Zohran Mamdani has an opportunity within his first 100 days to transform the streets of New York City and send a very strong message: “streets are for people.” Below, I list quick actions, easy decisions he can unlock, and forward-looking dreams of a brilliant future — offered while he still enjoys the glow of his impressive win on Election Day.
The excitement I feel from the safe street advocates, bus riders, cyclists, and walkers is electrifying; and it should be capitalized on before the “nattering nabobs of negativism” (thank you Spiro Agnew) do what they do best — block change. Mamdani’s ambitious transportation platform — from fast and free buses, expansion of on-street outdoor dining, to achieving Vision Zero for traffic deaths — can be jump-started and at low cost.
Day One. Mamdani can make a more-than symbolic action signifying that government officials don’t deserve special benefits. Simply return City Hall Park to a park, and not a parking lot! Close the vehicular entrance at Murray St. and send the message, “Parks are for people, not cars.”
Days 2-100. Can a mayor of NYC pull off major street operational changes without buy-in from the governor and others? Yes, due to a little-known traffic law.
The mayor of New York City, and only NYC, has broad powers when it comes to regulating streets and highways within the five boroughs. Section 1642 of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Law allows a city with a population in excess of one million to adopt its own traffic regulations. Here’s what I recommend the incoming mayor do:
Return traffic parking enforcement to the Traffic Bureau within the Department of Transportation (DOT), as it was prior to Rudy Giuliani’s administration. The police are crime fighters, not transportation planners and engineers.
It was former cop, Ben Ward, the city’s first Black traffic commissioner and then first police commissioner of color, who wanted the police out of parking enforcement, towing, intersection control and other functions that have a high risk of public confrontations. I was a sidekick of Ward’s when he was traffic commissioner and then, when I became traffic commissioner, he backed me fully as police commissioner.
I had more than 2,000 uniformed traffic agents, as part of the traffic department, patrolling every part of the city. I recommend the new mayor recreate the position of traffic or streets commissioner (a “streets czar”) within the DOT, and appoint someone with a steel backbone with the following responsibilities:
- The czar would “own” the streets. Everything that happens on the street, from illegal parking (especially placards) to construction blockages to street events would fall under their jurisdiction.
- The issuance of parking placards would be under the control of a triumvirate, including the czar, a police representative, and mayor’s office. This was done in the 1980s. See more on placards.
- Show “no mercy” to cars with placards that blatantly break parking rules. Restore “write first, adjudicate later” as the standard operating procedures when encountering a “placard” car in violation. If the parking of that vehicle was legitimate, it would be dismissed by an administrative judge.
- The function of enforcement should not be to write the most tickets to achieve revenue goals; instead, safety and mobility should be primary. Police react to complaints by writing more summonses. I found the best traffic agents were the ones who kept the curb lane clear of illegal parkers. Restore key performance indicators (KPIs) such as percent clear time where a perfect score means no illegally parked cars.
- Recreate the Traffic Intelligence Division that keeps track, and has shared veto power with the mayor’s office, of every event that blocks traffic including parades, demonstrations, construction, movie shoots, road races, etc.
We have suffered from indecision on capital projects for way too long. Within 100 days Mamdani should:
Make a decision on the BQE triple-cantilever. Mayors de Blasio and Adams have futzed around for years, held numerous community meetings and workshops and have gotten nowhere. Meanwhile the structure, in poor shape already when de Blasio took over, is a dozen years older with concrete well past its intended life. Former Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi, under Adams, proposed a minimalist two-lane in each direction stacked structure that should be advanced tout de suite.
In concert with the BQE construction, allow commercial vehicles on the Belt Parkway. Robert Moses built the Belt Parkway for cars, but trucks have to use city streets — that’s bass ackwards! Mamdani should introduce a bill, while still an assemblyman, allowing commercial vehicles (small ones at first due to low overpasses). The precedent is the Grand Central Parkway where trucks are now allowed from the Triborough Bridge to the BQE.
Start the process of “capping” the Cross Bronx Expressway. The state has thrown a wrench in the works saying each cap would cost $2 billion or maybe $10-20 billion in total. Nonsense! Rockefeller University, working from a wavering barge on the East River, was able to deck the FDR for about four blocks with a beautiful garden for just $500 million, and improve the adjacent Esplanade for another $8 million. Los Angeles is in the process of decking over a portion of Highway 101 for just $92 million. Pick one segment now and launch the design process.
Adopt an ethos about the future often attributed to the Iroquois Nation, that “in every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.” When you turn on the water, ride the subway, cross a bridge, bask in the foliage of Central and Prospect Park you are the 7th or 8th or more generation to do so. The Second Ave. subway was conceived in 1929. Mamdani should be planning for mid-century and beyond. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC was a great start. Let’s get creative.
Dream Big. The last bridge built to Manhattan’s central business district was the Manhattan Bridge completed in 1909. World cities from Paris to London to Singapore and a score of others have built dozens, if not hundreds, of bike-pedestrian bridges in recent years.
Let’s span the East River from Brooklyn Bridge Park to Governors Island to Lower Manhattan and from Long Island City to Roosevelt Island to Midtown. One can rent a Citi Bike in Jersey City and Battery Park City, but you can’t get between them by bike. A bridge from one tall building to another could solve that problem.
Don’t leave Staten Island out. About $40 billion has been spent, or is going to be spent, on Manhattan transit extensions and station improvements, including: the Second Ave. subway extension, the No. 7 line extension, bringing the LIRR into Grand Central Terminal, the Fulton Street subway station, and others.
I support all these projects, but they won’t do as much as to get people out of their cars than a subway to Staten Island. On April 14, 1923 the city broke ground on the subway from Bay Ridge to Richmond (I have the invitation, which I’ve written about previously on these pages). If we resurrect this project, then maybe we can have a subway extension by mid-century.
Focus on the way New Yorker’s move today. Technology in the form of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is not going to solve our traffic problems. In fact, it may make things worse. AV shuttles at airports and robo-taxis for last mile to/from transit in low density areas of the city may make sense within the next 5-10 years.
But, in the densest parts of our boroughs the best technology was invented 1600 B.C. — shoes! We are a walking city, and every step (pun intended) Mamdani takes should be for seven generations hence to walk our town.
Key to success will be the appointment of an action-oriented creative DOT commissioner who has the experience, stature, and intestinal fortitude to face the NIMBYs, cynics, and perpetual bellyachers. As for days 101-200… stay tuned!
Schwartz is a former NYC traffic commissioner.
