Upstate Leading the Charge for Safer Streets
New York Focus recently featured the impressive strides that Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany have made in recent years towards safer and more cyclist-friendly streets.
The organizations that NY Focus highlights - GObike Buffalo, Reconnect Rochester, Albany’s Capital Streets, and Syracuse’s Moving People Transportation Coalition - are all members of NYS Safe Streets Coalition, which NYBC co-chairs. Working together makes us stronger! If you are part of an organization that would like to join the coalition, check out nyssafestreets.org/about
Here are a few highlights from the article:
In Buffalo, work is underway to reconstruct a stretch of Main Street, including Buffalo’s first dedicated protected bike lane. A previously treacherous-to-navigate Niagara Square is undergoing a redesign to improve traffic circulation and safety for cyclists and pedestrians. Justin Booth, former leader of GObike Buffalo, now serves as the city’s parking commissioner and envisions more bike-friendly city initiatives coming down the road.
Albany is seeing pedestrian and cyclist-friendly infrastructure improvements including a new shared-used path crossing the Hudson River, connecting the Empire State Trail and the Albany Skyway. Albany committed to Vision Zero in 2024, a nationwide effort to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. The city lowered residential speed limits to 25 mph in 2025, introduced school speed zone cameras and speed humps and saw crashes reduce significantly. Albany County legislature recently enacted a law requiring motorists give three feet distance when passing cyclists. NYS Safe Streets Coalition is fighting for a statewide safe passing law, but until we are successful we encourage counties to pass local laws - find information about the seven counties who have done that already, and how you can get started at https://nybc.net/advocacy/dspcounty.
Rochester signed on to Vision Zero in 2024, and is working on joining Albany to reduce speed limits from 30 to 25 mph. The city received $24M from the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All Program which is helping create a safer network of streets for bicyclists and pedestrians through improvements such as raised crosswalks, traffic signal improvement, and building a 63-mile bicycle spine network of bike lanes for a seamless bike transportation network.
Syracuse is taking steps to move street safety and cycling efforts forward. This year, the city of Syracuse created a new Transportation and Mobility Director city position to spearhead these initiatives. Syracuse joined Vision Zero last year, and is improving more than 100 city blocks for cyclists through bike lanes, pavement markings and other traffic calming measures. A NYS DOT project is also underway to reconnect downtown Syracuse neighborhoods, and includes new dedicated bike lanes, crosswalks, sidewalks and traffic signals.
This work could not get done without the efforts of bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations, passionate cyclists, and concerned community members. New York Bicycling Coalition is proud to co-chair the NYS Safe Streets Coalition, which brings organizations together to fight for statewide legislative and funding improvements. Our steering committee meets monthly to share strategies and learn from each other as we work to improve conditions in their cities and across the state. Reach out to NYBC to learn more!
