Streetsblog New York City

The mother of a student at PS 162 in Queens is in critical condition after a driver struck her in front of the school this morning. The crash occurred as the parent was crossing 53rd Avenue between 201st and 202nd Streets at around 9:10 this morning, in view of students and teachers, according to a press release from Council Member Mark Weprin.

The driver, who remained at the scene, has been charged with failure to yield and driving with a suspended license, according to the NYPD. Eyewitnesses cited in Weprin's release said the driver was speeding.  

Weprin called on the Department of Transportation to install speed humps, traffic lights, or other measures to calm traffic in front of the school. Whatever the right solution is for PS 162, New York City sorely needs better enforcement to prevent reckless drivers from injuring people on city streets. The crash this morning is also a reminder that the city's commitment to Safe Routes to School must still be strengthened significantly to ensure that it's safe for children and families to walk to every one of its thousands of public, private, and parochial schools.

This morning, Brooklyn's MS 51 became the first school in the five boroughs to host a bike-to-school day. Students biked in two escorted rides, one starting in Sunset Park and the other in Carroll Gardens, with more riders joining each bike pool at pick-up spots along the way.

The students, parents, and educators at MS 51 pulled off the bike-to-school event with some help from the New York City Department of Transportation, Bike New York and Matthew Modine's Bicycle for a Day charity. To get ready for the ride, Bike New York held workshops to teach the students about bike safety and riding techniques. As principal Lenore Berner told us, maybe an event like this can help kids bike to school on other days, too.

(Editor's note: Enjoy the long weekend folks. We'll see you back here on Tuesday.)

The percentage of U.S. students between ages five and 14 who walk or bike to school has remained stable over the past 15 years but remains three-quarters below where it stood 40 years ago, according to a new analysis of government data by two groups working on the Safe Routes to School (SRtS) program.

Crunching numbers from the U.S. DOT's National Household Travel Survey, the National Center for SRtS and the SRtS National Partnership concluded that between 1969 and 2009, school transportation habits essentially flipped -- with auto use rising from 12 percent of the student population to 44 percent, and biking or walking going from a 48-percent popularity rate with kids to just 13 percent.

Despite the fact that the share of students choosing to walk or bike to school has remained around 12 percent since 1995, the SRtS groups saw a silver lining to their findings: Their efforts appear to be making headway when it comes to shorter trips from home to school. When the data was restricted to students traveling less than one mile to classes, 38 percent walked or biked last year.

“There is a real opportunity to change the car culture and make school campuses less congested if more of the parents who are driving shorter distances let their children walk or bike to school, and those who driving further distances let their children ride school buses,” Lauren Marchetti, director of the National Center for SRtS, said in a statement.

SRtS directs federal transportation dollars to help localities build dedicated infrastructure for kids up to age 14 to walk or bike to school. Members of Congress from both parties have endorsed legislation that would expand the program to high schools as part of the next six-year federal transport bill.

After 14 months of drama, deal-making, and declarations of its demise, the health care legislation envisioned by President Obama and congressional Democrats finally cleared its biggest hurdle last night, with the House approving the Senate-passed measure on a 219-212 vote.

The process isn't quite finished yet -- the Senate still must take up a series of tweaks to its original bill under the filibuster-proof reconciliation framework for debate -- but the meat of the upper chamber's health proposal is set to become law by week's end.

Once that occurs, a new pool of federal "Community Transformation" grants would be established, with local governments and nonprofit groups eligible for a share of the funding. As Streetsblog Capitol Hill noted back in November, the grants would go towards projects that support public health, including "activities to prevent chronic diseases" and "the infrastructure to support active living."

In practice, that could result in new funding available for bike-ped improvements or programs that encourage safe transportation for young students, such as Safe Routes to School.

The Senate bill also recognizes transportation's role in public health by giving the U.S. DOT a seat on a new National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council that would coordinate federal wellness policy.

First Lady Michelle Obama took to the mikes this afternoon to kick off a national campaign to combat childhood obesity, emphasizing new initiatives to promote biking and walking alongside a strong focus on healthier food options in schools.

Mrs. Obama appeared with six Cabinet members, the Surgeon General, and several lawmakers and mayors to mark the president's official creation of a new Task Force on Childhood Obesity. As part of the first lady's new effort, the White House plans to expand the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, while setting up a Safe and Healthy Schools Fund during hte next reauthorization of federal elementary education law.

In her remarks to the press this afternoon, Mrs. Obama paid particular attention to the lifestyle shifts that have led many kids to a more sedentary routine -- and helped contribute to obesity rates of 17 percent for children and teens, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. (The same study found that one of every three U.S. kids are oversight.)

The first lady said:

In my home, we weren't rich. The foods we ate weren't fancy. But there was always a vegetable on the plate. And we managed to lead a pretty healthy life.

