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NEIGHBORS: Join Neighborhood Streets Network Today!

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Neighborhood Streets Network: Neighbors - Join NSN!


Join Today!
The Neighborhood Streets Network is a city-wide coalition of 100+ block associations, civic groups, and business groups working for quieter, safer, friendlier neighborhood streets. The Network was created in 1994 to unite local groups that are working to calm traffic and reduce its effects on their neighborhoods. Groups join the network because it provides resources, pushes for citywide policy changes, and achieves results.

There's no charge to join, nor will you be expected to contribute time and energy unless you want to. We'll keep you up to date through a regular newsletter on what's happening in other neighborhoods and around the city.

To sign on your group as a Neighborhood Streets Network member, or for more information, call T.A at 212-629-8080 or email campaign@transalt.org.

By joining, your block association or civic group endorses these four goals:

1. Slow and reduce traffic on neighborhood streets.
Speeding traffic increases the risk of pedestrian injury and death, and decreases the quality of life in neighborhoods. The City needs to use traffic calming tools such as speed humps, extended sidewalks, and medians to make streets more pedestrian and neighborhood friendly. The NYC Slow Speed and Traffic Calming Law, passed in October 1999, allows for speeds as low as 15 mph when used in conjunction for traffic calming. This law, if implemented widely and effectively, has the potential to place NYC at the forefront of U.S. traffic calming and pedestrian safety.

2. Create "Safe Routes To School" programs at schools citywide.
Getting hit by a car is the number one cause of death and injury for NYC children ages 5-14. The Safe Routes to School program- modeled on a program in Denmark that reduced child-pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes by 85% works to create safe walking corridors at NYC elementary schools. In 1997-2000, the program worked with parents, faculty, and students to create safe walking corridors at 36 Bronx elementary schools.

3. Increase pedestrian safety on major thoroughfares and at dangerous intersections.
Major thoroughfares such as Queens Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, Grand Concourse, and Upper Broadway should be thriving, pedestrian-friendly retail centers. Instead, they serve as speedways that divide and isolate neighborhoods, are unpleasant to walk along, and are intimidating and dangerous to cross. These streets and intersections need comprehensive pedestrian improvements including increased 'walk' cycles, pedestrian only walk phases, red-light cameras, widened sidewalks, raised crosswalks, and other traffic calming devices.

4. Increase funding for pedestrian, bicycle and traffic calming projects.
A study by the Network showed that current spending is severely skewed towards motorists. The City and State spend approximately 22 times more money on highway safety than pedestrian safety, even though more pedestrians are killed every year than motorists. Quadrupling the money spent on pedestrian safety would mean dramatically safer streets for pedestrians, while keeping the vast majority of spending focused on motorist safety.


There's no charge to join, nor will you be expected to contribute time and energy unless you want to. We'll keep you up to date through a regular newsletter on what's happening in other neighborhoods and around the city.

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