Checklist as a mandate, not a suggestion, for major redesigns on all arterial streets. This will prevent half-hearted efforts like the Vision Zero Great Streets program, which claimed to make Atlantic Avenue into a safe street, for example, but actually did very little, leaving the street dangerous and resulting in the killing of Dyral Brown, Jose Ramos, and Leonard Mitchell, all on the same street in a period less than five months.
Set the Standard: Launch the first U.S. program for speed governors (also known as Intelligent Speed Assistance) on all City vehicles, guaranteeing that the City sets the example. With such leadership, the City of New York has the ability to save lives while changing the industry and lowering costs of safety infrastructure nationwide, as seen with New York City’s leadership on truck side guards.
Let the Lights Lead Speed: Re-time all remaining traffic signals on arterial streets to the speed limit to stop speeding before it occurs.
Take Away the Keys: In addition to focusing on placard abuse as outlined in the Moving Forward Together plan, mandate automatic suspension of any City employee involved in a fatal crash on the job until the investigation is over. Automatically suspend City employees who get more than five automated speed or red light summonses in a six-month period in a City fleet vehicle. Include a similar clause in all City contracts for professional drivers with private companies, both suspending the driver from City work and fining the company when exceeding five automated tickets in a six-month period.
Ban the Big Guys: Enforce current laws banning oversized and overweight trucks, using automated technology, such as weigh-in-motion sensors, whenever possible. This will make streets safer, because overweight trucks have reduced stability and longer braking distances, and increase the life of pavement by a significant degree. Weigh-in-motion sensors on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway have found trucks that weigh 170,000 pounds, more than double the federal legal guidelines and posted signage.
Switch to Two Wheels: Create incentives for last-mile delivery companies to transition deliveries by cargo e-bikes, which is important for local small businesses, will reduce congestion and pollution, increase safety, and deliver packages up to 60 percent faster. Ensure that all future bike lanes are wide enough to comfortably accommodate such bikes.
Get on the (State) Level: Work with the New York State legislature to pass the Crash Victims Rights and Safety Act, lowering New York City’s speed limit, expanding New York City’s speed camera program, requiring pedestrian safety ratings on all vehicles sold, and cementing the rights of crash victims.
Lose the Privilege: Ask the New York State legislature to allow license suspensions for drivers who rack up multiple automated enforcement summonses in a six-month period, targeting the most egregious offenders by removing driving privileges and thus the opportunity to cause harm.
More Than Thoughts and Prayers: Visit the site of every fatal pedestrian and cyclist crash during your administration with the press in tow, and require the Department of Transportation to make an engineering change at the site within one year. Commit to building a memorial to New Yorkers lost in traffic crashes.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Audit all Vision Zero efforts so far, asking agencies for data-driven demonstrable markers of effectiveness.
Launch a reboot of Vision Zero that focuses on re-engineering streets over enforcement or education, elevating the role of traffic engineers in saving lives and deprioritizing armed traffic enforcement and the printing of educational materials, by naming the five most dangerous corridors in every borough to redesign with true Vision Zero tenets in mind.
Commit to transitioning Vision Zero agencies budgets to match these priorities.
Bus riders have substantially lower median incomes than those of subway riders or New Yorkers overall, are less likely to have a bachelor’s degree, more likely to be a single parent, more likely to be foreign-born, more likely to be a person of color, and more likely to have a child at home. And these New Yorkers suffer from the slowest bus system in America. One reason for this is that the budget of the Department of Transportation is extraordinarily imbalanced toward serving car drivers, who on a whole are wealthier, more educated, and actively harming the city with their transportation choices. If we put bus riders first, in our budgets and on our agendas, we can improve the quality of life of bus riders and improve the efficiency of streets as a whole. Case in point: A single car lane on an urban street can move, at most, 1,600 people in cars an hour; a car-free bus lane can move 8,000 people an hour; a busway on a car-free street can move 25,000 people an hour in each direction.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Buses for All: Announce a commitment to every New Yorker having access to a car-free, camera-protected bus lane, and instruct the Department of Transportation to draw up a plan for car-free bus lanes accessible within a quarter-mile of every New York City residence. Set a minimum length of one-mile for all car-free, protected bus lanes
Go for Gold: Create a marquee “Bus Rapid Transit” system that addresses transit deserts, as laid out in the Moving Forward Together plan and seizing on the opportunity for New York City to host the first “Gold Standard” BRT system in the U.S.
