Streetsblog New York City

Image: Office of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has given NYPD an “F” for its record of withholding information from the public.

De Blasio’s “Transparency Report Card” rates city agencies’ response to freedom of information requests [PDF]. Looking at 10,000 FOIL requests over a three-month period in 2011, the report awards grades to 18 agencies “based on timeliness of response, requests left unanswered, and the ease of filing a request.” The report includes a history of the New York State Freedom of Information Law, and outlines what information city agencies are obliged to provide to the public, and how they should do it.

The report found that NYPD had the highest number of unanswered FOIL requests; that 31 percent of requests never received a response; and that 28 percent of answered requests took more than 60 days to process. The report noted that NYPD provides a mailing address for FOILs, but “no clear way to follow-up or appeal after a request.”

The report’s findings jibe with the experiences of Streetsblog and others who have filed FOIL requests to obtain information on fatal traffic crashes. It takes a tremendous amount of persistence, if not legal action, to wrest the barest details from NYPD, even if the petitioner is related to the victim.

“When an agency fails to respond within the stipulated timeframe, such failure constitutes a denial,” the report reads. “In these circumstances, an agency can be forced to comply through legal action — an option beyond the capacity of many petitioners.”

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Mayoral candidates Bill Thompson, Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill de Blasio, Adolfo Carrión, Tom Allon, and Sal Albanese gathered to talk transit at a Friday evening forum. Photo: Stephen Miller

Friday’s transit forum hosted by Transit Workers Union Local 100 and a coalition of rider advocacy groups offered an opportunity for a more more detailed discussion of transit policy than this year’s mayoral race has seen so far. While the candidates offered few specifics about how they would improve transit for the millions of New Yorkers who depend on trains and buses, clear differences emerged, especially on the question of how to increase funding for the debt-ridden MTA.

Five Democrats — former City Council City member Sal Albanese, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and former comptroller Bill Thompson — were on hand, as were former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión, running on the Independence Party line, and Manhattan Media publisher Tom Allon, running as a Republican. Conspicuously absent was Republican Joe Lhota, whose resume includes a recent one-year stint as MTA chair.

The transit issue that the mayor can control most directly is the allocation of street space. How much real estate should be dedicated exclusively to transit, so riders don’t get bogged down in traffic? More than anyone else, the mayor has the power to decide.

Albanese had the most specific proposal, calling for 20 new Select Bus Service routes by 2018. De Blasio said he wants more Bus Rapid Transit outside of Manhattan, citing a JFK-to-Flushing route as an example. When Streetsblog asked after the forum if the Bloomberg administration has been implementing the SBS program quickly enough, de Blasio said he didn’t know enough to say if implementation was going slowly, but that the implicit answer is “yes” because his vision calls more more BRT in the outer boroughs.

Carrión, who called for a new goal of providing 30-minute commutes from the city limits to the CBD, cited the Select Bus Service route on Fordham Road as a successful transit enhancement, noting that it has won over merchants who were initially skeptical. Quinn and Thompson, meanwhile, spoke about improving bus service, but not specifically about SBS or BRT. And Liu said that Bus Rapid Transit should be part of the city’s transit mix, but didn’t get more specific than that.

On the issue of funding the MTA, the mayor has far less direct control than the governor and the state legislature but still commands a powerful bully pulpit that can set the agenda.

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When was the last time Chris Quinn or Bill de Blasio rode transit to work? Left photo: NYT/Redux. Right photo: NYT.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose entertaining quotes about Mike Bloomberg have been ricocheting around New York’s political circles today, could teach a thing or two to the candidates running for mayor here in NYC. Yesterday, “Boris from Islington” called in to a radio talk show with a recorded question for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg about Parliament’s profligate spending on cars for political leaders. It’s a question New Yorkers can appreciate.

“Get all those government ministers out of their posh limos and on to public transport like everybody else,” Johnson said. “How can we possibly expect government to vote for increases in infrastructure spending, which we need in this city in upgrading the Tube, which we all need, when they sit in their chauffer-driven limousines payed for by the taxpayers?”

Imagine, for a second, if any of New York’s crop of mayoral contenders stood up for transit riders like this. Instead, the NYC hopefuls are driving around the city, trying to convince New Yorkers, most of whom depend on transit to get around, that they feel their pain.

Although residents outside Manhattan struggle with long commutes on pokey buses, the candidates vying for votes in Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island have yet to mention Bus Rapid Transit on the campaign trail. At the same time, streets where you can walk or bike without fear of getting run over by a speeding driver have apparently become something to campaign against.

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Bill de Blasio’s comments in today’s Brooklyn Paper are straight out of the “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” playbook.

Bill de Blasio's mayoral campaign is rehashing talking points from bike lane opponent and former deputy mayor Norm Steisel.

