Bloomberg’s Street Fighter
The relatively radical Janette Sadik-Khan has championed bike lanes and pedestrian plazas—but does the transportation commish move too fast?
In the late winter, Dan Biederman had a meeting with the city’s Department of Transportation in which the agency’s commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, gave him a heads-up on a project in the works. The agency wanted to close down traffic lanes on Broadway, she told the longtime president of the 34th Street Partnership, with the aim of opening up large swaths of the central corridor to pedestrians and bikes.
“It was one meeting at which we were going to discuss several things, and one was to be a surprise,” Mr. Biederman said. “She said, ‘Nobody knows this; please don’t share this with the press. It’s not ready to be announced.’”
By May, the agency rolled out its full plan for “Broadway Boulevard,” and another two months after that, construction started, then finished, and now suddenly midtown south has a whole new chunk of public open space, with one and two lanes of the city’s most notable thoroughfare closed to cars.
“It’s extremely surprising that Broadway Boulevard got done as quickly as it did,” Mr. Biederman said. “In the whole history of DOT projects, this has probably moved the fastest of anything I have ever seen.”
At a time when the Bloomberg administration is in a mad dash to get its initiatives in the ground, given the mayor’s scheduled exit at the end of 2009, it is finding something of an unlikely model of expediency in the DOT and Ms. Sadik-Khan, who came to the job in April 2007 from an executive spot at transportation engineering giant Parsons Brinckerhoff.
As many large legacy projects of the administration slowly plod along, she and the mayor are looking to the streets in order to leave their own lasting, physical imprint on the city. Using the wide-ranging powers of the DOT, the administration is swiftly pushing cars out of road lanes and installing a host of protected bike lanes, pedestrian plazas and bus lanes in their place. To name a few of the streets in Manhattan that Ms. Sadik-Khan has targeted: The messy intersection just west of Madison Square Park has become a mostly pedestrian plaza; Ninth Avenue now has a bike lane cordoned off from traffic in Chelsea; Broadway has seven blocks of new plaza and bike lanes; Eighth Avenue has a separated bikeway planned; and the Summer Streets program closed off Park Avenue to cars for three weekends this month.
“We’ve got 6,000 miles of streets and over 12,000 miles of sidewalks, and we’re trying to look at making them livable spaces, and not just these utilitarian corridors,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said in an interview. “So when you take a look at the streets of New York, that’s 80 percent of our public space. In some ways, I think of myself as the largest real estate developer in New York.”
Key to her strategy is speed. With broad powers over the road and virtually no public approval process, the 48-year-old is able to plan and then implement, often in just a few months or even weeks. It’s this ability that has irked elected officials and some in the community, who feel they are unfairly left out of the process.
On the ideological scale of transportation planning, her policies err far closer to Trotsky than Reagan. She is decidedly pro-bike and pro-pedestrian, and thus inherently anti-automobile, earning her constant praise from the normally critical transit advocates. “Sustainable” or “sustainability” seems to come up every few words in her talking points; she often rides her bike to work; and the rumor mill around City Hall says that she wants to be federal secretary of the Department of Transportation in an Obama administration. (She said she hadn’t heard that rumor, and responded: “I’m focused on New York City. I’ve got 496 days left; I’m looking forward to each and every one of them.”)
MS. SADIK-KHAN landed the top job 16 months ago when the prior commissioner, Iris Weinshall, left to take a job as vice chancellor at CUNY. Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff and Mayor Bloomberg brought Ms. Sadik-Khan on just as the administration was putting the final touches on its PlaNYC 23-year sustainability initiative, a plan that fit well with the relatively radical policies Ms. Sadik-Khan advocates. Next Page >
The DOT's policies "radical"? In a City where the vast majority of residents do not drive a car and must suffer the consequences of 100 years of auto subsidies, I can hardly see her policies as being radical.
I love all of the changes, bike lanes in the Bronx, plazas, summer streets! Things are looking up for once!
"Radical" compared to what? London and Paris, among other great cities, are way in front of New York City when it comes to reclaiming street space for pedestrians, public space, buses and bicyclists. People flock to live here, and raise families here, precisely because they do not have to drive everywhere. Commissioner Sadik-Khan should be applauded for finally letting New York be New York instead of trying to make it a Houston or Atlanta. It's nice to see NYC government aspire to be a world leader instead of laggard.
I echo the wrong use of the word "radical". I understand the need for balanced coverage, but the observer's real estate / city planning coverage continually sees the balance between Republican real estate developers and everyone else. What it should be is a balance of what the government can and cannot do and the needs of the community.
My guess for why they continue to cover things this way is that it is good "red-meat" coverage for the NYC development community. NYO gots to eat.
Wow,
A civil servant who gets things done quickly and efficiently, while pleasing her constiuants and improving the City.
Clearly she must be stopped! ;-)
Please explain how creating safe spaces for bicyclists and pedestrians adds up to being like Trotsky. Helping to create livable cities for people using all means of transportation isn't an inherently anti-capitalist concept.
Perhaps she is radical when compared to previous DOT commissioners, who were about 50 years behind the curve of transportation policy. As a global city, we should compare our policies to those in Paris, London, Tokyo, and Shanghai; not LA, Houston, and Atlanta.
This Commissioner and her staff are actually getting stuff done. And if you go to a community board, they'll tell you the DOT is doing a better job communicating now than at any point in recent memory.
Why the critique about a City agency actually moving with urgency? What speed would you prefer... a glacier?