Lose the Logjam: Convert on-street curbside parking nearest to unprotected bike and bus lanes into truck loading zones to prevent illegal parking blocking these lanes. Coordinate a multi-agency, City Hall-lead citywide curb management strategy team that tracks city curb use, reports data on revenue and proper and improper curb use, and proposes data-driven policies for curb management which are applied holistically, instead of piecemeal and reactively, on similar streets citywide.
Tackle the Top Ten: Build a car-free, camera-enforced busway on the ten bus routes that would most benefit, as measured by ridership and slow speeds.
Move Them Along: Accelerate all existing bus route projects that have already been presented to Community Boards.
Go All In: Pledge to a standard design for all bus lanes, including red painted lanes and camera-enforcement, bringing all existing bus lanes in line with this standard and requiring all new bus lanes to meet this standard. Convert all bus lanes to 24/7 operation, making commuting fair and efficient for essential workers who labor in off-hours and recognizing shifts in travel patterns citywide.
Bring the Speed: Add bus bulbs to the busiest bus stops and slowest bus routes, and lobby the MTA to enact all-door boarding, in order to improve bus speeds.
Build A Better Bus Stop: Require and fund bus shelters and benches at all bus stops. This will especially benefit non-Manhattan and non-white transit riders, as nearly all bus shelters are in Manhattan, and are placed based only on advertising profit, not where where the most riders board.
Set the Bar High: Require that Department of Transportation funding reflect our climate change goals and make mode shift a requisite goal for the agency.
MTA: Make Them Accessible: Ask the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to install bike racks on bus lines in transit deserts, such as Southeastern Queens and the North Bronx, and all express buses.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Launch an audit of bus speeds and bus commute times, all broken out by borough, neighborhood, and racial and economic make-up of the areas served.
Commit to create car-free 24/7 protected bus lanes on the five slowest bus routes in every borough and to transform all existing bus lanes into 24/7 protected bus lanes.
At the single busiest bus stop in each borough, design and pilot one world-class bus waiting area that shows respect for bus commuters by swapping parking spaces for public restrooms, benches, trees, bike parking, and bike share access for multimodal commutes.
Biking is good for New York. Every person on a bike is occupying the smallest possible footprint on crowded city streets. Each is getting the exercise that is critical to improving the health of the city overall. And every person who rides a bike is a person not taking up space on crowded buses or subways. More people on bikes means less congestion, less heart disease, less diabetes, and more clean air. Biking even helps save money, in any one individual’s transportation costs and to the City, in wear and tear on the roads. Everything that we can do to encourage biking is good for the health of the city.
Policies to Enact to Reach This Goal
Lay Down the Lanes: Announce a commitment to every New Yorker having access to a protected bike lane, and instruct the Department of Transportation to draw up a plan for protected bike lanes accessible within a quarter-mile of every New York City residence.
Walk the Line: Pledge to a standard and NACTO-recommended and -required bike lane design, which uses a standard minimum width, non-flexible bollards or cement protection, and green paint, which is implemented retroactively on all existing bike lanes and implemented on all new bike lanes going forward. Pilot the first NACTO-approved protected bike intersection at the most dangerous intersection on protected bike routes in each borough.
Citi Bike for All: Commit to full citywide access to the Citi Bike bike share program by 2025 by allocating city funding to the program for the first time. Ask Citi Bike to draw up a three-year plan to expand citywide.
