Reconnecters,
The Advocacy Team has kicked off 2026 with a slate of meetings with our local leaders to advocate for the things you care about: safer streets, more bike infrastructure, and places that feel safe to walk in.
City of Rochester Mayor Evans & New Vision Zero Report
We began with our annual sit-down with newly (re)inaugurated Mayor Evans and his newly confirmed Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Services, Kabutey Ocansey on the same day the City of Rochester officially started issuing bus patrol tickets (If you have a sec, watch the bonkers video of cars passing stopped school buses). During our meeting we focused on several ROC Vision Zero topics:
- We should lower the speed limit to 25 MPH in the City of Rochester as soon as possible. The Mayor confirmed the City is moving forward with this change, as reflected in the ROC Vision Zero report.
- The City can establish more quick-build mechanisms to quickly respond to traffic safety concerns, build confidence in ROC Vision Zero, and try new approaches to multimodal safety.
- We are committed to working together with the City’s Vision Zero task force to help bring national examples from Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento and even small municipalities like Keyport, NJ to the table.
You can read our Executive Summary of City of Rochester Hopes & Asks and our Budget Advocacy Letter here.
We also followed up with Mayor Evans about the building of the Intermodal Station Bus Terminal Phase 2, which NYSDOT has funds to build and Amtrak has responsibility to operate. We understand they are working behind the scenes on several issues, but we are also advocating to NYSDOT in Albany to press forward on the design of the station.
Last week, the City also released its first ROC Vision Zero report to the community. It contains a ton of useful information about what the City, partners and community stakeholders, including Reconnect Rochester, have been doing on the initiative over the past year. We’re excited about the year ahead because the report outlines several tangible projects that residents will start to see in their communities, like protected bike lanes, pedestrian enhancements, new bus amenities, and slower speeds. Driver accountability will also take center stage this spring with more public engagement around how drivers who break the law speeding or running red lights should be held accountable.
County Executive Bello Check-In
Monroe County government has been leading the charge to encourage Active Transportation Planning, expanding how community members can report traffic concerns, and to plan for sustainability. During our meeting with CE Bello, we emphasized that now we need to amp up implementation of active transportation. Towns and Villages in Monroe County have some local roads, some county roads and some state roads, and the county maintains 664 centerline miles of roads. The CATP calls for building out a network of bike lanes, but the county budget only envisions 4 miles of bike lanes per year and 10 miles of shoulder widening to make it more suitable for biking and walking per year. At that rate, we won’t have a connected network for a very very long time! Some of the town roads are state roads, which is why we’ve put so much emphasis on building a movement for safer state roads.
Read our full Monroe County Hopes & Asks document and County Budget advocacy letter.
For example, upcoming projects like Monroe Avenue in Brighton are state projects, and so we need those to also include active transportation features…speaking of which!
Monroe Avenue Public Meeting and Follow-up
Finally, we mobilized advocates to speak up at the Monroe Avenue project public meeting on Jan. 20th. NYSDOT officials heard from Reconnecters who are Britonians and everyone else who just likes to visit Brighton’s businesses by bike, by bus or on foot. As a follow-up to that meeting, we are calling on our advocates to send Action Network emails to the NYSDOT project managers to keep up the pressure. We have a meeting with the new Regional Director of NYSDOT Region 4 in early February where we’ll keep echoing our call for safer state roads.
Coming up next:
- We’re launching Voices of Transit soon with a push for transit equity and state funding to RTS
- SAVE THE DATE – February 19th we are having a community conversation starting at 6 pm on Transportation Advocacy!