After one too many pedestrian deaths caused by intoxicated drivers, a new grassroots effort has emerged to stop DWI offenders—and both residents and city leaders are taking notice. From no-towing zones to more transportation options to greater awareness and responsibility, ATX Safer Streets has brought about changes to policy and behavior in just over a year. And the founders say they’re just getting started.

As a downtown pedicab driver, Joseph Boyle saw people make bad decisions almost every night. But one instance from fall 2013 stands out. Late at night in the Warehouse District, a woman stumbled out of a bar and walked unsteadily down the sidewalk, leaning on car hoods, light poles—anything that would support her. She crossed the street, fumbled in her purse and pulled out car keys with a remote entry fob. But the car she approached didn’t respond when she pushed the button, so she went to the next car. Nothing happened. By the time she got to her own car, Boyle had called the police—something he did frequently while working downtown. But before they arrived, the woman drove away.

Pedicabbers like Boyle and bartenders like Sara LeVine were used to seeing episodes like this every weekend. But after the shocking incident during 2014’s South by Southwest, when according to the arrest report, an intoxicated Rashad Owens plowed into a throng of pedestrians, killing four and injuring 20, LeVine said enough. The accident was an extreme example that got people talking about drunk driving, but the issues it brought to light weren’t new to her or to anyone else who works in or patronizes our city’s entertainment districts. LeVine saw a mismatch between the size and economic impact of Austin’s famous nightlife scene and the transportation infrastructure that served it.

Long before the deadly crash, bartenders and patrons “all complained about the same thing,” says LeVine, who’s in her mid-30s. “‘We don’t have buses, we don’t have cabs, we don’t have options for getting home safe.’ The complaining started getting even louder after that accident, and for once I noticed that city council, APD and people in charge were actually listening.” She started a petition on change.org calling for proactive solutions to change the conversation “from how to stop drunk people driving home to how to help sober people feel safe and comfortable leaving their car in their driveway.” Within a month, it gained more than 3,000 signatures and attracted the attention of Boyle, 39, who contacted LeVine. They called their effort ATX Safer Streets and put together a proposal LeVine presented to the city council a month later. The list of recommendations included extending bus and train service, adding taxis, legalizing transportation networking companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft, and making it easier for people who’d had too much to drink to leave their cars downtown overnight.

Nine days later, 32-year-old Kelly Noel, was struck and killed by a drunk driver as he walked downtown. The founder of the popular Twitter feed @ATXHipsters was fiercely opposed to drunk driving, and his death was “a sad irony,” says Neil Diaz, 39, whose PR company works with many downtown clubs. That’s when he contacted LeVine and Boyle and joined the cause. (A fourth member, Austin Music People director Jennifer Houlihan, came on board in January.)

The founders know the lengths people go to when they don’t want to drive home and can’t find a taxi. Boyle, who’s since stopped pedicabbing, has been offered “crazy amounts of money” to take a fare impractically long distances, such as from downtown to Burnet Road. LeVine has witnessed fistfights over taxis. Both have heard tipsy patrons worry that if they found a ride home, their car would be towed overnight. Before TNCs entered the market, Boyle and LeVine would see dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people standing along downtown streets after the bars closed, trying to flag down random cars and offering cash in exchange for a ride.

As chaotic as it sounds, Boyle’s takeaway was this: “There were people who wanted to do the right thing—be responsible and get a sober ride home—but no one was offering it. So that’s where we stepped in and said let’s try to make transportation convenient and make it available, and then people will use it instead of just hopping in their car and driving themselves home.”

Their suspicions were confirmed by an informal survey they administered in May 2014 that asked Austinites about their late-night behaviors. Of the 651 responders, more than 65 percent admitted they drove to and from the bars, but more than 70 percent said they’d use taxis, Uber, Lyft or public transportation if such options were more available.

