PROGRAM

11:00am - 12:00pm ET

Hear from the experts featured in this year’s Vision Zero Cities Journal.

Featuring:

Ariadne Daher, Partner, Jaime Lerner Arquitetos Associados

Brittany Simmons, Planner, OHM Advisors

Josh Vredevoogd, Director of Media and Data, Streets for All

Renan Carioca, Research Manager, Global Designing Cities Initiative

Fabrizio Prati, Director of Design and Research, Global Designing Cities Initiative

12:30pm - 1:30pm ET

Cities across the U.S. are experiencing an intractable housing shortage and are overhauling outdated housing and land use policies. Understanding the interconnectedness between housing and transportation policy is critical for addressing affordability, equity, and sustainability goals. This panel will explore how transportation planners, advocates, and policy makers can ensure that housing and transportation policy are aligned, thoughtfully integrating walkability, and livability by thinking systemically about the challenges facing residents. Learn how housing and zoning choices impact transportation outcomes and hear from experts who are working at the intersection of housing and transportation policy.

Maulin Mehta, New York Director, Regional Plan Association

Jared Polis, Governor, Colorado

Courtney Porcella, Business Membership Manager, YIMBY Action

Donald Shoup, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning, UCLA

2:00pm - 3:00pm ET

The e-bike boom is everywhere, and so is the backlash, but varying ridership and reception complicate a unified message on a game-changing technology. E-bikes could make safe, affordable, low-emissions mobility accessible for millions -- but not if e-bikes are the enemy. This roundtable will discuss the e-bike boom and lay out proactive measures to get people to embrace emerging modes and policy and communications strategies to head off misguided opposition.

Featuring:

Melinda Hanson, Founder, Brightside

Emily Jabbour, Councilmember, Hoboken, NJ

Christy Kwan, Policy Advisor, Livable Communities, AARP

Sarah Thorne, Senior Program Manager, Colorado Energy Office

ROSENTHAL PAVILION

Your city adopted Vision Zero…now what? This panel is a primer for cities just getting started on Vision Zero, or where Vision Zero got off to a lackluster start. Pick up best practices on how to effectively implement Vision Zero and a Safe Systems approach, how to avoid common pitfalls that will limit your city’s progress, and which tools can help you fund and operationalize changes to the streetscape. Speakers will cover new federal and local funding streams available, review the safe systems approach and successful vision zero action plans, and discuss concrete tools to achieve success.

Featuring:

Anna Luten, Integrated Mobility & Marketing Advisor, Mobycon

Joel Meyer, Acting Transportation Safety Officer, City of Austin

Jessica Nguyen, Senior Planner, ChangeLab Solutions

Leeor Schweitzer, Transportation Demand Management Specialist, Portland Bureau of Transportation

ROOM 907

One of the greatest challenges in transforming streets is helping our communities imagine the possibilities. In this interactive session, you will learn how to design different types of safe streets, incorporating elements like chicanes and road diets, and hear from planners and designers about examples of successful community facilitation resulting in street redesigns that helped propel transformative changes to the streetscape. Participants will leave with street calming ideas for their communities, as well as tools for identifying priority streets and how to generate ideas that are locally specific.

Featuring:

Mike Lydon, Principal, Street Plans

Zuka Alavidze, Partner, Transportation Solutions, Country of Georgia

Molly O'Neill Robinson, Principal & Founder, MOR Design & Planning

ROOM 802

While Europe moves to require all vehicles to carry lifesaving new safety technology like Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), cities, and states, across the U.S. are writing innovative laws to step into the national regulatory vacuum. Learn how these new technologies save lives and how advocates across the U.S. are leading the local fight to bring ISA and other safety technologies to cars and roads in their cities. 

Featuring:

Joanne Vincenten, Health Specialist - Injury Prevention & Environmental Health, UNICEF

Amy Cohen, Co-Founder, Families for Safe Streets

Keith Kerman, Chief Fleet Officer, Deputy Commissioner, NYC Citywide Administrative Services

Julia Kite-Laidlaw, Senior Program Manager, National Safety Council

Michael Travars, President, LifeSafer Ignition Interlock

ROSENTHAL PAVILION

Many cities approach traffic safety with an emphasis on police officer traffic enforcement, which has [needswork] increased police interactions and harm to Black and brown communities across the United States, and not helped cities achieve their Vision Zero goals. This panel will discuss alternative, proven approaches that focus on structural solutions, such as infrastructure improvements, self-enforcing streets strategies, and decriminalization of the public realm to create streetscapes that are safe for everyone, no matter who they are or how they get around.