Many kids today aren't so fortunate. Urban sprawl and fears about safety often mean the only walking they do is out their front door to a bus or a car. Cuts in recess and gym mean a lot less running around during the school day, and lunchtime may mean a school lunch heavy on calories and fat. For many kids, those afternoons spent riding bikes and playing ball until dusk have been replaced by afternoons inside with TV, the Internet, and video games.

Mrs. Obama highlighted the presidential budget proposal for $400 million in financing to develop supermarkets and farmers' markets in neighborhoods that currently lack a walkable healthy food option, but she did not directly mention Safe Routes to School, the federal program that helps carve out local routes for children to bike and walk from home to class every day.

A report from NY1's Susan Jhun today describes the dangerous conditions at an intersection right next to P.S. 8 in the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, where parents and students constantly contend with cars darting the wrong way down the block.

Here, motorists on Briggs Avenue make an illegal left turn onto a short stretch of East Moshulu Parkway, in order to quickly cut over to East 203rd Street. Even with parents complaining about the danger to their kids posed by unexpected wrong-way traffic, police haven't made the intersection safe. 

Moshulu Parkway is clearly marked as one-way, but according to parents, drivers make illegal lefts "hour after hour." The police, however, don't seem inclined to measure the problem and tackle it with the data-driven techniques they apply to violent crime. The underlying assumption that NYPD has employed so successfully with CompStat is that you have to be able to count crime to fight it; right now, the NYPD isn't doing much of either when it comes to law-breaking behavior behind the wheel.

When NY1 called the NYPD, police said that 20 summonses had been issued in the last 60 days. The more important question is whether those tickets are actually reducing the risk to students and parents. So does the 52nd Precinct in the Bronx have a plan to systematically improve safety at P.S. 8? What sort of resources would they need to measure the problem and enforce the rules effectively? The precinct has not responded to Streetsblog's calls.

The NYPD has trouble answering questions about street safety because police grade their traffic enforcement performance mainly by counting summonses. The actual rate of traffic violations, which can be measured, is one metric they have so far ignored.

The parents of P.S. 8 know exactly how big a problem it is when cars drive the wrong way down a one-way street in front of a school. So should the police.

Over the past few months, Livable Streets Education has worked with schools across New York City on We're Walking Here NYC. Educators were asked to engage students in an exercise that highlights the importance of safety, healthy choices, walkable streets and sustainable transportation, and to share that message with others. This was the pilot run of our web-based project and we had a great group of participants. Next fall we plan to continue the initiative and invite any and all NYC schools to join in. 

Our grand prize winner was P.S. 8 in Brooklyn for their video PSA, "Why Should You Walk to School?" It was created by Class 3-305 with teacher Melissa Browning.

We had a tough decision as many schools did a great job. Our other winners are listed after the jump.

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The second installment in Streetsblog's series on the potential direction for transportation policy during Michael Bloomberg's third term comes from Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. Don't miss the first entry, by Tri-State Transportation Campaign executive director Kate Slevin.

Mayor Bloomberg has already shown how much his administration can accomplish in just a few years. Since Janette Sadik-Khan's appointment to head the DOT in 2007, the city has striped hundreds of miles of bike lanes, reclaimed acres of street space for pedestrians and improved bus travel for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. "More of the same" is no longer a dirty phrase when it comes to local transportation policy. During the next four years, the mayor needs to accelerate this progress, and introduce a few key innovations to maximize the value New Yorkers get from their new streets.

Whether you're a straphanger, a cyclist, or a driver, every trip begins and ends with a walk. Pedestrians have had it good in recent years: Public plazas are sprouting by the dozen, hundreds of intersections have safer sidewalks and crossings, and the city's blueprint for sustainability, PlaNYC, promises that many more improvements are coming soon. How should New York keep this momentum going?

Well, the release of DOT's Street Design Manual back in July was an especially auspicious development. This groundbreaking playbook contains templates that can transform streets in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. The manual is an engineering document, but it also makes sense as an outreach tool. Community groups concerned about street safety could use the manual as a menu, requesting traffic calming solutions for their neighborhood from DOT. Liberal use of these new designs, applied through a smart community-based process, could pay huge dividends all over the city.

For a fraction of the cost of subway line construction, buses could move millions, if the mayor throws his weight behind BRT.

Our city's new public spaces and calmed streets won't live up to their potential, though, unless New Yorkers know their roadways are safe places to walk and bike. Under Commissioner Ray Kelly, the NYPD has reduced levels of violent crime to record lows. Law enforcement should tackle traffic crime with equal diligence. Zero tolerance for speeding and dangerous driving, more comprehensive reporting and analysis of traffic crashes, and a relentless advertising campaign -- similar to the one the Mayor used to take on smoking -- would tame the Wild West atmosphere on our streets. If Bloomberg and Kelly successfully drive down traffic crime, hundreds of lives could be saved, thousands of injuries prevented, and countless New Yorkers would get out and enjoy their city more.

