2013 and Beyond, the Plan’s Most Recent Report, Outlines Progress Made on New York’s Roads
In 2008, The New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) published a comprehensive strategic plan. Titled Sustainable Streets, the plan outlined the department’s short- and long-term goals with regard to transportation policy for the city. Ambitious and wide-ranging, the plan was dedicated to making the streets in all five boroughs of New York safer, more navigable, more efficient, and better looking.
Several years later, the Sustainable Streets plan continues to deliver on its promises. In 2013 the NYC DOT released a progress report, Sustainable Streets: 2013 and Beyond, briefing readers on recent advances and detailing the department’s plans for the future. The plan was organized into five sections:
Safety: Road safety is the most important element of Sustainable Streets, and the initiative on which the DOT focuses it attention most heavily. As in any large city, achieving and maintaining protection for motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists here in New York is no easy task – and it’s a task with no end date.
Thanks to the initiatives put in place by the NYC DOT, road fatalities in the city have dropped over 60% since 1990; in its 2013 report, the department declared its goal of decreasing traffic-related deaths by another 50% by 2030.
Mobility: One of the best ways to increase transportation efficiency within a city is to increase and improve the methods by which its citizens can get from place to place. NYC DOT’s Sustainable Streets plan has outlined proposed initiatives to revitalize and strengthen the bus, bicycle, ferry, and pedestrian networks in all five boroughs.
World Class Streets. A city’s streets should offer more than just a path from A to B. They are a reflection of its culture. New York has been described as lacking in this regard, relatively speaking; the streets, sidewalks, and squares in this city are far less likely to be considered “places of interest” in the same sense that famous streets in other cities are celebrated. Sustainable Streets is dedicated to “re-imagining the public realm” by improving the aesthetic and community-focused appeal of certain plazas and thoroughfares in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the other boroughs.
Without the proper infrastructure in place to support them, even the most carefully considered plans are unlikely to be successful. NYC DOT’s Sustainable Streets has recognized the importance of properly building and maintaining the city’s means of transportation in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Resiliency. The effects of Hurricane Sandy were devastating on New York, and underscored the need for increased safety measures and transportation improvements throughout the city. NYC DOT responded immediately, addressing the most critical transportation needs of New Yorkers – from clearing debris to providing temporary bus bridges; in addition to chronicling those responses, the Sustainable Streets: 2013 and Beyond report outlines the steps that must be taken in order to avoid weather-related catastrophes in the future.
“These initiatives are laudable,” Jay Dankner, senior partner of Dankner Milstein, one of New York’s top auto accident injury law firms, “but more needs to be done to protect both pedestrians and drivers. As what was considered an almost intractable consequence of the rigors of living in city with more than 8 million people, we continue to see avoidable, preventable accidents that ruin people’s lives, or result in unnecessary deaths.”
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