Time's Up! 20th Anniversary Timeline

1991 Time's Up! launches a major campaign to promote non-polluting transportation, focusing on hybrid-electric and electric-pedal-assist technology.

Teaming up with Light Wheels, Cooper Union's Design for the Environment class and later continuing with activists at the HUB Station, Time's Up! volunteers conduct technological research, create early prototypes, and educate everyone from students to auto show attendees about alternative modes of transportation through workshops, seminars, and presentations.  Bicycles become Time's Up!'s vehicles for social change.

1992 Time's Up! supports the creation of the first Green Apple Map, pinpointing 145 local sites in New York City that have environmental impact and sparking a local-global movement. The non-profit Green Map System has fostered the creation of locally led Green Map projects in over 400 cities in 50 countries. As of 2007, more than 325 separate Green Maps have been published, including five citywide editions of NYC's own map. Time's Up! co-sponsors annual Green Apple Cycling Tours that introduce the map's highlighted areas. These fun and informative rides encourage new riders and inspire them to work toward a greener New York City.

1993 Time's Up! launches campaign to reclaim public space from automobiles, beginning with regular traffic calming rides in Central Park. Traffic calming rides promote shared road use with bicyclists, skaters and pedestrians, with the goal of car-free parks and bike-friendly city streets. These rides have since spread to other boroughs and to other cities, raising awareness about the importance of clean air and safer public spaces.

1994 Time’s Up! volunteers, working with the Hub Station, are instrumental in starting the pedicab industry in New York City

 Working with the HUB Station, Time's Up! designs, assembles, and introduces 12 original pedicabs (bike powered cabs) to the streets of New York as a carbon-dioxide-reducing alternative form of urban transportation.  Due to the tireless efforts of Pedicabs of New York, Manhattan Rickshaw and other environmentalists, the industry has since expanded to over 500 traditional pedicabs and electric-pedal-assist pedicabs in NYC alone, inspiring similar pilot programs in other cities.

1994 Time's Up! monthly year-round Central Park Moonlight ride begins. 

The Central Park Moonlight Ride offers cyclists a safe, fun way to explore the park at night.  A great draw for tourists, night-owls, lovebirds and regulars, the Central Park Moonlight recently celebrated its 13th anniversary.  Since its inception, night-time activity has surged in the park, and car-free hours have greatly expanded.

1995 Time's Up! introduces its first monthly calendar of free group bike rides and events to raise environmental awareness in fun, positive settings.  

• These rides attract cyclists at all skill levels and socioeconomic classes, fostering a sense of community while highlighting the benefits of non-polluting transportation. Group rides build the confidence of new cyclists and inspire them to become everyday commuters.
• The increase in riders puts more pressure on the city to create a safer infrastructure that, in turn, produces even more riders.
• Time's Up! rides and events have gained international recognition, have been featured and received several “Best Of” awards in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Out NY, and The Village Voice. Many of our unique rides have been replicated in other cities.
• A few favorites include the Central Park Moonlight Ride, Bike Lane Liberation Clown Ride, New Years Eve Ride, Green Apple Tour, Blue Apple Ride, Bridges By Night, Mystery, History, Murder and Money Ride, Folds Up! Ride & Festival,  Lights in the Heights, Environmental Bike tours, and Traffic Calming Rides.

1996 Time's Up! teams up with Wetlands Activism Collective to launch a campaign to raise awareness about animal rights and the preservation of both virgin forest and rainforest ecosystems.  Time's Up! continues collaborating with Wetlands on various events to date, including our weekly Thursday Night Movies and Presentations.

 1996 Time's Up! pioneers the Street Memorial Project, commemorating cyclists and pedestrians killed by motorists.

• The Street Memorial Project creates silent but powerful memorials to draw attention to pedestrian and cyclist fatalities around the city through actions such as Stencil Memorials, Memorial Bike Rides, and candlelight vigils.
• In collaboration with Right of Way, Time's Up! volunteers identify intersections around the city that are especially dangerous to cyclists and pedestrians.
• Captured by the media, these actions successfully raise public awareness of the need for improvements in the design intersections,  the creation of new bike lanes and motorist awareness campaigns and harsher punishments for hit and run offenders. 
  
• The success of this project in New York City has inspired similar programs in other cities including Chicago and San Francisco.

1997 Time's Up! teams up with the Lower East Side Collective's public space division to protect and celebrate use of public space, especially community gardens.   