Featuring:

Latayna Byrd, Families for Safe Streets Philadelphia

Juan Martinez, Founder, Systemic Policy Solutions

Scarlet Neath, Policy Director, Center for Policing Equity

Tiffany Smith, Program Manager, Vision Zero Network

ROOM 907

Achieving Vision Zero and environmental justice goals are well-aligned, yet the overlapping opportunity is unclear to many. Green Streets are a street design approach that incorporates green infrastructure, provides a framework for reimaging our streets as both calm, and green – resulting in a new typology that can reduce flooding, improve air quality, and add to the urban forest – all while combating reckless driving, encouraging alternative transportation modes, and improving health outcomes within the community. Learn from experts creating sustainable, livable, safe streets and how to apply these design solutions.

Featuring:

Majed Abdulsamad, Associate, WXY Architecture + Urban Design

Jenny O'Connell, Associate Director of Programs, NACTO

Michael Manzella, Director of Transportation Planning, Jersey City

Lauren Newman, Youth & Schools Organizer, Transportation Alternatives

ROOM 802

Package delivery is expanding rapidly with outsized impacts on Vision Zero. Increased delivery is impacting our streets and the rise in truck traffic in residential neighborhoods delivers problems with traffic safety, increased congestion, environmental safety, and public health on the doorstep of the frontline communities surrounding warehouses, with consequences that trickle out to every neighborhood. Experts and community advocates will discuss the intersection of the rise of deliveries and traffic safety, and outlay solutions to meet the moment from cargo bikes to delivery hubs.Featuring:

Kevin Garcia, Senior Transportation Planner, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance

Marcus Hoed, Co-Founder, DutchX

Diniece Mendes, Director, Office of Freight Mobility, New York City DOT

Maria Reyes, NYC Climate Justice Hub Advocate, The Point Community Development Corporation

David Shuffler, Executive Director at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice

ROSENTHAL PAVILION

The effects of redlining policies, highway expansion, and zoning laws enacted decades ago are still felt most in the communities where the physical manifestation of these policies is an inescapable daily reality. This design-focused panel will examine how practitioners are applying a racial and transportation justice lens to on-the-ground solutions that reconnect divided communities. Learn about various ways in which civic leaders and designers are stitching communities back together, taking on harmful land use codes, building transit, and addressing historic disinvestment with tactics you can bring back to your communities. 

Featuring:

Nathan Elliott, Managing Principal, OJB Landscape Architecture

Tara Green, Principal, Public Realm Strategies, OJB Landscape Architecture

Darwin Moosavi, Deputy Secretary for Environmental Policy & Housing Coordination, California State Transportation Agency

Amy Stelly, Artist, Designer, & Urban Planner, Studio Dumaine

Madeleine Pelzel, Planner, Huitt-Zollars, Inc.

ROOM 907

Strategic partnerships between community organizations can be a singularly effective tool for generating support for a street safety project or the defining factor that cancels one. Intersectional approaches to local issues that bring new partners together across differences and reciprocal relationships that build trust have led to advocacy wins and long-standing allyship. Learn tactics to use and pitfalls to avoid when working with local community organizations and hear from advocates who have successfully turned community concerns into community partnerships.

Featuring:

Dale Charles, Executive Director, The Bed Stuy Gateway BID

Shawn Garcia, Director of Advocacy, Transportation Alternatives

Jodie Medeiros, Executive Director, Walk SF

Nicole Yearwood, Senior Manager, Government Relations, Lime

ROOM 802

Transportation planning policies have centered anti-climate policies for too long, making it harder for people to get where they need to go. Transportation is a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, and we can’t build a livable future without shifting our energy, funding, and support to greener and more equitable transportation systems. Hear from local leaders around the country successfully fighting against increased highway-centric investments and towards public transit, walking, and biking infrastructure that supports mobility for all.

Featuring:

Jaqi Cohen, Director of Climate and Equity Policy, Tri-State Transportation

Nina Guidice, Policy Manager, Transportation Alternatives

Todd Litman, Executive Director, Victoria Transport Policy Institute

Katherine Garcia, Clean Transportation for All Program Director, Sierra Club

Location: New York University, 4th Floor, Eisner and Lubin Auditorium

Location: New York University, 4th Floor, Eisner and Lubin Auditorium

Featuring:
Patrick McClellan, New York State Policy Director, New York League of Conservation Voters
Danny Pearlstein, Policy and Communications Director, Riders Alliance
Jessie Singer, Senior Strategist, Transportation Alternatives
Midori Valdivia, Transport Advisor and MTA Board Member

Location: NYU Room 802

Your City, Your Voice is a series of activist trainings developed by Transportation Alternatives’ renowned team of community organizers. Hear the lessons learned in their years of hyper-local, grassroots political activism. Absorb the tools and tactics that contributed to winning campaigns to change New York’s speed limit and introduce innovations like protected bike lanes, bike share, and speed cameras to city streets.

You’ll be taught how to engage with your neighbors and organize a successful local campaign — valuable lessons that could apply to the fight for a protected bike lane, an effort to protect a community garden, or a campaign to advocate for better food access for your community.