Bridges For People: Coordinate agencies toward a goal of 24/7 bike access on all bridges including the Harlem River Bridges, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, Washington Bridge, Verrazzano Bridge, Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, Rockaway Bridges, Throgs Neck Bridge, Whitestone Bridge, Marine Parkway Bridge, and the Cross Bay Bridge.
Go Greenway: Fund and build all remaining greenway connectors, linking existing greenways and waterfront paths into a multi-borough off-street circuitous route that connects to parks, as laid out in the Moving Forward Together plan.
Park it Here: Launch the United States’ first citywide secure bike parking program.
Money for Micromobility: Launch the first U.S. municipal “Micromobility Tax Credit,” mirroring successful programs in Europe, offering 25 percent back on the purchase of a bike, scooter, e-bike, or e-scooter, prioritizing lower income residents in transit deserts and purchases by local small businesses for cargo ebikes. A similar program in Sweden doubled the number of e-bikes within a year.
Share the Fare: Convene Metropolitan Transportation Authority, NYC Ferry, and Citi Bike officials to create a plan for multimodal fare integration.
Connect the Dots: Fund and build the Five Borough Bikeway, as proposed by the Regional Plan Association.
Work it for NYC: Task New York City Small Business Services to create a grant program to train bike mechanics and e-bike mechanics and to provide start-up capital to build bike shops in areas where there are none.
What Can Be Done in Mayor Adams’ First 100 Days
Ask the Office of Management and Budget to audit the current economic, health, and transportation benefits of public bike share in New York City to make the case for City funding for the bike share program as well as a citywide expansion.
At the ten busiest transit hubs in the city, pilot full block Citi Bike station parking swaps.
Commit to public funding for the widely popular Citi Bike program, catching New York City up to every other bike share program in the U.S., all of which receive public funding. Announce that you will make City funds for citywide Citi Bike a capital priority in year one of your administration.
APPENDIX TO SEVEN STEPS TO SAVE OUR HEALTH, OUR SAFETY, OUR ENVIRONMENT, AND OUR ECONOMY BY MAKING BETTER USE OF NEW YORK CITY’S STREETS
Research and Citations Supporting Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets’ Policy Platform for New York City Mayor-Elect Eric Adams
STEP ONE: CONVERT SPACE FOR CARS INTO SPACE FOR PEOPLE
Streets For Students, Not Speeders:
66 percent of New Yorkers support closing streets to cars outside NYC schools.
Three out of four school-aged children in New York City are not driven to school, and more than one in three walk.
A study showed School Streets reduced nitrogen dioxide by up to 23 percent during morning drop off.
From 880 Cities, a School Streets Guidebook lays out how to plan and launch a School Street.
Repeal Robert Moses:
There are a wealth of negative externalities to car traffic, all inequitably distributed across New York City because highways were inequitably distributed across New York City.
Standard Space for Strolling:
The NYC Department of Transportation Street Design Checklist recommends this.
58 percent support adding wider sidewalks to their neighborhood, including 70 percent of voters under age thirty-five, even if it results in fewer parking spaces.
Parking Spot Swaps for Straphangers:
99 percent of transit riders walk or bike to their station.
Clear the Corners:
NACTO recommends daylighting intersections, and specific ways to do so.
This is what clear corners look like in practice.
San Francisco’s experience with clear corners offers guidance.
Stink Off the Sidewalk:
A Department of Transportation survey found that 84 percent of New Yorkers support or are neutral about reallocating space away from cars in order to containerize trash off the sidewalk.
Car-Free Way to Be:
63 percent of voters support the expansion of Open Streets in their neighborhood, including 76 percent of voters under age thirty-five.
AARP supports converting car space into car-free Open Streets as a public health intervention for older people.
Low Traffic, High Happiness:
After the City of London created Low Traffic Neighborhoods, the rate of injurious traffic crashes fell by 42 percent and the rate of crashes involving fatality or serious injury fell by 53 percent within the zones.
Car ownership decreased 6-7 percent within two years in Low Traffic Neighborhoods.