Together, volunteers organize demonstrations, community garden cleanups, street parades, and events related to reclaiming public streets and parks for community use.  Volunteers help clear rubble-strewn lots and establish new green spots, cultivating a connection with the earth and the community.  Time's Up! continues to highlight the environmental benefits of green spaces by leading bike tours of gardens. 

1997 Time's Up! celebrates its 10th anniversary.  

Time's Up! grows to over 50 volunteers, who coordinate a variety of environmental campaigns and events from community garden cleanups to raising global awareness about climate change. Time's Up! continues to build its reputation for leading effective grassroots campaigns: increasing environmental awareness, promoting non-polluting transportation, defending cyclists' rights, and protecting and creating green public spaces. Their techniques and campaigns become models for newly created programs to initiate environmental change around the world.

1997 Time's Up! registers as a non-profit corporation in New York State.

1997 In collaboration with many organizations, Time's Up! rallies public support for the building of greenways to increase non-polluting transportation and public waterfront access.

• Working in collaboration since 1997, Time's Up! and the Cherry Tree Association advocate increased public waterfront access in the Bronx. Together, these groups raise awareness about environmental injustice, including the relationship between air pollution and the high asthma rate in the Bronx.
• In 1999, Time's Up! helps launch Friends of Brook Park, a group that has expanded environmental outreach work in the Bronx to include canoe and bicycle excursions for all ages. These efforts have seen great success with the plan for a Bronx greenway system, slated for completion by 2009.
• Time's Up! and the Manhattan Waterfront Alliance continue to work with community and environmental groups to eliminate gaps in the car-free greenways, moving toward the ultimate goal of a continuous public greenway system around Manhattan, providing ample public waterfront access for pedestrians and cyclists.

1998 Time's Up! introduces its acclaimed video documentary team.  The effectiveness of Time's Up! events and campaigns can now be easily viewed worldwide.

• Time's Up! documents both environmental abuses and solutions.  These videos show how communities unite to bring about sustainable change for a greener and more just New York.
• Time's Up! Video Collective team continues to flourish and is noted for their fearless, truth-seeking front line footage, which is regularly screened on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, shared with independent media and used to protect first amendment rights in legal proceedings.
• From Community Board meeting to major broadcast new stories to film festivals, the Time's Up! Video Collective's footage promotes community activism in support of a sustainable New York.
  

1999 Time's Up! teams up with the More Gardens! Coalition to cultivate new community gardens and protect endangered ones.

This work has helped save over 500 community gardens throughout New York City through lobbying public officials; organizing and educating communities about the importance of community gardens; drawing press attention; creating visual aids (including colorful puppets and props); and encouraging non-violent direct action (including lockdown encampments and protests). The overwhelming success of these tactics has fostered similar grassroots movements for community gardens in cities across the country.

1999 Time's Up! is granted 501(c)(3) status.  Donations are now tax-deductible and can be made through the website or mail.

2001 Time's Up! teams up with NYC Green Thumb and Trust for Public Land, to sponsor dozens of educational workshops and community garden cleanups. Time's Up! uses its large volunteer base to organize local communities to improve and protect existing gardens and to cultivate new gardens on vacant lots. With community support and the support of Green Thumb and Trust for Public Land, many of these gardens have now become permanent. The Time's Up! Garden Committee continues to fight for and supports all NYC community gardens

2002 Time's Up! initiates a "valet bike parking" program at the annual Great Hudson River Clearwater Revival. Time's Up! encourages festival-goers to ride their bicycles to the yearly Clearwater Hudson River Revival Festival, the region's premier environmental festival, by providing free "valet bike parking" and running an outreach environmental center. Growing steadily each year, the valet bike parking area served 200 people at the 2007 festival and has inspired other events to include provisions for people arriving by bike.

2003  Time's Up! leads the coordination of Bike Summer, a month-long celebration of bike culture in NYC.  Consisting of more than 100 well-attended events over a one month period, Bike Summer marks the first major collaboration among the city's numerous bike groups, contributing to an increased number of commuter cyclists and galvanizes an identity for the bicycle community that still exists today. Following its success, Bike Week, an annual event co-sponsored by NYC DOT, expands to New York City Bike Month.

2004 Time's Up! supporter Steve Stollman generously donates full-time use of a storefront space, centrally located at 49 East Houston Street, just east of Broadway, in downtown Manhattan.

