{"id":141731384,"date":"2009-06-29T09:49:44","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T09:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141731384"},"modified":"2009-06-29T09:49:44","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T09:49:44","slug":"long-island-nysdot-office-kills-pedestrian-safety-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141731384","title":{"rendered":"Long Island NYSDOT Office Kills Pedestrian Safety Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long Island has the two most dangerous roads in the region for pedestrians, the Hempstead Turnpike and Sunrise Highway.  Respectively, 15 and 12 pedestrians perished on the roadways between 2005 and 2007, continuing a long-term trend of Nassau and Suffolk Counties having some of the most dangerous roads  in New York.<br \/>\nBut the numbers didn\u2019t stop NYSDOT\u2019s Long Island regional office, Region 10, from eliminating its Local Safe Streets and Traffic Calming Grant Program. The program, established in 2000, provided $2.7 million a year for pedestrian and bike projects throughout Nassau and Suffolk Counties (see MTR # 292).  It has paid for over 40 projects in towns including Oyster Bay and Great Neck.<br \/>\nNo public announcements related to the program had been made since 2006, so MTR recently inquired about the projects the program has funded.<br \/>\nIn response, we received an email from a Region 10 spokesperson that said the program was \u201cunder review\u201d (read:  eliminated) but that it had succeeded in  \u201cproviding examples for municipalities to emulate on their roads\u201d (read: towns should pay for pedestrian and bicycle projects themselves).<br \/>\nThe most troubling part of the communication was the reasoning behind the decision, which demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), the federal program authorized under SAFETEA-LU that funded the local safe streets grants. According to the spokesperson, these funds \u201ccan only be used on roads on the federal-aid highway system\u201d and \u201crequire a 20% local match.\u201d<br \/>\nIn fact, the HSIP funding guidelines say that \u201cfunds may be used for projects on any public road or publicly owned bicycle and pedestrian pathway or trail \u2026 the Federal share is 90 percent, except that the Federal share is 100% for certain safety improvements listed in 23 USC 120(c).<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.tstc.org\/2009\/06\/17\/long-island-nysdot-office-kills-pedestrian-safety-program\/\">https:\/\/blog.tstc.org\/2009\/06\/17\/long-island-nysdot-office-kills-pedestrian-safety-program\/<\/a>oldId.20090629094944843<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long Island has the two most dangerous roads in the region for pedestrians, the Hempstead Turnpike and Sunrise Highway. Respectively, 15 and 12 pedestrians perished on the roadways between 2005 and 2007, continuing a long-term trend of Nassau and Suffolk Counties having some of the most dangerous roads in New York. But the numbers didn\u2019t &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141731384\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Long Island NYSDOT Office Kills Pedestrian Safety Program&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141731384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141731384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141731384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141731384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141731384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141731384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141731384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}