Another study also found that not only did car ownership decrease, but so did weekly car use, and the number of minutes spent driving, which shows that congestion didn’t increase. Active travel increased, too.
Low Traffic Neighborhoods have also reduced crime, despite a 21 percent increase in the amount of walking by residents. Low Traffic Neighborhoods were associated with an overall reduction of street crime, particularly more serious crimes involving direct attacks against the person.
Super Blocks for Super Safety:
Researchers have found that converting a residential street in a low-income neighborhood to a street that prioritizes walking and biking resulted in five times as many neighbor interactions, twice as many children playing, and twice as much time spent playing.
In New York City, people who live on high-car-traffic streets have fewer relationships with their neighbors and spend less time walking, shopping and playing with their children than people who live on low-car-traffic streets.
Playgrounds from Pavement to Keep Families in NYC:
84 percent of voters support adding more space for children to play in their neighborhood, even if it results in fewer parking spaces.
St Mark’s Playground, Brooklyn is a prime example.
Brooklyn is the playground desert of the city, but the problem is citywide and many playgrounds are in hazardous condition.
Cities for Play created a helpful guide: Designing Child-Friendly High Density Neighbourhoods.
Researchers argue that kid-friendly urban design makes cities better for all.
STEP TWO: MAKE OUR STREETS HEALTHY AND FAIR
Move People Not Cars:
A dedicated bike or bus lane can move 7 times or 17 times, respectively, more people than a single car lane.
Finish the Job:
A bike lane network that is developed on two factors — connectivity and directness — can directly predict higher bicycle ridership.
Bicycle commuting increases when “low-street connections” are provided for cyclists.
Legalize Walking:
89.8 percent of jaywalking tickets issued were to Black or Hispanic New Yorkers in 2019 when Blacks and Hispanics comprise about 55 percent of the population.
This is inseparable from the forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking."
Clear the Air:
One study out of Harvard found that car pollution claims 1,400 lives and billions in costs in New York City.
In a single year, air pollution from cars caused childhood asthma that cost the an estimated $178 billion in the U.S.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene estimates a massive cost from air pollution’s effects on New Yorkers.
Low-income communities and communities of color bear a greater burden from traffic congested streets, including disproportionate effects of longer commutes, hotter neighborhoods, worse air pollution, higher asthma rates, more health conditions related to car pollution, and more premature deaths.
In New York City, more than one in 10 children have asthma. In the Bronx, the childhood asthma rate is closer to one in five. In New York City’s poorest neighborhoods, asthma is a leading cause of emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and school absences.
Lose the Loud:
Transport noise is linked to increased risk of dementia, poor heart health, and is the second biggest urban environment stressor. For Black New Yorkers, the rate of premature death due to heart disease is almost twice that of white New Yorkers.
In New York City, sleep disturbances due to noise are more common in low-income and non-white neighborhoods.
A study recently found that drivers lay on the horn every 15 seconds, or 240 times an hour, at a single intersection in SoHo.
Plow for the People:
DSNY admits that the agency lacks snow removal equipment required to make sidewalks and bike lanes safe in the aftermath of blizzards.
A super-majority of New Yorkers use public transit for both commuting and non-commute trips, 99 percent of whom walk or bike to their transit stop.
Lack of snow removal maintenance, not cold weather, is often ranked as a top reason why more don’t bike in the winter.
Pavement to Planting:
83 percent of voters support adding more trees and greenery to their neighborhood, including 87 percent of Latino voters, even if it results in fewer parking spaces.
There are stark racial and economic disparities among children with asthma in New York City.
Wealthier neighborhoods in New York City have more trees, which means cleaner air, cooler temperatures, and a better quality of life.
Street trees provide many benefits, from cleaning and cooling the air to reducing crime.
High-Viz Means We Live:
There is a strong case for providing direct vision for truck drivers for safety. A study in London found that reaction times by truck drivers are 70 percent slower in traditional trucks compared to drivers in high-visibility models.
