Sunday, October 31, 2010

City of Dunwoody Receives Golden Shoe Award


The City of Dunwoody is honored to receive a 2010 Golden Shoe Award from the Pedestrians Educating Drivers on Safety (PEDS) organization in recognition of efforts to make Dunwoody a pedestrian friendly City. This is the first Golden Shoe Award for Dunwoody and a strong acknowledgement of its dedication to all pedestrian safety and accessibility issues. The City will officially receive the award in a ceremony held on November 10 at Georgia State University.

“Improving Dunwoody’s sidewalk infrastructure is important not only to the City but to the residents,” stated Michael Smith, Director of Public Works. “Receiving this award is validation of our commitment to make Dunwoody more walk-able for the enjoyment of everyone who lives and visits here.”

One of the City’s top priorities is to create an environment where pedestrians can safely navigate in and around Dunwoody. The policies and projects completed this year focused on making Dunwoody known as a City where children can safely walk to school. In the spring of this year, City Council adopted a sidewalk improvement policy that identified future sidewalk projects and outlined a process for prioritizing these initiatives. By approving this policy, Council made it a priority to fund sidewalk projects in school walking zones. The City has already completed a new sidewalk segment at Dunwoody Elementary School and will complete two other projects in school zones by year’s end.

Additionally, the City has completed installation of permanent radar signs that display and record driver’s speeds in each of the City’s elementary school zones. Data gathered from the first signs installed has indicated that average vehicle speeds have decreased by 3 mph in the school zones.

“Speeding in school zones and neighborhoods is a serious and pervasive problem,” stated Dunwoody Councilman, John Heneghan. “I am proud that the City was able to implement the radar signs as an effective and affordable solution of reminding drivers of their responsibilities and making our school zones safer for our children.”

For additional information regarding the Golden Shoe Award or the City’s sidewalk plan please contact Michael Smith, Director of Public Works, at michael.smith@dunwoodyga.gov or 678-382-6700. For more information on PEDS please visit their website at www.peds.org.

5 comments:

Chip said...

John:

Why isn't the City fessin' up to poor sales for the Smart Car raffle, and the snafu around the winner?

I thought you were all for open and transparent guvermint'.

Seems the City muffed the logo, the motto, and the raffle.

Not very smart, all in all, was it?

Enquiring minds want to know!!!

Chip

Ps. Maybe "The Other Dunwoody" is on to something when he refers to The Crier as the "Dunwoody Fan Magazine." They had ample time to report the results and winners this week, but didn't run much of a story on the music festival, the winners of the BotBands, the Chili cookoff, etc.

Hmmmmmmm

John Heneghan said...

I had an e-mail exchange with a member of the city staff (or was it the CVB?) about mid-week whereby I saw the name of the winner mentioned and I believe they were in the process of contacting prior to publicly releasing the name.

I also believe that as the rules stated, the prize would be converted to cash (60/40 split) if not enough tickets were sold.

As for the Crier, I'm guessing there will be a complete spread this week.

rosegorham said...

This award makes me laugh. I have been complaining about how unsafe it is for pedestrians to cross the intersection of Womack/Vermak Rd. I am almost hit there every single day while taking my daughter to school. I bet you if PEDS observed this intersection for 1/2 an hour at peak time then his award would quickly be taken away. There have been numerous letters in the Crier about how UNSAFE it is for our children to walk to school and how many more people would walk to school if they could be assured they could walk to school in safety! This award is not deserved!

Sam Lamborsky said...

Early this year, a teenage girl was hit and substantially injured during the morning drop-off at DHS. It occured at the intersection of Vanderlyn & Womack Road. It took her several weeks to recover and she was on crutches as well. Not one blog or newspaper covered the incident. At the scene EMS workers were yelling at drivers to stop and quit trying to drive around the incident and Dunwoody PD had to be called in to handle traffic.
In my opinion, people in Dunwoody don`t give a D*M about anybody but themselves!

Thank goodness we now have some viable newspapers in Dunwoody, ie, Reporter News and Neighbor News!

Bob Fiscella said...

Dunwoody Dad,

I don't live far from the corner of Vermack and Vanderlyn. If you have news (such as what you mentioned) - I'd be happy to place it on my blog at www.dunwoodyusa.org. I'm sure John would as well.