The New York State Department of Transportation has announced four public meetings to accept input on the NYSDOT Active Transportation Strategic Plan (ATSP). The ATSP has been under development for several years and is meant to outline how NYSDOT will improve New York’s transportation network for walking, bicycling, wheelchair use, and micromobility.

How can you help?  Come to one of these public meetings and share your personal experiences!

Do you ride or walk for transportation? How safe and convenient is it for you to get around your community without a car? Has NYSDOT been a good partner to pedestrians and cyclists in your community? How could NYSDOT help make your transportation safer, and your community better?

More details at https://www.nysdotwalkbikeplan.com/get-involved.htm

• September 1 - Albany Library (5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.)
• September 2 - Rochester Public Library (5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.)
• September 3 - Hauppauge Public Library (5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.)
• September 4 - Virtual (12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.)

In addition to sharing your personal experiences, here are some specific points you might encourage NYSDOT to consider:

• Support local initiatives to reduce speeds: Lower speed limits are a best practice for safety. NYSDOT should defer to municipal requests to lower speed limits on state roads through local towns - espeically when the community has reduced the speed limit on surrounding streets! Slow speeds are essential where people walk and bike as well as drive. If your community hasn’t yet changed your speed limit to 25 miles per hour, read more here to see if your community can make this life saving change.

• Dedicate funding and make spending information easily available:  The ATSP should call for dedicated funding for the construction and maintenance of safe, connected active transportation facilities, and should commit NYSDOT to clear, accessible, and regular public reporting on spending related to Complete Streets and active transportation. The public should be able to easily see what projects were funded, how much was spent, and which funding sources were used.
   
• Evaluate Organizational Structure: NYSDOT should commit meaningful human resources to ensuring that the needs of vulnerable road users are carefully considered in all new and major rehabilitation work. NYSDOT staff have many competing responsibilities – how does NYSDOT ensure that vulnerable road users are a priority? Is the staff to do this work sufficient? How does NYSDOT compare to other states? Is there clear reporting and accountability? These are all questions we hope the ATSP will answer!
   
• Update Manuals and Regulations: Unsafe road designs were locked-in decades ago when they were codified into design manuals like NYSDOT’s Highway Design Manual, supplement to the MUTCD, streetlighting policy, and other guidelines. NYSDOT’s guidance should match or exceed national best practices for vulnerable road user safety! What would it be like if every state road outside Town/Village centers had a wide, safe, flat shoulder, and every state road inside Town/Village centers had reasonable speed limits and safe infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians?  Both the National Association of Transportation Officials and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials include strong best practices for safety. NYSDOT’s Highway manuals and guidelines should be at least as good!!

• Make Crash Data easily available. New York City residents can easily review timely, anonymized crash data by accessing http://vzv.nyc.  The rest of the state deserves no less! NYSDOT should create an easy to use, public resource for the entire state. Most of this data is already centrally located in NYSDOT’s CLEAR system - but it needs to opened to the public with a flexible, simple interface.
   
• Embrace the Safe Systems approach. People make mistakes. Our transportation system must be designed to prevent those mistakes from causing serious injuries and fatalities. That means safer vehicles, better education, and most importantly – better infrastructure!  We need more and better-connected protected bike lanes, multi-use trails, and pedestrian infrastructure statewide.

The suggestions above are drawn in part from our recommendations for the NYSDOT Transportation Master Plan 2050. These recommendations were developed by NYBC and our colleagues at the NYS Safe Streets Coalition when the draft Transportation Master Plan 2050 was released in early 2025.  The final 2050 plan has not yet been released and is now expected in 2026.

NYSDOT has not yet made a draft Active Transportation Strategic Plan available for review, so comments at this stage must be general. Information about the NYSDOT’s page about the ATSP is available here.

NYBC will be providing comments as well, and we welcome your input - send suggestions to nybc@nybc.net, subject: ATSP Comments.

nybc@nybc.net | www.nybc.net

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