Measure What Matters:
Drivers are statistically more likely to lower their driving speeds and respect green-colored bike lanes than roadway-colored ones. There are a number of benefits.
The same is true of red-colored bus lanes, according to research in New York City and in Washington, D.C.
Right-Size Fines:
STEP THREE: REDUCE THE NUMBER OF CARS IN NEW YORK CITY
Begin with a Baseline:
74 percent of New Yorkers support policies that encourage biking, walking, and public transit.
One study found that cycling to work was associated with a 41 percent lower risk of dying overall compared to commuting by car or public transport. Cycle commuters had a 52 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40 percent lower risk of dying from cancer. They also had 46 percent lower risk of developing heart disease and a 45 percent lower risk of developing cancer at all.
The number of vehicles entering Manhattan and the annual vehicle miles traveled in New York City is increasing year over year.
The lack of reliable and efficient public transportation forces many New Yorkers into car ownership, which is costly, $9,561 annually according to the American Automobile Association, and is a de-facto tax on lower income commuters.
Over the last decade, Seattle saw the largest decline in the share of people driving alone to work and the largest drop in car ownership because it spent more money on new transit projects per-capita than any other large metro area.
Count Your Miles:
New Yorkers lose 133 hours on average each year due to traffic congestion, which costs them $1,859 annually in lost productivity and other costs.
Congestion in the New York City region will cost businesses, commuters, and residents $20 billion a year, according to a 2018 analysis by the Partnership for New York City.
A study of one Transportation Benefits Equity “cash-out” program found that, as a result, solo driving to work fell 17 percent, carpooling increased 64 percent, transit ridership increased 50 percent, and walking or biking increased 39 percent.
Go After the Big Guys:
SUVs were the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry and even trucks.
The percent of fatalities caused by SUVs is increasing in New York City.
SUVs and pickups are 2.5 to 3 times more deadly to pedestrians than smaller passenger cars.
The New York City Independent Budget Office has analyzed the potential revenue to be gained by this life-saving change, and found it significant.
Rid the Parking Min:
A new study found a "clear relationship" between parking minimums, a guaranteed spot at home, and the likelihood of commuting by car, even in New York City.
Parking minimums in New York City have been found to lead to more congestion, more pollution, less affordable housing and higher construction costs that are passed along to tenants.
A national study found that more parking puts more cars on the road.
Experts believe that free parking causes untold damage to cities.
Make it Metered:
Similar efforts have been shown to decrease parking search times, citations, double parking, congestion, vehicle miles traveled, and emissions, and to increase public transit speeds and activity at local businesses.
Today, 97.5 percent of today’s parking spaces in New York City are free.
Clear the Car Clutter:
Focus on the Fleet:
A city-agency car-share program could immediately reduce the amount of space taken up by the City’s fleet.
Root Out the Rot:
The New York Times reported that the only time city and New York State officials tried to put an end to insurance fraud was in 1987, when it was estimated to be costing $20 million in lost sales tax ($48 million in 2021 dollars), a figure that would likely be much higher now that there are more cars in New York City.
The drivers of illegal out-of-state registered vehicles are also more difficult to find and can lead to deadly and tragic results, especially in hit-and-run crashes.
Sweeten the Deal:
A “cash-out” commuter benefits option recently passed both the Portland and Washington, D.C. city councils, and research there has shown that solo driving to work fell 17 percent, carpooling increased 64 percent, transit ridership increased 50 percent, and walking or biking increased 39 percent under such cash-out programs.
Unlock the Grid for All:
Transportation experts universally agree on the need to implement congestion pricing as planned with no additional carve-outs.
STEP FOUR: BUILD SELF-ENFORCING STREETS
Rebalance Our Streets:
Over 75 percent of our current streetscape is dedicated to moving or storing vehicles, with only 24 percent for pedestrians, and less than 1 percent for buses and cyclists combined.
Even in Manhattan, where only one in four Manhattan-bound commuters from both New York and regionally arrive by car and only 1 in 5 Manhattan residents own a car, over three-fourths of the street is dedicated to storing or moving cars.
