T.A. Bronx Program Shows Way

Crossing guards, like this one in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn, are great while they are on duty, but traffic calming devices are on duty all day, every day.

From 1996 to 2000, T.A.'s the Bronx Safe Routes to School program introduced the Safe Routes to School concept to New York City through work at 38 Bronx schools. The project showed the City how to do the community education, planning and consensus building needed to generate strong support for traffic calming around schools. T.A.’s project generated strong public interest and support from the Bronx delegation to the city council. In April 1998, political support for T.A.’s Safe Routes to Schools program inspired then DOT Commissioner Dick Malchow to tell the city council that he was launching a $50 to $80 million, four year plan to create traffic calmed safety zones around all 1,300 New York City public schools. It has taken six years for the current DOT Commissioner, Iris Weinshall, to get the program off the ground. 

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