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The city’s Department of Transportation is failing miserably to hit annual mileage targets for bus and bike lanes, and elected officials are squabbling over who is to blame.
Transit officials were supposed to build 80 miles of bike lanes and 50 miles of bus lanes, among other traffic upgrades, within the first two years of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, under the Streets Master Plan, which became law in 2019. DOT has struggled to meet the mandates, with the city reporting in a February update on the law that it has rolled out roughly 60 miles of bike paths and not even 10 miles of bus lanes.
The Adams’ administration has taken heat for waffling and failing to deliver on street safety upgrades, and has been quick to capitulate to critics of individual projects, but during a tense Wednesday City Council budget hearing DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez sought instead to blame his agency’s shortcomings on the Council.
“I want to say this, if I will have the support of every single council member to do the bus lanes and bike lanes, we will accomplish these goals,” Rodriguez told lawmakers at the hearing.
Queens Council member Selvena Brooks-Powers, who chairs the council’s committee on transportation and infrastructure, pushed back on DOT’s critique. Brooks-Powers called on the Adams administration to be more proactive in its community engagement on bus and bike lane projects, and “leaving room to make adjustments.”
“The law stipulates that DOT is mandated to implement bus lanes and bike lanes; it does not mandate the City Council to do that,” said Brooks-Powers, who herself pushed back against a Jamaica busway in 2022. “The City Council passed this legislation for DOT to implement.”
Concerns over slow progress on the Streets Master Plan spurred City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to unveil plans in March during her State of the City address for legislation for transit officials to create a public streets plan project tracker that would be updated monthly.
Speaker Adams said earlier this year she’s open to exploring a lawsuit against the Adams administration to force compliance.
“Laws and policies are only as good as their implementation,” Speaker Adams said during her March State of the City speech. “New Yorkers can wait no longer.”
Margaret Forgione, DOT’s first deputy commissioner, added during Wednesday’s hearing that “we could probably do more if we implemented projects, say Fordham Road, in spite of strong opposition.” To do so would open a political can of worms the Adams administration has not shown an appetite for.
The Adams administration, for instance, initially pushed a plan to shift a bus lane on Fordham Road from the curb, where it is frequently blocked by cars, into what’s known as an offset lane beside curbside parking for faster service. DOT dropped the plan in the wake of opposition from Bronx council member Oswald Feliz and local institutions such as Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo.
The relatively modest streetscape change would have increased bus speeds by some 20%, transit officials estimated at the time, and was a compromise from an earlier, more ambitious proposal for a car-free busway, similar to the one on 14th Street in Manhattan.
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Caroline Spivack , 2024-05-09 12:03:04
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