City Officials Adopt ‘Safe Routes for Seniors’ as Priority

Submission Date: December 2009

State/Territory Submitted on the Behalf of: New York

States/Territories Involved: New York

Domain Addressed:

Environmental Approaches

Public Health Issue:

• Walking is an easy, low cost way for seniors and others to get daily physical activity.
• Seniors are a vulnerable pedestrian group, representing about a third of New York City’s pedestrian injuries and fatalities although they are only thirteen percent of the city’s population.
• Over the next twenty years the city will experience a large increase in the population of older adult residents.
• Creating safer streets makes it possible for city-dwelling seniors and others to be physically active, important for promoting a healthy heart, reducing the risk of obesity, and improving quality of life.

Program Action:

• Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group, started the Safe Routes for Seniors campaign with a grant from the New York State Department of Health to achieve two goals: encouraging older adults to walk more by improving their neighborhood pedestrian environment and reducing senior pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
• Meetings with local partners in nine city communities elicited ideas from seniors on improving their streets and guiding senior residents in documenting dangerous conditions using maps, measuring wheels, stop watches and disposable cameras.
• Four neighborhoods held design workshops where senior citizens had the opportunity to collaborate with urban planners to draft short and long term proposals to enhance safety and ‘walkability’ at priority locations.
• Transportation Alternatives works with local elected officials, coalitions and senior residents to bolster community support for these proposals.

Impact/Accomplishments:

• This program has taken a major, unaddressed quality of life issue for senior citizens and made it a priority for the Mayor, City Council Chairman and Department of Transportation Commissioner. Results include:
  • Improved infrastructure including new curb-cut ramps, stop bars, a pedestrian park, signal timing changes, as well as lighting at a dangerous corner and one street closure
  • Development of the “Age Friendly New York” Initiative which will create a blueprint for transportation and pedestrian safety for senior citizens, announced by the City Council Speaker and New York Academy of Medicine
  • Creation of the mayor’s “All Ages Project” to bring street improvements to twenty-five areas where seniors have been involved in a large number of pedestrian accidents.
  • Development of the Elder District Policy to educate legislators on improving streets for seniors and funding these improvements on a citywide scale

Program Areas:

Health Equity and Cultural Competency, Healthy Communities (general)

State Contact Information:

New York
Karla Quintero
Transportation Alternatives
646-873-6024
research@transalt.org

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