Thanks to all of you who joined us for the kickoff meeting of the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership, or have joined us since online. The standing-room only crowd at the town hall was a crystal-clear indication that traffic safety is a critically important issue throughout New York City, let alone Park Slope.

Since the meeting, the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership has been busy refining our mission, coalescing with other groups, and planning next steps – including the launch of our first campaign.

While participants at the December town hall raised a number of concerns about traffic safety (and proposed a number of potential solutions), the issue of unsafe speeds on neighborhood streets was at the top of the list.

As many of you know, New York City began implementing Neighborhood Slow Zones around the city in 2012 (following a pilot program in the Bronx). A Neighborhood Slow Zone reduces the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph and adds safety measures within a designated area in order to change driver behavior. The goal of the Neighborhood Slow Zone program is to lower the frequency and severity of crashes. Slow Zones also seek to enhance quality of life by reducing cut-through traffic and road noise in residential neighborhoods.

The Park Slope Civic Council and Park Slope Neighbors submitted a joint application for a Park Slope Neighborhood Slow Zone in 2012, but we unfortunately didn't make the cut. Nor did Park Slope get the nod in 2013, when several more Slow Zones were implemented, including one in nearby Boerum Hill. This past November, the city announced that it would roll out 15 additional Slow Zones through 2016, but again, Park Slope was left off the list.

While we're fortunate that Park Slope experiences, relatively speaking, fewer violent crashes than many of the other neighborhoods awarded Slow Zones, we're obviously not immune. We're bordered by two of the more dangerous arterial roads in New York City in Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues. Furthermore, taking concrete steps to prevent crashes before they happen makes more sense than waiting until our frequency of dangerous incidents makes us more "qualified."

Since Mayor de Blasio has said he would like to see the number of Neighborhood Slow Zones increased significantly (and he knows a thing or two about Park Slope), and the prospects for a citywide 20 mile-per-hour speed limit are unclear, the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership is launching a campaign to have Park Slope designated a Neighborhood Slow Zone. Much of the groundwork has been done with our original application, and now we intend to demonstrate the broad public commitment to lower speeds by collecting signatures – lots of signatures.

You can do your part by signing our online petition today, and encouraging your friends and neighbors to do the same. We'll also be circulating paper petitions via our Block Captains and at local events. Our aim is to show overwhelming support in Park Slope for lowering the speed limit – support that the Department of Transportation and Mayor de Blasio won't be able to ignore.

Please don't delay in adding your name to the burgeoning list of Park Slope residents who believe that 20's Plenty for Us.

The 78th Precinct, which encompasses the entirety of Park Slope, has fully embraced its key role in the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership. Last month, Deputy Inspector Michael Ameri, the 78th's Commanding Officer, began holding a regular monthly traffic-safety meeting, open to anyone concerned about making local streets safer. The monthly traffic-safety meetings will take place the last Tuesday of each month, at 6:30 pm, usually at 78th Precinct headquarters at 65 6th Avenue. The sessions are followed immediately by the regular monthly 78th Precinct Community Council meetings. The next meeting is Tuesday, February 25, at 6:30 p.m.

The 78th Precinct is doing much more than just talking the talk, however. In January, officers from the 78th began conducting undercover failure-to-yield sting operations, in which one plainclothes officer would enter a crosswalk with the right of way. Drivers who didn't yield as required by law were pulled over farther down the block by a second officer, and given a summons. Drivers' failure to yield to pedestrians is a top cause of fatal and serious-injury crashes, so Deputy Inspector Ameri plans to make these operations a regular part of the precinct's enforcement tool kit. This kind of commitment to Vision Zero has many people, including Councilmember Brad Lander, calling the 78th Precinct a "model" for all of New York City.

February 20, 6:30 p.m., Community Board 6 Transportation Committee
February 24, 10:00 a.m., City Council Joint Oversight Hearing on Vision Zero
February 25, 6:30 p.m., 78th Precinct Traffic-Safety Meeting

Please forward this newsletter to a friend. Click here to join the Park Slope Street Safety Partnership mailing list and/or to enlist as a Block Captain. Block Captains will be called upon from time to time to act as liaisons with neighbors, circulate petitions, and disseminate pertinent information.

Contact us at ParkSlopeStreetSafety@gmail.com.

Credits: Logo – Pablo Pineda / Photo – Dmitry Gudkov