“OUR MISSION IS TO RECLAIM NEW YORK CITY'S STREETS FROM THE AUTOMOBILE AND ADVOCATE FOR BETTER WALKING, BIKING, AND PUBLIC TRANSIT FOR ALL NEW YORKERS.”

For nearly 50 years, TA has led the movement for safe, equitable streets in New York City. They believe that the roads belong to the people of New York City and work with New Yorkers in every borough to build a future that rises to the needs of its many communities. 

TA uses a combination of neighborhood-level grassroots organizing and city-wide advocacy to push for changes in public policy, street design, enforcement, and resource allocation that transform the city’s streets for the better. 

As a resident, student, and healthcare administrator/ patient advocate in New York City, I value this organization's cause as it aims to create safer and more accessible streets for those who put so much into the city but might feel they get little in return. Every resident should feel safe when traveling up and down or side to side through the boroughs and should have transportation options that allow them to get to where they need to be. 

Since working for Weill Cornell Medicine | New York-Presbyterian, I’ve realized how much residents rely on public transportation, bicycles, their own feet, and Access-A-Ride. Patients rely on these outlets for diagnostic imaging appointments, blood transfusions, surgeries, fertility testing, etc. However, for New York residents, the adverse health effects of a car-filled city rule the domain. Asthma, heart disease, and preterm births rise with car pollution. Carbon emissions remain high, and climate change threatens our future. New Yorkers risk life-altering injury and death crossing the street; I’ve seen many bike riders coming in for x-rays after sustaining an injury from vehicular-related incidents during simple commutes. Patients and healthcare professionals waste time on gridlocked streets. Burdensome commutes and a lack of transportation choices isolate communities from opportunity. 

In their nyc25X25 challenge, transportation alternatives dares New York City’s leaders to end this vicious cycle by making a specific and substantial promise to convert 25 percent of car space into space for all people by 2025. For patients and New Yorkers with disabilities, this could mean a more accessible city with fewer barriers to getting around. 

Today, more than one in 10 New Yorkers are living with a disability, and more than half of those disabilities are ambulatory. But our sidewalks are commonly blocked by obstacles, like towering piles of garbage. More than half of the neighborhoods served by the subway system do not have any accessible stations, meaning hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers with disabilities must rely on Access-A-Ride, the bus, or bikes. Converting parking spaces into drop-off and pick-up zones and storage for garbage could give Access-A-Ride vehicles, which make 6.1 million trips a year, transparent access to the curb and keep sidewalks clear for easy mobility. Converting car space into bike lanes and working with Citi Bike and micro-mobility operators to offer models for those with ambulatory disabilities could provide safe transportation alternatives for people with disabilities. A network of car-free Open Streets could ease travel in a wheelchair without worrying about impassable sidewalks and inaccessible curbs.

Moreover, because I am beginning my Master’s Program in English Education and Educational Theatre, I can’t help but think about how Open Streets could benefit students and children in our community. Today, there are only eight playgrounds for every 10,000 children in Brooklyn, the least of any borough. The few play spaces available are subpar, with 24 percent rated as being in “unacceptable” condition by the New York City Comptroller. 

Three out of four school-aged children in New York City are not driven to school, and more than one in three walks. Converting a street outside every New York City school into a playspace for our city’s more than 1.3 million students and offering up car parking for community use in every neighborhood could offer kids new safe spaces to roam and parents a reprieve outside of school and home. Protected bike lanes, widened sidewalks, and Open Streets would help provide safe routes to school and encourage walking and biking for teachers, students, and their parents.

I am excited to run with this organization as I raise money to better the city I love so much. For residents I know, those I love, invisible residents who are underserved in our communities, for those I care for, my coworkers, future residents, and those I might have the privilege of teaching one day.