The Time's Up! space becomes a center for environmental education and enables Time's Up! to expand its indoor educational programs to include weekly seminars, guest speakers and movie nights.  For the first time, internships can be offered, benefiting local and international university students.

Hands-on workshops are offered in bicycle repair and welding, video editing, stenciling, composting, textile work and prop-making for events.

Since 2004, our volunteers have recycled more than 1,000 bicycles. Over 10,000 people have attended our bicycle repair workshops where Time's Up! has empowered individuals to maintain their own bicycles and to take a step closer towards becoming more sustainable citizens who utilize and advocate for this form of non-polluting transportation.

2004 Time's Up! hosts the Bike National Convention (BNC), drawing thousands of visitors from all over the world.  The BNC, coinciding with the Republican National Convention, consisted of a month-long calendar of free educational events and direct-action events to highlight environmental issues on a national stage.  The large presence of cyclists during the Republican National Convention resulted in a boost of political clout and motivated local officials to take cyclists' concerns seriously.

2004 Time's Up! steps up its campaign to defend New Yorker's First Amendment Rights.  

• Since its inception, Time's Up! has been dedicated not only to protecting the environment, but also to defending the community's right to use and assemble on public space. 
• Fueled by the suppression of First Amendment Rights during and after the 2004 Republican National Convention, Time’s Up! unites with acclaimed civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, New York Bar Association,  National Lawyers Guild, Assemble for Rights NYC, Radical Homosexual Agenda, 100 Blacks of Law Enforcement  FreeWheels,  International Mobility Justice Project, and numerous legal observers and video journalists to defend the right to speak and assemble peacefully.
• Many law firms and individual lawyers have filed successful lawsuits supporting the right to assemble, including protection for group bike rides. 
  

2004 Time’s Up! media team is formed and the media coverage of issues and events involving Time's Up! rapidly increases over the years. 

Time's Up! continues to spread its message and promote its events to city-wide and even international audiences. In the past year, Time's Up! events and campaigns had over 100 mentions in the media. Coverage included not only The New York Times, CNN, Voice of America, El Diario NY, Bicycling Magazine and all major New York TV networks but also media outlets from around the world including the United Kingdom and China.

2005 Time's Up! begins working on the Ghost Bike Project in collaboration with the Visual Resistance art collective who brought the concept of "Ghost Bike" memorials to New York City.

"Ghost Bikes" – bicycles painted white with plaques above them to recognize deceased cyclists – are intended to honor cyclists killed on city streets and remind drivers to use caution and be aware of bicyclists. Time's Up! and Visual Resistance worked together in the placement of 38 ghost bikes around New York City at each known crash site where a cyclist was killed by a motor vehicle in 2005 and 2006.  Along with the Street Memorials Coalition, Time's Up! continues working on the Ghost Bike Project and for safer, more secure streets for cyclists and pedestrians.

2006 Time’s Up! releases an extensive study prepared with economist Charles Komanoff to inform New York taxpayers of the monies spent by the city and state to suppress the monthly Critical Mass ride. 

The study calculated the financial cost to arrest, prosecute and bring suit against law-abiding cyclists on this traffic calming group ride (which is replicated in hundreds of cities around the world). In addition to being covered in major media outlets, the study is referenced in the NYC Bar Association’s statement opposing new NYC parade permit regulations.

2007 Time's Up! teams up with New York University's Sustainability Taskforce to promote non-polluting transportation and environmental education among the NYU student body.

In a project known as "Bike To School," Time's Up! volunteers remove and recycle abandoned bicycles from NYU buildings, design bicycle parking infrastructure on campus, and educate incoming freshmen, enabling them to become bicycle commuters. This groundbreaking program sets a precedent for the way bicycles can be recovered, recycled and respected in New York.

2007 Time's Up! celebrates two decades of initiating environmental change.  Non-polluting transportation and environmental awareness are at an all time high and the strength and success of Time's Up! continues to rise in New York City.  With dozens of successful campaigns that have been replicated across the country, Time's Up! currently has more than 100 active volunteers who create and coordinate hundreds of free environmental events, bike rides and campaigns each year. Time's Up! now has a worldwide network of more than 5,000 friends and supporters working for positive environmental change, and we encourage you to become part of our community!  Visit our membership and volunteer pages to find out how.

This timeline represents just a small portion of Time's Up!'s events and campaigns over the last 20 years. These achievements would not have been possible without the hundreds of volunteers and supporters like you who have contributed over the years. Thank you.