85 percent of voters strongly or somewhat support efforts to improve crosswalk safety, even if it results in fewer parking spaces.
Let the People Lead:
In New York City, the Department of Transportation found that intersections with Leading Pedestrian Intervals saw the number of deaths and serious injuries caused by cars turning decrease by 56 percent.
Build Better Barriers:
Researchers found that painted bike lanes provided no improvement on road safety, but protected bike lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all users of the road.
Cities such as Jersey City are replacing flex posts with immovable barriers for safety and cost-effectiveness.
Disarm Traffic Enforcement:
A massive study of police traffic enforcement in 33 states could find no correlation between police traffic stops and reductions in traffic deaths.
Looking only at those New Yorkers who were stopped by NYPD officers on the street or sidewalk, officers were significantly more likely to use force against Black and Latina New Yorkers than white New Yorkers.
The Department of Justice, America’s overseer of policing, recommends the redesign of streets with traffic calming devices and roadway narrowing: “The most important principle in speed control is that motorists tend to drive at the speed at which they feel safe and comfortable, given the road conditions. Therefore, the key to reducing speed is to alter road conditions such that motorists feel uncomfortable speeding.”
Ditch Dangerous Driving:
Red Lights, Cameras, Action:
85 percent of New York City voters, including 84 percent of those who own cars, support installing cameras that would ticket drivers for running a red light.
Where red light cameras are present, red light running has dropped by 80 percent according to the .
A 2015 Hunter College study, which examined driver behavior at New York City intersections, observed that one in 10 drivers violated a red light.
Boot the Bus Blockers:
68 percent of New York City voters support installing cameras that would ticket drivers for blocking a bus lane, including 80 percent of Hispanic/Latino New Yorkers, and 64 percent of car owners.
Camera enforced bus lanes have helped to increase bus speeds by as much as 37 percent in New York City.
Slow It Down:
New York City residents overwhelmingly support the proposed bill to allow the City to control its own speed limit.
Researchers found that the crash rate decreases by four to six percent for every one mile per hour reduction in speed.
A one mile per hour reduction in driving speed has also been shown to result in a 17 percent decrease in fatal crashes, and a 10 percent reduction in the average speed resulted in 19 percent fewer injurious crashes, 27 percent fewer severe crashes, and 34 percent fewer fatal crashes.
When Boston lowered its speed limit to 25 mph, the number of Boston drivers exceeding 35 mph decreased by 29 percent. When Portland lowered its speed limit from 25 mph to 20 mph, the number of Portland drivers traveling between 30 to 35 mph decreased 26 percent, and the number exceeding 35 mph decreased by 47 percent.
Keep It Automated, Keep It Safe:
59 percent of New York City voters support relying on speed safety cameras, rather than NYPD officers, for traffic enforcement.
85 percent of New York City voters, including 84 percent of those who own cars, support installing cameras that would ticket drivers for running a red light.
67 percent of New York City voters support installing cameras that would ticket drivers for blocking a crosswalk, including 79 percent of New Yorkers whose households make under $50,000 a year, 79 percent of voters over age 65, and 62 percent of car owners.
60 percent of New York City voters, including 53 percent of car owners, 69 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters, and 69 percent of voters age 65 and over, support adding more speed safety cameras outside of school zones, too.
Eyes on the Street:
60 percent of New York City voters support installing cameras that would ticket drivers for blocking a bike lane including 70 percent of Hispanic/Latino New Yorkers, 67 percent of voters over age 65, clear majorities in every borough, and 54 percent of car owners.
STEP FIVE: SCALE THE SUCCESSES OF VISION ZERO
Time Crisis:
Traffic fatalities are increasing for the third year in a row with 2021 expected to break traffic fatality records.
Being struck by the driver of a car is the leading cause of injury-related death for New York City children under 14.
30 percent of New Yorkers have been injured in a traffic crash, while 70 percent of New Yorkers know someone who has been injured or killed in a traffic crash showing just how deep this epidemic really is.