Featuring:
Shawn Garcia, Director of Organizing, Transportation Alternatives

Location: New York Historical Society

The first public exhibition drawn from the archive of the author whose award-winning works on Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson are regarded as masterpieces of modern biography and history, "Turn Every Page" includes never-before-seen highlights from the archive—which New-York Historical acquired in 2019—that provide an intimate view of how Caro started his career and how he worked as a reporter. 

Featuring: Ken Weine, Senior Vice President & Chief Content Officer, New York Historical Society

Start: Hunters Point South Park
End: Brooklyn Bridge Park

Over the past decade, cities worldwide have invested in waterfronts as critical defenses against climate change. These areas offer opportunities to protect vulnerable populations and infrastructure from severe storms while addressing economic, health, and social challenges. Under-utilized waterfronts are being transformed into housing, park spaces, and vital infrastructure like active mobility corridors. This tour will utilize New York’s newest public transportation infrastructure - the NYC Ferry – to explore waterfront projects including Brooklyn Bridge Park, Domino Park, Hunters Point South, the East Midtown Greenway, and Malt Drive Park —focusing on trail connectivity, stormwater management, and urban design, while discussing policies and strategies that shape urban communities and improve quality of life.

Featuring:
Franny Civitano, Senior Vice President & Deputy Director, New York City Economic Development Corporation
Steven Lee, Principal, SWA / Balsley
Tal Fuerst, Senior Designer, SCAPE
Gullivar Shepard, Partner, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Sanjukta Sen, Senior Associate, Field Operations
Tom Klein, Waterfront Planning & Design Advisor, Waterfront Alliance

This session will start and end with a walking tour, please expect approximately 1 mile of walking at either end.

Start: Central Park North / 110th Street Subway Stop

Join Transportation Alternatives Youth & Schools Organizer for an interactive deep dive into one of TA's newest resources: the Green Schools, Safe Streets Toolkit. On this field tour we will critically examine the streetscape and surroundings of a local school and discuss tangible solutions that would contribute to a safer and greener environment for our young people. The purpose of the Toolkit is to empower students to envision more beautiful, resilient, and safer streets around their school. While it is designed with schools in mind, this toolkit can be adapted to evaluate any space you want to spark a conversation around mobility justice and environmental resilience.

Featuring:
Lauren Newman, Youth and Schools Organizer, Transportation Alternatives

Location: NYU Kimmel Center Room 802

“There Are No Accidents” author and Transportation Alternatives senior strategist Jessie Singer will lead an interactive lecture on the origins and applications of the Safe Systems approach. Learn how to shift your city from individualized, behavior-based responses to systemic safety solutions and save lives.

Featuring:
Jessie Singer, Senior Strategist, Transportation Alternatives

Start: Journal Square PATH, Jersey City
End: Grove Street PATH, Jersey City

Join us on a field tour showcasing urban transformation through pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, intersection safety techniques, and placemaking. We'll explore how closing slip lanes, adding pedestrian plazas, and incorporating Vision Zero principles are reshaping our streets for walking and biking.

Highlights include:

- Homestead Place, a fully pedestrianized street
- Protected bike lanes extending to Journal Square
- Bergen Square’s transformation with crosswalks, trees, and benches
- Future bike lanes and safety improvements at McGinley Square

We’ll discuss the challenges and successes of creating safe, people-centered streets!

Featuring:
Michael Manzella, Director of Transportation Planning, Jersey City
Lyndsey Scofield, Senior Transportation Planner, Jersey City
Drusilla Hengel, Principal, Nelson\Nygaard

Expect approximately 1 mile of walking and 5-6 miles of biking.

We will lead a bike tour of a portion of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, highlighting several different typographies of greenway designing, and discussing the strengths and challenges of each in terms of implementation, safety, and suitability for different types of greenway users. The tour will also pass several locations of sensors and intercept surveys from the recently-completed Greenway User Study.

The Tour will start in Brooklyn Bridge Park near the corner of Old Fulton Street and Furman Street (near Pier 1), travel along the Greenway to Red Hook, then backtrack and go through DUMBO, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint, ending near the Newtown Barge Playground.

Featuring:
Kathy Park Price, Brooklyn Organizer, Transportation Alternatives
Hunter Armstrong, Executive Director, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative
Brian Hedden, Advocacy & Greenway Projects Coordinator, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative

Ride Distance: 9.5 miles

Start: Broadway & 31st Street (NW corner)
End: Queens Plaza South & Crescent Street

Take a walking tour of recently installed street infrastructure in Queens. The tour will cover the Crescent Street protected bike lane, the new 31st Avenue Bike Boulevard, and the planned Queens Waterfront Greenway. We will also visit the yet-to-open Queensboro Bridge South Outer Walkway. This tour offers a closer look at the evolving transportation and bike infrastructure in the area.

Featuring:
Laura Shepard, Queens Organizer, Transportation Alternatives

Expect an approximately three mile walk.

Location: Skyscraper Museum

Mingle with your fellow Vision Zero Cities attendees for a casual Happy Hour at the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan. Enjoy food, drinks, and other activities!