Jan 27 - PEDS Pizza Party

PEDS Pizza Party
Join other PEDS members for a great time. You'll find out about PEDS' priorities for 2009, give us your ideas, meet PEDS' staff, elect board members, network and enjoy delicious pizza! Slice, a terrific pizza restaurant and bar in downtown Atlanta, is hosting the event. When: Tuesday Jan 27, 6 - 8 pmWhere: Slice, 85 Poplar Street (MAP)Free for PEDS members. Cash bar.It's an easy walk from both the Peachtree Center and Five Points MARTA stations. Friends are welcome and will be asked to join PEDS at the door. We're offering a special $20 rate for first-time members who join on January 27.

About PEDS
PEDS is a member-based advocacy organization dedicated to making metro Atlanta safe and accessible for all pedestrians. When PEDS was founded in 1996, pedestrians were not yet on metro Atlanta’s radar screen. Government agencies identified transportation safety exclusively with occupant safety, engineers lacked information about the needs of pedestrians, police officers ticketed crosswalk law violators only after someone had been hit, and media attention to pedestrians was limited to one-inch blurbs following fatal crashes. Worst of all, people rarely thought of themselves as pedestrians. Because of PEDS’ efforts, all that is changing.

PEDS' goals:
-Change community attitudes to favor pedestrians
-Increase walking and other pedestrian activity
-Ensure the design of pedestrian-oriented communities
-Advance the equitable use of transportation funds
-Reduce the risk to pedestrians of injury and death

Major accomplishments include:
-Transforming pedestrian safety from a non-issue in metro Atlanta to one that attracts front-page headlines, lead editorials, and lead stories on local news broadcasts.
-Prompting the Georgia Department of Transportation to adopt high visibility crosswalk markings as the state standard and to develop a Pedestrian Design Guidebook.
-Presenting workshops on pedestrian facilities design to more than 300 transportation engineers, planners, landscape architects, and community activists.
-Facilitating Police Sting Operations targeting motorists who failed to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.
-Assisting with the passage of legislation authorizing the use of cameras to ticket red-light runners.
-Prompting installation of in-street crosswalk signs.