Thank you to all the people and partners who helped us to champion mobility in 2025 — by coming out for a community bike ride or rally, showing up to public meeting, partnering with us on a project, or sharing the good word on social media! With your help we were able to accomplish a whole lot this year.
Financial support is another way to help grow the mobility movement. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll take a look at the membership levels and gift options, and make a donation toward our Membership Drive to help us keep up the good work in 2026!
Top 10 Things We’re Most Proud of in 2025
(In no particular order of importance)
#1
A New Safe Streets Program
2025 brought the birth of our Downtown SmART Streets project! In our inaugural year, we installed curb extension murals at E. Main & Gibbs and Broad & Fitzhugh. We also completed our 5th Complete Streets Makeover project that transformed the intersection of Avenue D & Hollenbeck St in the El Camino neighborhood.
We’re super proud of the on-street projects undertaken this year that engaged the community in demonstrating how our streets can be made safer for everyone. Shout out to all our community partners and to project manager extraordinaire, Lourdes Sharp, for phenomenal work this year!
#2
Standing Up For Public Transportation
In 2025, our advocacy team worked alongside New Yorkers for Transportation Equity and VOCAL-NY, on the Get Around New York campaign that asks for accessible, reliable, affordable public transportation for all New Yorkers. We gathered rider voices and experiences through Voices of Transit interviews to share with lawmakers on Transit Equity Day in Albany, and hosted several town hall meetings with local RTS riders to strategize efforts that center and uplift transportation needs. We gathered local partners to sign on to a letter to Governor Hochul urging full funding. Unfortunately, our funding asks were not fully met, but we built a lot of power for the to fight for funding in the coming year, and avert a budget crisis that could lead to service cuts.
Locally, we spent time midyear weighing in on RTS OnDemand service plan proposal, spreading the word about the changes and gathering rider input. During the public input process, we expressed concern that proposed changes to an already struggling service will add further cost and hardship for riders. As the changes take effect, we continue to gather and bring rider voices and experiences to the decision makers at RTS about how the new service plan is affecting riders.
#3
Partnering on ROC Vision Zero
We spent much time this year being a strong partner with the City of Rochester on ROC Vision Zero, working together toward the bold goal to bring the number of traffic fatalities and severe injuries down to zero. We started out the year helping put together the Beacon’s Vision Zero Forum where we packed the house with “Reconnecters” to give encouragement & input. We’ve been highly engaged serving on the RVZ Task Force and its subcommittees, and in June, took a trip to Albany with Councilmember Gruber and others to learn lessons from their Vision Zero experiences. We’ve talked it up in the media, helped the public understand all the parts (like what does Bus Rapid Transit have to do with safe streets?), and informed the implementation of new bus arm cameras and other aspects of the RVZ plan.
We also spent time honoring lives lost, connecting with families, developing support networks, and gathering people with a National Day of Remembrance vigil and installation on Parcel 5. Connecting to the personal pain of crash victims motivates us to keep up the work to make our streets safer, to save lives and reduce the harm inflicted by road violence.
#4
Fighting Nationally & Celebrating Locally on Bike Infrastructure
In 2025, we sounded the alarm on the assault on bike infrastructure as we saw the gains and investments in recent years under threat, and action being taken at the national level that threatens the safety of people on bikes. Our advocacy team stayed in close contact with national advocacy groups about what’s happening and response strategies, gave local cyclists opportunities to take action, and in March, visited Capital Hill to share our concerns directly with federal legislators.
On the home front, we spent time tracking and urging progress, and celebrating wins as we continue to see slow and steady investment and progress throughout Monroe County. We cheered the first ever concrete barrier-protected bike lane on West Main Street as the City of Rochester continues to step up its commitment to bike safety. We unveiled a new Bike Spine Tracker tool, and had a 5th season of Mind the Gap public voting campaign to highlight critical gaps. In August, nearly 100 area cyclists came out for our Keep Us Safe on State Roads rally to send a strong message to NYSDOT that we need safer infrastructure on state controlled roads.
#5
Getting More People on Bikes and Riding Together
Community rides all summer long in partnership with the City of Rochester & Brighton Recreation, Light Up the Night rides, bike to work pitstops, bike history tours, and our annual ROC ‘n Roll ride – all get people on bikes and riding together! In May, we coordinated Rochester Bike Week and kicked it off with Mayor Evans and County Executive Bello who gave a rousing Bike Month Proclamation! We also worked to inspire and engage people online with @ROCCycling social media channels and a #ROCbyBike series where everyday bike riders share why they love to get around on two wheels.