Armed with this knowledge, the group began using Facebook (facebook.com/ATXSaferStreets) and Twitter (@ATXsaferstreets) to share information about bus routes, cab companies and designated driver services like Sober Monkeys and Urban Scoot, and encouraged their followers to make a plan for getting home before they left their houses. They also worked with the city’s transportation department and Capital Metro to promote “get home safe” information on their websites. They lobbied (successfully) for the legalization of Uber and Lyft, and (unsuccessfully) for Proposition 1, the urban rail bond.

Former council member Chris Riley, who led the effort to legalize TNCs, says ATX Safer Streets was effective in mobilizing public support for Uber and Lyft and providing reasons for their legalization other than the companies’ own self-interest. Having lived downtown most of his life, Riley says he’s familiar with the nightlife scene and drunk driving–related injuries and deaths, “but at times it seemed the city was almost becoming numb to them. It was impressive to me that this group was rising up and saying, ‘No more, we’ve got to do something about this,’” he says.

With the transportation department, they requested an end to the practice of towing vehicles parked under the elevated portion of I-35 downtown after 3 a.m. on weekends. Survey responses and the founders’ own observations had shown that revelers who had too much to drink opted to drive anyway for fear of their cars being towed. In response to the popular misconception that cars left at street meters overnight will end up impounded, the group publicized the fact that meters offer overnight parking time, and that enforcement doesn’t start until 11 a.m. on Saturday and is nonexistent on Sunday. Drivers who fail to purchase overnight parking and get a sober ride home can have their ticket waived if they present a bus or taxi receipt.

It’s this approach to building awareness that has drawn the praise of City of Austin Transportation Director Rob Spillar. He credits the grassroots effort with starting a public conversation about the shared responsibility for safety, which he says includes not over-serving patrons, taking personal responsibility and being aware of the risks of speeding and vulnerability of pedestrians. “What ATX Safer Streets has done as a nongovernmental entity is help us keep a discussion going about safe behaviors and personal choices,” he says. “That’s really important, and that’s something we have not had in this region for a while.”

Now in their second year, the founders are advocating for more changes. They’d like to see wayfinding signs in downtown entertainment districts that include maps of bus routes, phone numbers and parking rules, among other things. They want more taxis, particularly during times of peak demand. (The city will consider adding more taxi permits later this summer.) They recommend the city establish clearly marked, well-lit taxi stands to offer patrons a safe, reliable place to find a cab. Boyle points out that a ready supply of cabs at well-known locations would give taxis an advantage over TNCs, which the group also supports, because TNCs can’t accept street hails.

Other changes the group would like to see include a circulator service, like the ’Dillo trolley cars, restored to downtown, and perhaps private companies running shuttles between different neighborhood and entertainment districts. The latter move, the founders say, would effectively expand service into times and areas Capital Metro’s budget doesn’t allow it to serve.

LeVine describes all these changes as “infrastructure” needed in a city with a large concentration of bars and clubs in a downtown entertainment district. Not every city is built this way, adds the former Portland resident, who moved to Austin in December 2010. Both she and Boyle, who’s originally from New Orleans but spent some time in Baltimore, find it’s more common in those cities to walk or bike to neighborhood bars than to go across town to “destination” districts. In a city set up like Austin, they say, just telling people not to drive drunk isn’t sufficient; alternatives need to exist, and people need to know about them.

At the same time, the group emphasizes that personal responsibility comes first. Asking people in Austin to stop drinking entirely isn’t realistic. “Wagging your finger obviously has not been effective in reducing the number of DWIs, deaths or crashes over the years,” LeVine says. “So we’re trying to say, you can go out, but do it in a safe manner. That’s why we’re pushing for the infrastructure end of it. If that’s there, you’re just being an idiot if you choose not to use the options that are available.”

