In-Line Skating in Everyday Manhattan Life || Personalizing Public Transportation

Toward a Pedestrian Agenda: Ten Mayoral Steps
by Right of Way

How do we spell out a transportation philosophy that is hospitable to walking and cycling? Here's a sketch, in the form of a memo to the mayor.

1 Stand symbolically with victims of car violence, rather than with drivers. During your tenure as mayor, over 1200 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by automobile. Console a bereaved family. Pledge "No more car violence."

2 Stop embracing the motoring minority. Declare New York a transit and walking city. "One person one car" doesn't work here. This isn't "anti-car ideology" but common sense.

3 See to it that the police enforce all vehicular traffic laws that protect walkers and bike-riders -- not as an occasional publicity gambit, but every day.

4 Jawbone the district attorneys to prosecute all dangerous driving, not just DWI.

5 Institute traffic-calming projects in the neighborhoods, not just near schools. Fight for legislative approval of "neighborhood zones," in which any driver who hits a child is presumed culpable.

6 Require inquests into all pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, and make the findings public.

7 Stop treating bicyclists as if they were a major source of street danger. Work to change state vehicle and traffic law to establish, as the Toronto coroner recommended last year, "the principle of motorized vehicles yielding to non-motorized vehicles."

8 Institute comprehensive road-pricing, beginning with barrier-free tolls on East River bridges and per-minute pricing for cars on midtown streets.

9 Build out sidewalks and enlarge crosswalks, starting in thronged midtown and extending throughout the city.

10 End free parking for public employees, including yourself.

   
 
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