What's more like Trotsky is the vast sums of public money that is spent on streets and highways in the name of the public good, but which actually disproportionately aids the privileged class.
ms. sadik-khan is about the most capable bureaucrat this city's got. and i think that's only exemplified by the fact that the best criticism you can dig up is that she moves to fast.
It's worth noting that Robert Moses was also a fan of "Getting Things Done" as fast and with as little public input as possible.
At the time he was celebrated for building parks, bridges and highways. Look around today and it is the effects of those rushed efforts - crumbling infrastructure, isolated crappy neighborhoods that know nothing about gentrification and the plundering of public authorities - that got us in this situation in the first place.
They might not see eye-to-eye on the place of the automobile in New York City, but just saying...
Sadik-Khan is a liar. She lied when she told the NYT that she heard only 'rave reviews' for the Summer Streets, yet the NYT found plenty of displeasure at the silly scheme.
She lies when she claims to avoid the community boards in order to expedite the process. If fact, on the rare instances DOT did come to a few CBs, the proposals were rejected by both residents and businesses. For example, Summer Streets was rejected by CB1, closing Prince Street for a pedestrian mall was rejected by CB2, and the Ninth Avenue bike lane was also denied by CB4. There are more examples uptown.
So, instead of behaving democratically and listening to the boards, as most other agencies do (either from courtesy or statute) this dictator has just decided to ignore them.
Actually, she is a lot more like Stalin than Trotsky.
Who thinks the Community Boards are democratic institutions. If they are it is democracy for those with too much time on their hands and opposed to building anything, anywhere, anytime. Electing representatives who appoint bureaucrats who manage the functions of government is plenty democratic to me. Anyone who has sat through the interminable Community Bored meetings and listened to the genuinely mentally ill hold forth on all manner of nonsense knows that is not democracy. Empowering the Community Boards is about the least democratic and foolish thing New York City government could do.
the comparison to Robert Moses is correct. It is too bad that someone with progressive ideas in transportation does not believe in community based planning
this whole comparison to moses is crap. moses rammed things through and destroyed neighborhoods and the people who suffered were the poor, racial minorities, and people without cars. the only places sadik-kahn has forgone community input has been in affluent manhattan/brooklyn hoods (soho or the 9th st bike lane in park slope) or business districts. so yeah, she doesn't care too much for folks trying to protect their privilege and their "right" to drive or park anywhere. and i say good for her.
Niccolo :
I thought only my community board was made up of the unstable and sycophantic carrying on for hours about nonsense, you man it happens elsewhere too?
Leave it to The Sun to invoke "trotsky"; ridiculous. more ikes.
I heard the Commissioner will be incognito at the Safe Streets Critical Mass Ride Friday evening.
I am very excited finally to see Godwin's Law Nazi Analogies in action. Godwin's Law states the following: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." I guess I'm a little disappointed that Stalin's name is being thrown around and not Hitler's, but I think this still counts.
Less traffic = better living for all
Summer Streets - The only complaints I observed were from disgruntled drivers or car passengers who took out their frustrations on the very civil and nice traffic police. The overwhelming majority of folks were happy and enjoying a great time with friends and family. How wonderful to see children enjoying scooter and bike rides with no fer of being hit by a car. And unlike street fairs, the air and streets were clean!
Broadway Blvd - every bench and chair was occupied last night so the nay-sayers and fear-creators were wrong. It is a lovely place to walk and I had a fabulous chat with tourists from Sweden who were impressed with the bike and pedestrian friendly path. NYC impressive. It brings us back into the race for World's Best Livable City.
While I applaud Ms. Sadik-Khan for doing the things to bring biking and walking into New York in a way her predessesor never even tried to do, I'm puzzled by her hodge-podge approach. A few blocks from Times Square to Herald Square - amidst the most congested section of the city doesn't really solve the problem; neither does putting a bike lane between the pedestrian sitting areas and the sidewalk. Similarly, 9th avenue, while a nice interlude, is really too short to matter much.
Meanwhile, the most vital Greenway link in Manhattan - the one that would actually save lives - from 41-60 street along the East River - continues to go undone. No fewer than 7 entrances and exits exist in the detour bike route along First and York Avenue uptown and York and Second Avenue downtown. Also, there is a 30 degree hill under the 59 street bridge, more hills near the U.N, the entrance and exit to the U.N. tunnel, two of the busiest bus routes in the dity, the entrance to the midtown tunnel, and dense, impatient car/truck and pedestrian traffic everywhere. There are no bike lanes - even the painted kind - on any of this. Quite a shock to anyone coming off the greenway above 63 street and below 35 street (neither the 60th nor 38th street entrances to the greenways are open at this time). It seems Ms. Sadik-Khan is doing the easiest things, not the most sensible. That's not strategic planning, that's just plopping down bike lanes.
She worked at Parsons Brinkerhoff and she's a Columbia grad, so why is anyone suprised at her effectiveness? She's not a barely educated beaurocrat who barks at the moon about rights she does not fully understand. She understands, she's a pro. What suprising is to find this quality of professional in this sort of position.
Why weren't the traditional politicians involved? Because it's costly and counterproductive.
If we could get someone like this, and give them czar-like powers, with respect to MTA we could get better, cleaner service without raising rates.
Cleaner streets, cleaner air, less noise, greater safety, and an overall better urban experience are easily attainable if we aggressively hire professionals of this quality.