Recommit to Real Change:
We already have the yardstick in the NYC Department of Transportation’s Street Design Checklist.
Set the Standard:
This is already happening in Europe, where vehicle technology is being implemented to prevent speeding.
Let the Lights Lead Speed:
Today, despite a 25 mph speed limit citywide, few of our streets have traffic signals retimed for a 25 mph limit. (See: Vision Zero View / Street Design)
Take Away the Keys:
Researchers have found that automatic suspension is significantly more effective as a reckless driving deterrent than post-investigation suspension.
Ban the Big Guys:
New York City law already sets limitations on dimensions and weights of vehicles.
Weigh-in-motion sensors on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway have found trucks that weigh 170,000 pounds, more than double the federal legal guidelines and posted signage.
These trucks are extremely common on today’s streets, destructive to our roadbads and deadly to our neighbors.
Switch to Two Wheels:
Cargo e-bikes deliver packages up to 60 percent faster and reduce emissions by 30 percent.
The top three zip codes for daily freight deliveries are located in Midtown Manhattan, the most traffic-clogged areas of the city where commercial cargo bicycles would bring the most benefits.
In New York City, it takes trucks on average 15 minutes circling searching for parking per location. Trucks circling street blocks until parking is found, adds to congestion and increases noise and air pollution.
Since cargo bikes are significantly cheaper and are an extremely small burden on owners, it would be possible for bike couriers to help local businesses compete with giants like Amazon on local deliveries.
Get on the (State) Level:
Passing the Crash Victims Rights and Safety Act would be a landmark for reclaiming the promise of Vision Zero, saving lives and prioritizing crash victims.
70 percent of New Yorkers say that they know someone injured or killed in a traffic crash and 30 percent say that they themselves have been injured in one. These percentages are even higher for Black New Yorkers, households making under $50,000, New Yorkers over 50, and Staten Island residents.
There is a wealth of evidence that speed kills, especially in cities.
This is especially, especially true in New York City, the most pedestrian-dense place in the U.S., where the speed limit really matters.
Lose the Privilege
Speed cameras are extremely effective and very few drivers ever get a second speeding ticket, so those who have more than a few tickets ever are a minority, but the worst offenders are the most dangerous.
More Than Thoughts and Prayers:
How we cover car crashes can improve, and bringing attention to this epidemic will bring more media attention to the issue.
STEP SIX: PUT BUS RIDERS FIRST
Buses for All:
Camera enforced bus lanes have helped to increase bus speeds by as much as 37 percent in New York City.
Commutes for workers in the healthcare sector, the largest industry in New York City, have also been increasing faster than those of any other industry and are the longest of any industry.
The median income of bus riders is substantially lower than those of subway riders or New Yorkers overall, and bus riders are less likely to have a bachelor’s degree, more likely to be a single parent, more likely to be foreign-born, more likely to be a person of color, and more likely to have a child at home.
Go for Gold:
Experts see full-featured Bus Rapid Transit as key top delivery mobility and equity to New York City’s transit desert.
A lack of access to good transit for New Yorkers is correlated with lower median incomes and higher unemployment.
Lose the Logjam:
In New York City, double parking decreased by up to 70 percent across 111 pilot Neighborhood Loading Zones.
A study of commercial vehicles found that cruising for parking accounted for 28 percent of total trip time.
Tackle the Top Ten:
The 14th Street car-free busway reduced travel time by 47 percent. The busway also brought a 17 percent increase in ridership in just two months, so much so that the City needed to purchase additional buses.
Buses in Manhattan’s Community Board 11 average 4.8 mph, in Brooklyn’s Community Board 9 the average bus speed is 5.9mph, and in the Bronx’s Community Board 2 the average bus speed is 5.5mph.
Move Them Along:
56 percent of voters support using space currently used for parking in order to have protected citywide bus lanes. New Yorkers from households with income below $50,000 a year have the strongest support, with 66 percent supporting.
