At this week’s town hall meeting at LaGuardia College in LIC, Ydanis Rodriguez, Vanessa Gibson, Jimmy Van Bramer, Danny Dromm, Costa Constantinides, Donovan Richards, and Mark Weprin were unequivocal in their support for improving pedestrian safety, and clear-eyed about the difficulty of the challenge. NYCDOT, NYPD, TLC also made clear that they are primed for action and intend to bring about real change. The vast majority of citizen speakers spoke in support of the Vision Zero agenda, urging action in particular risk locations, or calling attention to aspects of the pedestrian safety challenge that shouldn’t be overlooked.

This is an extraordinary place to be 100 days after Mayor de Blasio’s historic Vision Zero announcement.

Now, city agencies need tools and resources to do their jobs and make this change happen. This requires support on three fronts.

First, the New York City Council Transportation Committee will hold a very important hearing at 1pm on April 30th on a package 14 city laws and 8 resolutions requesting action by the state legislature. We encourage the four Queens members of this committee (Costa G. Constantinides, I. Daneek Miller, Jimmy Van Bramer, and Mark S. Weprin) to support the entire package.

Second, the New York City Council will soon be adopting a budget for the coming year. All components of the Vision Zero agenda — planning, engineering, implementation, enforcement, and education — require resources to deliver change on the comprehensive, citywide basis the Council and the Mayor have been promising. We encourage the Queens delegation to ensure that these priorities are reflected in the budget.

Finally, some of the most important legislative steps, such as a reduced citywide speed limit, speed and red light cameras, and increased consequences for reckless drivers with suspended licenses) require action by the State Legislature in Albany. Make Queens Safer is joining Families for Safe Streets and Transportation Alternatives for a day of action in Albany on May 6th to call on our state legislators to pass pedestrian safety legislation, especially the 20 mph speed limit. So far, with the exception of a few members, the Queens delegations in the State Senate and Assembly have not signed on as cosponsors of this legislation, so it’s hard to tell where they stand. We need people concerned about these issues to join us for this event, to let our representatives know that we consider this to be a priority. More details on the Albany trip are available here.

The momentum is encouraging.  But our legislative representatives need to hear from us that their leadership is needed to provide local officials with the tools they need to carry out this important and broadly popular initiative.