To a question about whether he would dedicate space for biking and walking as mayor, de Blasio replied:

The motivation [for bike lanes] has been noble but the approach has often been without the kind of communication with the community that I’d like. What I’d say is that let’s look at actual evidence, not biased evidence, but actual evidence about what has happened with each of them. Where they’ve worked, great, let’s keep them. Where they haven’t worked let’s revise them or change them.

This is more than mealy-mouthing. In the thick of the 2011 bikelash, de Blasio met with bike lane opponents Norman Steisel, Louise Hainline, and Lois Carswell, along with their attorney, Jim Walden, “to discuss bike strategy,” according to documents obtained by Streetsblog through a freedom of information request.

A month later, de Blasio sent a letter to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan that characterized the department’s evaluations of several projects as “rubber stamps” — echoing NBBL propaganda from its campaign to discredit DOT and erase the Prospect Park West bike lane. Soon after, DOT announced that it had abandoned plans for a separated busway on 34th Street.

Last night’s vote for safer streets on the Upper West Side adds to a long list of publicly vetted and community-backed bike and pedestrian projects. The real “biased evidence” is the cherry-picked data trumpeted by NBBL for its PR war against a project that grew from the ground up.

In his nascent campaign for mayor, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has yet to take a stand for measures that are preventing injuries and saving lives. Instead he is parroting the line of a handful of insider malcontents who would reverse the public process to make the streets more dangerous for millions of New Yorkers.

It was hard to miss mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio as he made the media rounds yesterday. After positioning himself as the “outer borough” candidate on the local Fox morning show, de Blasio — who voted against congestion pricing and the transit funds that would have come with it — traveled to Washington Heights to shake hands with straphangers.

The city through Bill de Blasio's windshield. Photo: NYT

Later in the morning, during a segment on WNYC, Brian Lehrer asked de Blasio how he would get New Yorkers to “go and play” in Times Square, where the pedestrian spaces installed in 2009 are about to be made permanent. Here’s what he said:

All of us, including those of us who drive cars, such as myself, we don’t necessarily seek out Times Square. I’m glad our tourist friends do, which has been very good for the city. But that’s a tall order. Maybe the greatest asset of Times Square being the Theatre District around it, maybe that’s the ticket. But I’ll have to give that one some thought.

Okay, we get it: De Blasio is competing with Bill Thompson and John Liu for the anti-Bloomberg mantle. But what’s so hard about saying that Times Square is more inviting now that pedestrians aren’t spilling out into traffic because the sidewalks are so crowded? Where is the harm in acknowledging that business is booming now that people have room to walk, stand and, yes, take a seat at the Crossroads of the World?

One of the memes of the de Blasio campaign is that New York is “a tale of two cities.” He has a point. There’s the distorted city as seen through the windshield glass, and there’s the city as experienced by the car-free majority. So far, de Blasio has identified himself squarely as a motorist. The New York Times informed everyone last October that he drives himself to events. But when was the last time he rode the bus, took a crowded train, walked across a street like Queens Boulevard, or shared a street with motorists while he was on a bicycle?

New Yorkers who don’t drive everywhere want to know.

The bus driver who ran over and killed a woman in Canarsie last Friday broke no laws, according to NYPD.

Lorraine and Michael Ferguson. Photo via Daily News

Lorraine Ferguson was crossing at Avenue K and 105th Street at approximately 7:15 a.m. when the driver, operating a private bus carrying disabled adults, struck her while turning left. Michael Ferguson, the victim’s husband, witnessed the crash, and said the driver ran a stop sign before the collision.

Nonetheless, the Daily News reported on Friday that police have all but cleared the driver of responsibility:

He was not expected to be charged, police sources said. Contrary to Michael Ferguson’s assertion that the driver cruised through the stop sign, investigators found no immediate evidence the man had done anything wrong, the sources added.

No one disputes that the actions of the bus driver led to the death of Lorraine Ferguson. But in New York City, a lifeless body underneath a vehicle is not considered sufficient evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the motorist behind the wheel. That such a conclusion could be reached by police, and reported by the media without question, encapsulates the extreme dysfunction of our city and state traffic justice system.

As candidates for mayor and other citywide offices begin to shape their campaign platforms, no one is talking about the thousands of injuries and deaths that occur on city streets every year, or the fact that, in violation of state law, virtually none of them are investigated by Ray Kelly’s NYPD. This life and death issue continues to be ignored by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, two mayoral aspirants who are currently in a position to help make New Yorkers safer from reckless drivers like the one who killed Lorraine Ferguson.

Editor’s note: With yesterday’s appellate ruling prolonging the Prospect Park West case, Streetsblog is running a refresher on the how the well-connected gang of bike lane opponents waged their assault against a popular and effective street safety project. This is the fifth installment from the six-part NBBL Files.

