ALEXANDRIA FAMILIES FOR SAFE STREETS - Alexandria Families for ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
ALEXANDRIA FAMILIES
FOR SAFE STREETS
SPRING 2021
IMPROVING PEDESTRIAN
SAFETY IN 2021
On behalf of the Board of Directors of AFSS, thank you, the community of Alexandria,
for your support. We couldn’t have accomplished half of the projects that we’ve
undertaken to make our streets safer without so many terrific volunteers helping us.
In this edition of our AFSS newsletter, we'll share our accomplishments from the past 3
months, what we're working on for the remainder of 2021 to make our streets safer for
pedestrians and all vulnerable road users, some exciting news regarding a major
upgrade to our "Near Miss/Dangerous Location" survey, and more.
If you’d like to learn more about what we do, join us for one of our meetings, scheduled
for the third Tuesday of every month. Our next meetings are on Tuesday, April 20,
2021 and Tuesday, May 18, 2021. All meetings start at 6:30 p.m. and end promptly at 8
p.m. (EDT).
Sincerely,
Mike Doyle
AFSS Founding Member
1
ALX MOVES'
"GET ACTIVE CHALLENGE"
AFSS, along with seven other health & transportation community organizations, is
participating in Alexandria Moves’ “Get Active Challenge” from March 29 to May 23 with 8
weeks of activities to promote physical and mental health events.
AFSS is sponsoring the week of Monday, April 5 to Sunday, April 11. Follow us on
Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to engage in various walks in our community while
observing street safety features (or not) on our local roads. Wednesday, April 7 is also
National Walking Day.
Let’s get outside this week and take
pictures of the traffic safety features around
the city. Crosswalks, safety signs, traffic
signals are all meant to keep pedestrians,
bicyclists, and drivers safe.
Send us pictures with the location and
description to post on Twitter, Facebook, or
Instagram. And if you see something that
could be improved to make Alexandria
safer, we want to know.
SPRING2ACTION EVENT
Spring2Action is AFSS’s major fund raiser of the year. This year we
hope to raise $4,000 in order to fund our costs of over 1,500 3-way
blinkers that we give away to organizations like ALIVE, Carpenter’s
Shelter, Senior Services of Alexandria, West End Food Panty, etc.
We also provide street safety educational material to ACPS schools
and advocate for traffic regulations like the “Hands Free” law and
most recently, the “Stop at Crosswalks for Pedestrians or other
Vulnerable Road Users” and the new 15 mph speed limit law in
residential neighborhoods (at the discretion of the jurisdiction).
As an all-volunteer organization with no staff expenses, donated
dollars are efficiently utilized to help make the above programs
successful. We are looking to all of our supporters to contribute
whatever they can on Spring2Action to help continue our critical
work of keeping our streets safe for all.
Visit AFSS Spring2Action Page on April 28 to donate (early
donations start April 14). Thank you for your support!
2
AFSS LEGISLATION
VICTORY
AFSS, along with other street safety advocacy organization, successfully advocated for the
new 15 miles-per-hour (mph) speed limit bill, which allows a jurisdiction to impose 15 mph or
20 mph speed limits in residential neighborhoods or business districts if the jurisdiction
elects to do so. AFSS volunteers sent out around 200 handwritten postcards (the NoVA
FSS chapters collectively sent 400 postcards) to House of Delegates and Senate
policymakers during this General Assembly 2021 season, asking them to vote "yes" on the
15 mph bill. The 15 mph Speed Limit bill is now awaiting the governor’s signature.
We encourage Alexandria City’s Transportation & Environmental Services Department to
use this opportunity to make our residential neighborhood streets safer and move the City to
#VisionZero #VisionZeroALX.
Fox 5 News report on AFSS's advocacy for the 15 mph speed limit law
effective July 1, 2021: https://novafss.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?
u=2eb0003290e8185771865ebbc&id=caa39a7422&e=5184aabbdc
AFSS ARL FSS
Visit AFSS online at
www.alxffss.org
Email inquiries to
Mike Doyle
contact@novafss.org
3
ENHANCED NEAR MISS
SURVEY
AFSS and its affiliated Families for Safe Streets (FSS) chapters in Arlington and Fairfax
County (collectively referred to as the Northern Virginia Families for Safe Street or “NoVA
FSS”), have the Near Miss survey on their respective web sites where pedestrians and
other vulnerable road users can report vehicle / pedestrian “near miss” incidents that were
almost crashes as well as describe dangerous locations so that pedestrians and/or bikers.
Currently, there is limited data analytics regarding the Near Miss/Dangerous Location
survey on the AFSS website, but it will soon be upgraded to an Esri software platform with
GIS mapping thanks to the work that the capstone studio class at the VT Graduate School
of Urban Planning is about to complete. The VT Graduate students have also built the
platform so that VDOT’s TREDS crash data involving pedestrians and cyclists can be
displayed by the jurisdictions of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax and then the Near Miss
data can overlay the TREDS crash sites to compare where the history of crashes have
happened versus where the NM incidents are happening in more of a real time setting. One
can visually see the correlation (or not) of reported Near Miss incidents versus historical
crash sites.
Alexandria Families For Safe Streets brings the community together to create safe streets for all people
to walk and bike, by telling the impact stories, educating the general public, and educating policymakers
about policies and investments that eliminate traffic-related fatalities and injuries in our city.
501(c)(3) Private Foundation
c/o Mike Doyle, Founding Member
211 North Union Street Suite 100
Alexandria, VA 22314
4You can also read