By implementing bus lanes and busways that are currently proposed and approved, but not implemented, would quickly allow the City of New York to move significantly more people. For example, the 5th Avenue busway proposal could move over 108,000 commuters daily with bus routes that stretch out to every borough.
Go All In:
London’s red painted and camera-enforced bus lanes make up a bus lane network that uses only 5 percent of London road space but carries 35 percent of its traffic.
The Pratt Center found that 750,000 New Yorkers commute longer than an hour each way, and two-thirds of these commuters earn less than $35,000 a year. A mere six percent of those long commutes are made by those earning more than $75,000 a year.
Camera enforced bus lanes have helped to increase bus speeds by as much as 37 percent in New York City.
Bring the Speed:
1199 SEIU conducted an informal survey of major causes of stress among home health aides and found that transit was the number two stressor, second only to the death of a family member.
Add bus bulbs to the busiest bus stops and slowest bus routes, and lobby the MTA to enact all-door boarding, in order to improve bus speeds.
Build A Better Bus Stop:
75 percent of voters support creating more places to sit such as benches, even if it results in fewer parking spaces.
Seniors and those with disabilities, two types of riders especially in need of benches, are more likely to ride the bus, due to the Subway’s lack of elevator accessibility..
Set the Bar High:
Research shows that in order for New York City to do its part in achieving necessary climate goals, over 80 percent of all trips must be made by sustainable modes.
MTA: Make Them Accessible:
The MTA is already running a successful pilot of bicycle racks on city buses.
STEP SEVEN: GET MORE BUTTS ON BIKES
Lay Down the Lanes:
68 percent of voters, including majorities in all five boroughs, support adding more protected bike lanes in their neighborhoods. 82 percent of Latino voters support adding protected bike lanes in their neighborhoods.
Bicycling could help cut carbon emissions from urban transportation by as much as 11 percent.
Walk the Line:
Researchers found that painted bike lanes provided no improvement on road safety but that protected bike lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all users of the road.
The City of Ottawa has published a guidebook on creating protected bike intersections.
Citi Bike for All:
56 percent of voters believe that bike share stations are an important use of curb space in their neighborhoods, including 69 percent of voters from households with income less than $50,000 per year.
A team of researchers calculated that from 2014 to 2017 New York’s CitiBike system saved the equivalent of 13,370 tons of oil and reduced CO2 emissions by 30,070 tons and NOx emissions by 80 tons respectively.
Researchers comparing the impact of Citi Bike on public health found that, between the system launch and the 2015 expansion in New York City, the resulting public health savings rose to $28.3 million. The same study showed converting car storage spaces to public bike share docks and protected bike lanes, especially in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, could significantly prevent premature deaths and produce significant public health savings.
Bridges For People:
The first full month of the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane’s opening saw a near doubling in ridership, while ridership on other bridges stayed the same, indicating the new lane created new bike commuters.
Go Greenway:
Every $1,300 spent converting car driving and parking lanes to protected bike lanes provided benefits equivalent to one additional year of life over the lifetime of all city residents.
Research has found that access to open space is so significant as to be equivalent to decreasing local unemployment rates by two percentage points.
Park it Here:
One in four New York City households has experienced bike theft, and for delivery workers it is 49 percent.
Secure bicycle parking is especially critical for low-income people and people of color in New York.
Money for Micromobility:
Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities.
A similar program in Sweden doubled the number of e-bikes within a year.
In New York City, just over half of all car trips are three miles or less, according to a 2019 study by the analytics company INRIX. Many short car trips could be replaced with a short, brisk e-bike ride.
Share the Fare:
OMNY has the potential to make our commutes faster, better access, easier and less costly transfers, enhance service information, and make fares more fair, especially for transit deserts in areas such as Eastern Queens.
Connect the Dots:
A bike lane network’s connectivity is the most important to increasing the number of cyclists.
Work it for NYC:
Bike shops, especially in low-income communities and communities of color, can help children and adults start bicycling and make it a regular activity.
