One year ago, your support allowed Los Angeles Walks to hire our first staff member, Emilia Crotty, as a full time policy and program manager. To mark this milestone, we’ve compiled a list of four things we are proud to have accomplished since then.

As a direct result of your support, these are your accomplishments. Thank you for making it all possible...   

1. This year, you built a citywide coalition committed to creating safe, healthy streets.

Over the last 12 months, more than 20 community organizations and concerned individuals came together to form the Vision Zero Alliance. The Alliance is a unique coalition that supports and influences the City’s ambitious Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Los Angeles by 2025.  

Your support allowed Los Angeles Walks to facilitate monthly Vision Zero Alliance meetings, liaison with City agencies, and foster the development of the Alliance, which creates a unified constituency for safe streets in Los Angeles.

Packed house for @LAvisionzero new member meeting. @AARPCA is proud to be a founding partner #VisionZeroLA pic.twitter.com/c7ITlzC0yn

— Stephanie Ramirez (@StephRami8) August 25, 2016

Through your support, the Alliance has pushed the City of Los Angeles to (1) increase and improve its community engagement methods, (2) commit to advancing social equity through engineering investments, and (3) make enforcement strategies more transparent.

We are proud that these efforts have brought national attention to the Los Angeles Vision Zero Alliance. Thanks to Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit Program for partially funding this vital program.

2. You offered seniors a chance to improve their quality of life.

Your support created the beginnings of a Safe Routes for Seniors campaign in the Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood just west of Downtown LA, a dense neighborhood where more seniors are involved in traffic collisions than anywhere else in Los Angeles. Safe Routes for Seniors engages older adults to identify and champion street safety improvements in their neighborhood.

Through the program, you’ve made it possible for residents to identify obstacles to walking, develop a set of design solutions to improve walkability and safety for senior residents, and advocate for physical changes on the streets and sidewalks they frequent. A more walkable environment will improve the physical and emotional health of senior residents, and reduce social isolation.

3. You installed wayfinding signs in South Los Angeles.

This year you also helped to launch the Walk This Way/Caminale wayfinding signage program. Along with the support of ioby (In Our Backyard), you made it possible for a group of teenagers to lead a community-based project that installed 11 wayfinding signs along Central Avenue, a main route in their South Los Angeles neighborhood.

The signs provide information on walking and biking times between various destinations, show connectivity between neighborhoods, celebrate community history and assets, and encourage walking. A pilot program, we will use this experience to develop a Walk This Way toolkit for easy implementation in other Los Angeles communities.

4. You got hundreds of people outside to walk their city.

Finally, you offered hundreds of people a chance to experience dynamic and diverse neighborhoods across the city through twelve group walks, all led by volunteer Walk Ambassadors. In addition to monthly walks, you made it possible for Los Angeles Walks to host four WalkLAvias - the simplest way to CicLAvia.

The best thing people can do for walking in Los Angeles is to get out and walk, and these group walks make that possible for so many people.

Thank you for all you’ve done this year to make walking safe, accessible, fun, and equitable for all Angelenos. We look forward to working with you to do even more in 2017.

All the best and safe streets for all,

Deborah Murphy

Founder and Executive Director