While the group started to combat drunk driving, elements of its platform also serve the estimated 2,500 people who work in the late-night service industry downtown. In August 2014, volunteers with ATX Safer Streets fanned out across downtown, surveying employees in the nightlife industry about their own transportation situations. Their responses were telling: Bartenders, barbacks and other downtown employees often choose parking at a metered space and running out in the middle of a shift to feed the meters (or getting a ticket), or parking farther away at an unmetered space and trekking back to their car at 3:30 a.m. with a pocket full of tips. The last night owl bus leaves downtown at 3 a.m., not late enough to accommodate entertainment district staff, so the group would like to see it extended one more hour on the weekends. “That’s not an issue about driving impaired,” Diaz says, “but these people are a big component of the economy in our downtown areas, and they need alternative transportation and more parking, too.”

While the co-founders aren’t seasoned lobbyists, they’ve all had experiences with volunteering in some capacity. LeVine has been involved in advocacy in Oregon, but this is her first time starting an organization. She says it’s “surreal” to go from bartender and mom of a toddler to activist. But she’s encouraged by the traction the group has gained in just over a year of organizing. When she first spoke to the city council, she says, “I realized there was a huge disconnect between the people making the policies and the people who were out there every night, because most of them don’t go to Dirty Sixth, ever.” Now, she finds most council members are supportive and responsive to the group, including Ellen Troxclair. The District 8 council member considers ATX Safer Streets’ message as particularly resonant in her Southwest Austin area, where bus service is limited. “They were a handful of people who became really concerned and, with some determination, were able to shed light on an important issue that wasn’t getting a lot of attention,” she says.

Looking ahead, ATX Safer Streets wants to remind everyone that safer streets are the result of a million individual decisions. This message is all the more important in light of APD statistics showing that after the number of DWIs dropped in 2014, it rose again in the first two months of 2015. “The biggest part of this whole conversation is that people need to take responsibility for their own actions,” Boyle says. “What we want to do is make it easier for them to make those responsible choices.”

PLAN OF ACTION

To get you and others home safe, know your options before you go out on the town

Public Transportation

Capital Metro

Night Owl : Runs from 12 a.m. to 3 a.m., Mon-Sat; $1.25 to ride, $2 for 24-hour unlimited, free to UT and ACC students; capmetro.org/nightowl/

E-bus : Runs from 12 a.m. to 3 a.m., Thur-Sat, through Riverside Drive and Main and West campuses; $1.25 to ride, $2 for 24-hour unlimited; free to UT and ACC students; utexas.edu/parking/transportation/ebus.

For additional transportation options, including the MetroRail, go to capmetro.org/planner/

Transportation Network Companies

Lyft

$1.35 base charge, $1.70 per mile, $5 minimum. lyft.com/cities/austin

Uber

Prices vary based on selection but range from base fares of $1-$3 and $1.30-$3.10 per mile. uber.com/cities/austin

Designated Driver Services

Sober Monkeys

Takes your car home, with or without you. 8 p.m. to 12 a.m., Mon-Thur, or 8 p.m. to 3 a.m., Fri-Sat. Rates based on mileage and range from $40 to $130. (512) 808-9232; sobermonkeys.com

BeMyDD

Allows you to order a personal driver. $14-$19.50 per hour, or a pick-up service for you and your car ($25 + mileage). (877) 823-6933; bemydd.com

Urban Scoot

Takes you and your car home, then driver zips away on a scooter. $7.50 pick-up fee and $3.50 per mile; (512) 394-7320, urbanscootdesignateddriver.com.

Taxis

Austin Cab

(512) 478-2222; austincab.com

Lone Star Cab

(512) 836-4900; lonestarcabaustin.com

Yellow Cab

(512) 452-9999; yellowcabaustin.com or download the “Hail a Cab” app

Last Call Cabs

(512) 992-7272; lastcallcabs.com

Electric Cab of Austin

(512) 900-7734; electriccabofaustin.com

Pedicabs

Find companies at austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Transportation/Pedicab_Companies.pdf

Other helpful sources

RideScout

Use this app for nearby real-time options.