One sensible way for the NYPD to roll out this approach to traffic enforcement would be to start in areas frequented by children and seniors. Seniors make up 12 percent of New York's population, yet account for 39 percent of pedestrian fatalities. And according to the Department of Health, auto traffic is the leading cause of injury-related death in children ages 1-14. DOT's Safe Routes to School and Safe Routes for Seniors programs have spawned imitators around the country, but our city is no longer the national leader. Other cities are now far ahead of New York when it comes to implementing these street safety programs. Combined with police enforcement, short-term and inexpensive improvements such as leading pedestrian intervals, reductions in signalized crossing speeds, and a citywide slower speed limit in school zones would prioritize pedestrians, save the lives of children and seniors, and get New York City back in the forefront of planning streets for safety.

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Last April, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced the "New York City Model" -- mapping out a strategic plan to prioritize greener, more efficient modes and turn city streets into world-class public spaces. We've seen some major changes in the year-and-a-half since. Among the big accomplishments: the transformation of Broadway, an expanded bike network with more protected routes, and a new street design manual that codifies the progressive treatments DOT has started to adopt. Plans for new rapid bus corridors are approaching fruition, with a route on First and Second Avenues scheduled for completion next year and several more in the pipeline.

In an update to the strategic plan released this month, DOT lays out several new benchmarks, including some glimpses of the agency's goals for the rest of 2009 and 2010. The document isn't available online yet, but Streetsblog has a hard copy so I thought I'd share a few highlights:

• Bike modeshare targets are more ambitious than before. The goal is now to double bike commuting by 2012 and triple it by 2017 compared to 2007 levels. The previous goal was to double cycling by 2015. If annual increases stay close to last year's 35 percent clip, the new target should be easily achievable, especially if the next item turns into something concrete...
• DOT will "explore opportunities for a large-scale public bicycle system in Manhattan and surrounding areas." The agency had previously signaled its interest in launching a bike-share network, but I believe this is the first official hint of the scale they're contemplating.
• 8-10 new rapid bus corridors will be selected by the end of this year. (DOT had already posted a timeline for this process on its website.)
• DOT will increase the number of 20 mph zones around schools from 25 to 75.
• More templates from the Street Design Manual will take shape on city streets. "Shared streets" are mentioned as a potential new design treatment.
  
• Summer Streets will expand "to additional days and areas."
• To keep cabs out of bus lanes, the city will make greater use of bus-mounted enforcement cameras. (The city launched a pilot enforcement program along these lines on 34th Street back in February.)
• Some single-space parking meters, which are being decommissioned by the thousands as more muni-meters are installed, will be converted to bike racks.
  
• PARK Smart, a performance parking program that DOT has piloted in Greenwich Village and Park Slope, will help manage the curb crunch in more neighborhoods.
  

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Last month, more than 500 people gathered in Portland, Oregon for the second National Safe Routes to School Conference. Maybe it's the fact that Congress might triple national funding for safe routes to school programs. Or maybe it’s the way that walking and biking to school fits so well with efforts to improve public health, safety, and the environment. Whatever the reason, you definitely got the feeling at this event that you were part of something that’s gaining momentum.

Livable Streets Education was among the presenters, and we learned quite a bit ourselves about the safe routes to school movement. We wanted to share with Streetsblog readers some insights that we picked up from two of the headliners at the conference.

First, the problems plaguing our built environment are big. We're all pretty familiar with the triple whammy of traffic violence, sedentary lifestyles, and global climate change, but sometimes it helps to get a refresher in the salient facts and figures. Richard Jackson, chair of the Environmental Health Sciences Department at UCLA, laid it out. Global average temperature is increasing at an ever higher rate. One-third of Americans live in neighborhoods without sidewalks, half without access to public transportation. Motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death for every age group from 3 to 33. Meanwhile, the costs to our healthcare system from diseases related to obesity are enormous: We spend 1.5 percent of our entire GDP on treating diabetes alone.

It can all seem overwhelming. But as Jackson pointed out, there are plenty of ways to make these problems feel more manageable. As he said, it really comes down to asking yourself: "Can I walk to buy milk?"

Another keynoter, Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, elaborated on the same theme. Rather than generate fear, despair, anxiety, he said, we need to communicate the changes we must make with accuracy and balance. We don't want people to mentally check out or give up when they hear the facts -- we need constructive engagement.

That's where "Safe Routes to School" comes in: It's a solution that's easy to grasp and feels like something we are capable of achieving. We can demand sidewalks, we can set up “walking school buses” to get kids to school. These are doable steps with benefits ranging from improved cardiovascular health to reduced carbon emissions. And it will help raise a new generation to appreciate the experience of walking, biking, and meeting your neighbors.

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