#6
Keeping Cyclists Safe on the Road
In 2025, we continued our efforts to get people feeling comfortable and safe on the road through classroom and on-bike educational opportunities. This year, we were thrilled to sponsor Hulda Yau to become Rochester’s first Spanish-speaking certified bike educator, and partner with Ibero-American Action League to deliver bike education classes to Spanish speaking residents. We also struck up a new partnership with Rochester Refugee Resettlement to offer classes to Syrian residents in their own language. As part of our commitment to equity and inclusion, we removed the cost barrier by making our on-bike Smart Cycling classes free. We also keep our area’s pool of League Cycling Instructors (LCIs) busy teaching learn to balance and ride classes in City Rec Centers!
Online resources like our custom bike route assistance and ROC Easy Bike Map and educational blog content like the most common crashes, offer routes and tips to safely move around our community on two wheels. This year, we made a poster drawing attention to our online bike resources and dropped one off at every bike shop in Monroe County!
#7
Putting a Spotlight on Land Use & Zoning
Building on last year’s The Sprawl Effect edition of Rochester Street Films, we continued to raise consciousness around the costs and consequences of our auto-centric land use policies, and how we can grow our communities smarter to deliver access, vitality and upward mobility. The Transportation Impact Collective (TIC) chose this topic as a focus of our 2025 efforts, and together we joined community partners in holding several workshops throughout the year on more inclusive zoning policies, advocating for denser, mixed use zoning along transit corridors and eliminating parking minimums to spur housing in-fill development, and sharing the economic analysis offered by Urban3.
The TIC is a 20-member group that exists to unite local efforts around equitable, systemic solutions to address our region’s transportation challenges, and Reconnect Rochester provides “backbone” support to the group.
#8
Engaging and Spreading the Good Word
Through our quarterly engagement breakfasts, community group presentations, tabling at community events, lunch and learns, walking tours and a packed house Rochester Street Films event, we stayed busy all year spreading the good word and inviting folks from every corner of our community to get involved in our local mobility movement.
Our social media audience has ballooned this year with Chaz at the helm engaging people online with sharing car-lite stories, more video content, and engaging blog content. Our work to build media relationships paid off in spades with many more opportunities to share our message and expertise on mobility topics with appearances and quotes on podcasts, radio shows, news stories & articles, and we even got to represent ROC in national outlet Strong Towns!
Our ROC edition of Week Without Driving in September was a new effort to encourage Monroe County residents to explore their mobility options beyond the car. We were thrilled with the collective impact we were able to have, with 44 participants logging 616 non-car trips and 1,970 non-driving miles!
And that’s not to mention engaging people in our advocacy work via weekly mobility action alerts, hosting a ROC neighborhood leaders conversation, convening a town & village advocate group, and producing a candidate questionnaire to inform your vote, to name a few.
#9
Bolstering Our Organizational Leadership
Strong leadership is an essential ingredient to any organization’s success. In January, Reconnect Rochester welcomed three incredible new members to our Board of Directors. Their diverse backgrounds and shared commitment to making a meaningful impact in our community will strengthen our efforts and broaden our reach.
To help ensure a bright future at Reconnect Rochester, the Board of Directors appointed Mary Staropoli and Cody Donahue as the organization’s Co-Executive Directors. In an announcement blog, we shared why we made the shift to a shared leadership model, what makes it work, and Mary and Cody’s respective areas of focus.
#10
Finding Our New Home!
After a lengthy search process, in September we packed up and moved our offices from The Hungerford (our home for the last 9 years), to a new home at the Harro East in downtown ROC! We can’t believe our luck in finding a place that fit all our needs that will serve as both an office space for our growing staff team, as well as a “community hub” to host events, meetings, classes and conversations. And we get to be part of all the exciting development downtown, including having a front row seat to the Inner Loop North development as it happens in the coming years!
Over 100 people came through our October Community Open House, and we’ve welcomed many more as we begin to make good use of the awesome space. A ribbon cutting with the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Evans and County Executive Bello in November made it official.
Whew! What a year. Reconnect Rochester’s organizational strength is made possible in great part by the continued support of Dr. Scott MacRae, a generous grant from the ESL Charitable Foundation’s Building Strong Neighborhoods initiative, and a growing base of supporting members — folks like you who share ownership for the mission and express that with your dollars.