In South Bend, IN, residents and city staff painted a temporary design in the street as part of a demonstration project to test safety improvements.
Americans want to walk and bike more. But as long as we continue designing our streets to prioritize moving cars—not people—as quickly as possible, those walking will continue to be killed in larger numbers. How is SGA changing this? This year, our National Complete Streets Coalition launched the Safe Streets Academy. Over the course of several months, our experts worked with three cities to build skills in safer street design and then helped them put these skills into practice with real demonstration projects that transformed their streets, intersections, and neighborhoods into slower, safer places for people—proving the value of safer streets. We are repeating this work with three more cities in 2019, but we’d love to expand it to even more places. Supporting SGA means supporting safer streets.
Our Transportation for America program is putting intense public pressure on the Federal Transit Administration for failing to award capital grants to building and expanding public transit.
The Trump administration has declared war on transit funding. Twice now, they’ve asked Congress to end the program that cities use to build or expand transit. Twice now, Congress has refused and given USDOT more than $2.3 billion to advance these transit projects. Yet USDOT has awarded less than a quarter of those funds. Our national advocacy and media work is shining the spotlight on USDOT’s intransigence, forcing FTA Administrator Jane Williams to respond publicly after regular questions from members of Congress and major newspaper editorial boards saying “show us the money!” We’ll need your help to continue this drumbeat as the Trump administration continues their hostility toward transit, something that communities of all sizes are clamoring for more of to help attract talent, stay competitive, and keep everyone moving. Supporting SGA means supporting improved public transit.
We are on track to provide tangible help to dozens of communities of nearly all sizes in 2019.