New York City is developing a five-year masterplan to improve street safety across the Five Boroughs — and officials want your help!
The Department of Transportation recently launched its first ever NYC Streets Plan aiming to make New York City’s streets safer, more accessible, and of a better quality. Now, the agency wants to hear from locals about what upgrades they want in their neighborhoods.
“No one knows your neighborhood better than you! NYC DOT is developing the #NYCStreetsPlan, a 5-year plan that will set equitable and ambitious goals for the City’s streets. We need your input,” DOT wrote in a tweet on June 23.
No one knows your neighborhood better than you! NYC DOT is developing the #NYCStreetsPlan, a 5-year plan that will set equitable and ambitious goals for the City's streets. We need your input!
Get involved through our online survey & public workshops: https://t.co/L90n7nuKXJ pic.twitter.com/EFcZuext5F
— NYC DOT (@NYC_DOT) June 23, 2021
The agency opened an online survey to gather feedback and will start virtual Zoom workshops next month and through the fall, before issuing a final plan in December.
The four-part survey starts by asking how city residents would allocate public dollars, followed by a map where participants can pinpoint local issues related to streets; a more traditional questionnaire; and a section where residents can tell the agency about themselves.
The upcoming Zoom sessions will start for some Brooklyn neighborhoods closer to Manhattan on the morning of July 7 and continue for that month, with a second round of digital forums slated for September and October.
The move comes in response to a local law passed in the City Council in late 2019, requiring DOT to come out with and implement an ambitious transportation masterplan every five years starting in 2021.
The law mandates that the first plan due by the end of this year include better lanes and signal priority for buses, hundreds of miles of new protected bike lanes, pedestrian safety upgrades, and parking policies to promote safety, mass transit use, accessibility for the disabled, and lower vehicle emissions.
The proposals build on previous efforts under Mayor Bill de Blasio, including the Green Wave Plan to expand the city’s bike lane network and the Better Buses Action Plan for — you guessed it — better bus lanes.
Hizzoner and DOT have rolled out several new busways in the city during the past year and added more bike lanes, but traffic violence has also increased unabated so far, with fatalities on pace to be the highest this year of the whole de Blasio administration, Streetsblog reported.
Among his most recent street safety upgrades, de Blasio earmarked millions of dollars to install a new bike lane on the Brooklyn Bridge — which has started construction — and pledged a $39 million fix for the deadly McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, earlier this month, following a fatal hit-and-run that killed a beloved area teacher.
Some efforts have been stalled, such as the Fifth Avenue busway in Midtown, which is likely going to be a year late of its schedule.
For more information on DOT’s NYC Streets Plan, visit nyc.gov/nycstreetsplan.
