New York City

Drivers across America are hitting deadly speeds in neighborhoods with lots of walkers — and a lot of them aren't even breaking the law when they do it.

The post In the U.S., Drivers Hit the Deadliest Speeds in Places People Walk appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

A week after New York City's Central Park went mostly car-free, today marked the beginning of the permanent car-free zone on the west side of Prospect Park [PDF].

When the news came out yesterday that a Staten Island grand jury had failed to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold, like many people I found the outcome difficult to comprehend. With clear video evidence showing that Pantaleo broke NYPD protocol and a coroner's report certifying that Garner's death was a homicide, this grand jury should have reached the conclusion that had eluded grand jurors in the Michael Brown case in St. Louis County: There should be a trial to determine if Pantaleo had committed a crime. But apparently that's not how our justice system works.

Noah Budnick, an accomplished advocate for safe streets and effective transit in New York City, has been named the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's new executive director and will succeed Leah Shahum, who will step down after 12 years leading the organization.

Halloween is fun because we get to be afraid of things that we know aren't really scary. But for little trick or treaters in the United States, the danger posed by reckless drivers and unsafe roads is real.

It's official: Alta Bicycle Share, the company that runs Citi Bike, has a new owner, an infusion of cash, and a fresh face at the top -- longtime transit executive Jay Walder. At a press conference this afternoon, the new team promised to correct Citi Bike's blunders and double the system's size by the end of 2017.

Ever since we broke the news that New York City's Tom Maguire would be hired as the new director of the SFMTA's Sustainable Streets Division, we've heard only positive reactions. If nothing else, there's a lot of hype building for this promising veteran of the livable streets renaissance seen under Janette Sadik-Khan's NYC Department of Transportation. On the other hand, Sadik-Khan and her executive staff had the full support of former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In sync with Bicycling Magazine naming New York America's best biking city, the NYC Department of Transportation released a report this week full of stats on the safety impact of protected bike lanes. It's the most robust data the city has released about this type of street design, and the results prove that protected bike lanes make streets safer not just for cyclists, but pedestrians and drivers as well.

Re-shaping city streets almost always runs up against some level of opposition -- it's part and parcel of physically changing what people often see as their territory. Whether residents get to have safer streets, however, often comes down to the elected leaders who stand up to the naysayers.