This piece originally ran on November 10, 2011.

This is the fifth post in a series examining the tactics employed by opponents of the Prospect Park West redesign. Read the first, second, third, and fourth installments.

For a few months in the beginning of 2011, hardly a day went by without some political figure or media pundit inveighing against bike lanes and the Department of Transportation. The attackers ran the gamut from Staten Island Republicans to Democrats holding citywide office, from tabloid editorial boards to columnists for highbrow glossy mags. The story swirling in the middle of it all surrounded a bike lane about a mile long on Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West, which had the backing of most local residents but irritated some powerful neighbors.

PPW bike lane opponents including former deputy mayor Norman Steisel, left, met with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in February. A month later De Blasio sent a letter to NYC DOT criticizing the agency's evaluation of bike, bus, and pedestrian projects.

Even the most rational observer had to question, at times, whether the multi-pronged attack on the city’s bike policy was really a coincidence. And it turns out that in fact, the self-proclaimed “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” had several previously unreported connections to the bikelash of 2011, according to email communications obtained by Streetsblog via freedom of information request.

Former DOT commissioner Iris Weinshall and former NYC personnel director Bob Linn tried to trade on their contacts inside the Bloomberg administration to undermine the PPW bike lane and NYC DOT.

In some cases, NBBL joined up with other bike lane foes after observing them from afar. In others, they had a direct hand in ginning up bad press for bike lanes and DOT. Sometimes they got what they wanted out of their political and media connections. Other times their gambits seemingly went nowhere. And on occasion their efforts completely backfired. We’ll explore these connections in two posts: This one deals with their political and professional contacts, and the next one with their media contacts.

The picture that emerges of NBBL’s behind-the-scenes lobbying contrasts starkly with the process that led up to the installation of the PPW bike lane. While the neighborhood advocates and civic groups who supported the bike lane gathered signatures and helped shepherd the project through the community board process, the opponents traded on their extensive Rolodexes and high-level connections to undermine the bike lane in a secretive and sophisticated campaign.

Two major NBBL players should be familiar if you’ve been following the story: Iris Weinshall, former DOT commissioner and wife of United States Senator Chuck Schumer; and Norman Steisel, sanitation commissioner for Ed Koch and first deputy mayor under David Dinkins. The constellation of former city bureaucrats who put their government contacts to use opposing the Prospect Park West bike lane also includes Bob Linn, city personnel director under Koch, and Connie Christensen, a former arts commissioner.

Note: Streetsblog has already covered NBBL connections to Senator Chuck Schumer, former deputy mayor and Gibson Dunn partner Randy Mastro, City Council Transportation Committee Chair Jimmy Vacca, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. They are for the most part not included in this piece.

NBBL Spoke With the Public Advocate, City Council Members, Borough Presidents and City Hall About PPW Lane

NBBL leaders Steisel, Louise Hainline, and Lois Carswell, as well as their attorney, Jim Walden, attended a meeting with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio on February 9 (Weinshall was out of town). The meeting was “to discuss bike strategy” according to a confirmation message from de Blasio scheduler Ellyn Canfield Nealon. De Blasio’s office has not returned an inquiry about who called the meeting and what was discussed.

One month after that meeting, however, de Blasio sent a letter to Janette Sadik-Khan calling DOT’s evaluations of its own projects, including of the PPW lane, “rubber stamps.” Impugning the integrity of DOT’s project evaluations echoes a major theme in the NBBL lawsuit. The Post picked up de Blasio’s letter a week later, when DOT publicly abandoned plans for the 34th Street separated busway.

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As the 2013 mayoral race gradually shudders to life, the city New Yorkers should look to as a cautionary tale is Toronto. It was in Jane Jacobs’ adopted home town that a progressive mayor, David Miller, laid plans to prioritize pedestrian safety, surface transit, and bicycling, only to see his successor Rob Ford assume office, declare an end to “the war on the car,” and proceed to reverse much of the previous administration’s initiatives.

When it comes to transportation policy, will NYC's next mayor be more progressive than Toronto's disastrous Rob Ford? Photo of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio: WikiMedia; Photo of Rob Ford: Torstar News Service

So when a 2013 mayoral contender calls the last five years of progress toward safer, more sustainable streets the product of a “radical” approach, as Public Advocate Bill de Blasio did in a David Seifman column this weekend, everyone’s ears should perk up.

De Blasio soft-pedaled his words by framing himself as the “incrementalist” to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan’s “radical.” But when you consider how large the city is, the innovative street designs that are making it safer to walk and bike in New York have been rolled out in small increments. Less than one half of one percent of NYC street space had been reallocated to pedestrians, bike lanes, and bus lanes as of last summer.

And there is no tide of public sentiment threatening to undo these changes. The public opinion numbers are unambiguous: New Yorkers have a healthy appetite for the portions of progress that NYC DOT has been serving up the past five years. Every time a polling outfit asks people what they think of these projects — from the 2009 Q Poll about the Times Square plazas right up until yesterday’s Times poll about bike lanes — clear majorities say they approve. If the point of incrementalism is to gradually enact progressive policies without provoking widespread hostility to change, then you can call what DOT has been doing “incrementalism.”

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Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Image: Office of the Public Advocate

Election Day is more than a year away, but the race to become the next mayor of New York City is well-underway. In the last two issues of its magazine, Reclaim, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the would-be mayors for their thoughts on transit (in the more recent interviews, one question about cycling was added). So far, TA has received responses from all of the major candidates except 2009 Democratic nominee Bill Thompson.

All this week, Streetsblog will be re-printing the candidates’ responses. Here are the answers TA received from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Q: What role does a well-funded public transit system play in New York City’s economic growth?

A: Public transit is an economic pillar . It’s what connects workers with employers and customers with businesses. And it’s one of the reasons New York is so resilient even in hard economic times. The transit system drives down the costs of transportation for everyone, helping New Yorkers of all income levels have access to jobs and opportunity in every part of the city.

Q: What would you do as mayor to address transit deserts, which are locations where riders are faced with hour-plus commutes, multiple transfers or multi-fare rides?

A: We’ll need to rely heavily on improving bus service—which already reaches many of these areas—to reduce the long travel times so many New Yorkers face. The introduction of real-time bus tracking or offboard fare collection presents promising tools here. We need to recognize that the increase in economic activity that comes with giving more New Yorkers access to the transit system can help make these expansions viable and cost-effective in the long-term.

Q: When transit fares go up on 1/1/13, it will be the fifth fare hike since 2008. Do you think transit riders are paying their fair share, and is it time for elected officials to seriously consider new sources of revenue for public transit?

A: I’m concerned that built-in, guaranteed fare increases put too much pressure on working families. Raising the cost of transit is akin to raising the cost of working. Going back to the fare box over and over creates a bad mentality for those making the budgets—it becomes about what they can get out of the transit system, instead of how to ensure the service we need is adequately funded.

Tomorrow evening, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio will deliver the keynote address at the Transportation Alternatives summer benefit. When de Blasio’s name was announced as a headliner, it was somewhat surprising. As a City Council member, he was an early backer of making Prospect Park car-free. But as a citywide office holder and presumed 2013 mayoral hopeful, de Blasio has not made street safety or sustainable transportation a priority.

As Public Advocate, de Blasio commands a citywide bully pulpit and can highlight just about any issue he cares to. The position was created to serve as an “ombudsperson” — someone who listens to the public and speaks up for their interests.

Pedestrian safety and traffic congestion are the top two concerns of New Yorkers, according to a 2008 survey by the Citizens Committee for New York City. And, as Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign told Streetsblog after de Blasio was elected in 2009, the public advocate could use his office “to press for picking up the pace and scope of Bus Rapid Transit routes.”

But de Blasio has not had much to say on these issues. When he has spoken up about livable streets, he has tended to sympathize with opponents of current NYC DOT initiatives to improve bus service and bike safety.

Instead of asking the city to pick up the pace of bus improvements, he asked for more bureaucratic delay before DOT went forward with the 34th Street Transitway (de Blasio’s suggestion came just before the city announced that there would be no separated busway in the project). Most recently, he applauded the decision not to stripe a bike lane on Bay Ridge Parkway that was voted down by the local Community Board: “This was an important step forward that shows a willingness to respect the input of residents and community leaders.” In contrast, de Blasio has not come out and said he supports the Prospect Park West bike lane, which was requested and approved by the local community board in his old district.

Past citywide office holders have raised the profile of street safety and sustainability issues. Former city comptroller Alan Hevesi called attention to rampant traffic violations with a 2000 report estimating that motorists run red lights more than a million times each day in New York City. De Blasio’s predecessor as public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, who was widely considered a meek presence in the office, pointed out the folly of including so much parking in the city’s plans for the Far West Side of Manhattan.

De Blasio has not yet announced a mayoral run, but the Times reported last week that he raised nearly $700,000 in the first half of this year (less than Christine Quinn, about the same as Scott Stringer, more than Bill Thompson). As a big-city mayoral contender, de Blasio would have some catching up to do before he could plausibly claim to be a progressive candidate on transportation issues. The bar is high these days: Rahm Emanuel campaigned for mayor of Chicago with a strong commitment to expanding transit and bike infrastructure in his platform — promises that he is now delivering on.

Here is an overview of de Blasio’s record when it comes to transit, street safety, and public space issues.

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