"Janette Sadik-Khan has a superb mix of public and private sector transportation management experience and she will make great addition to our team. She's joining us at an exciting time, as we use the last 979 days of our Administration to enact policies to set this City on the course for a better future," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Janette has the skills and the experience to meet the challenges of overseeing our vast transportation infrastructure, to ensure that people can move around our City safely, and to continue to lead the DOT by implementing innovative and exciting policies."

"I am pleased to be joining Mayor Bloomberg and his team, who are continuing to show leadership by articulating a bold new vision for New York. I look forward to working with the men and women of DOT to realize that vision," said Janette Sadik-Khan. "My first priority is the safety of our residents as they use the networks of roads and bridges that connect our City, and I will focus on making our system more sustainable and achieving a full state of good repair for our aging infrastructure. I am very happy to be returning to city government at such an eventful time."

"This is an exciting time to be joining the Bloomberg Administration and I want to welcome Janette to DOT," said Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, Daniel Doctoroff. "Because we recognize that transportation is linked with land use, energy, housing development, air and water quality, we truly operate as a team, and I know that Janette will be an integral part of that as we work to meet the challenges that the Mayor has laid out as part of PlaNYC."

Sadik-Khan's first day on the job is May 14th.

Today's Crain's Insider reports:

Insiders say Janette Sadik-Khan will be named to head the city Department of Transportation by the end of the week. Sadik-Khan, a senior vice president at engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, is viewed as the choice of transit advocates, who believe she will extend mass transit options as opposed to car-friendly projects. Michael Horodniceanu, a former DOT traffic chief under Mayor David Dinkins, was the other finalist for the post. The new commissioner's job will be particularly challenging, given Mayor Mike Bloomberg's ambitious PlaNYC agenda.

Rumor has it, however, that a deal is close to being done.

In a major restructuring of the Bloomberg Administration, outgoing Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall will be replaced by Public Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. Bloomberg's surprise announcement came at a rare Sunday morning press conference, where the mayor also rolled out a major piece of his 2030 Sustainability plan for reducing congestion.

After thanking Weinshall for her efforts, Bloomberg set forth his vision for New York's new Transportation Commissioner. "Today begins a new day, when we look at our streets differently, when we see the inextricable link between public health and and the public realm, when we choose clean air and quality of life over congestion. What I started on Friday with my veto of the pedicab cap will continue through the end of my administration. We will free this city from the negative consequences of automobile congestion."

"Driving a single-passenger private motor vehicle in New York City is about to go the way of smoking in restaurants," Commissioner Frieden said. "I accepted this job because I realized that the best way to achieve many of our public health goals is to reduce New Yorkers' automobile dependence."

Bloomberg went on to announce his support for congestion pricing and said that he would begin taking street space away from private motor vehicles throughout the city to help accelerate his long-stalled Bus Rapid Transit project. Bloomberg named Vision42 founder George Haikalis as DOT Deputy Commissioner and boldly announced that by the end of his term 42nd Street would be transformed into a car-free light rail pedestrian boulevard.

He then introduced Dr. Thomas Frieden as the new DOT chief. "Tom is the natural choice. He has been a remarkable innovator as New York City's Health Commissioner, but he can do more for public health as DOT commissioner than he can in his current position," the mayor said.


Vision 42: One of the many innovative projects now embraced by the Bloomberg Administration

"As we move more people out of automobiles and encourage more people to bike and walk around the city," Dr. Frieden said, "our city's residents will get fitter and healthier. We'll reduce obesity and diabetes rates. Moreover, we will start eliminating the ground-level pollution that causes asthma, lung cancer and other respiratory ailments that plague so many New Yorkers, our children and seniors in particular."

Frieden also pointed to the fact that much of the traffic congestion and pollution was from automobiles merely driving through the city as something he intends to address. "Automobile congestion is not only making our residents sick, it is stymieing New York City's economic development and holding us back from being the greatest city in the world."

The move stunned Livable Streets advocates. Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, was initially very excited about the announcement, but quickly realized the full impact of City Hall suddenly buying in to his entire agenda. "I'm not really sure what TA's mission would be moving forward. I mean, if Frieden's running the show, what are we going to complain about?" He was last seen scratching his head and mumbling something about updating his resume and trying to get a job in the new DOT.

Ken Coughlin, chairman of the Car Free Central Park campaign, reportedly received a call in advance of Frieden's appointment from Dan Doctoroff. "He told me that he's been a big supporter of Car Free Central Park from day one, but just has been waiting for the right moment to announce his support for a total ban on automobiles from entering the park." Coughlin then did three cartwheels in front of City Hall and high-fived several people around him.

Streetsblog will be following this story as it unfolds. Stay tuned and happy April Fools Day.

Multiple sources say that Mayor Bloomberg has chosen Urbitran Chairman and CEO Michael Horodniceanu as New York City's next transportation commissioner. Iris Weinshall's last day on the job will be Friday, April 13. No word yet on when the official announcement will be.

We will know if Mayor Bloomberg heard that call by the choice he makes for DOT. 

As a wise New York City traffic engineer once told me:

"Traffic engineers have failed," Sam Schwartz says. "If you compare the accomplishments of our profession over the last 50 years to the medical profession, our performance is equivalent to millions of people still dying of polio, influenza and other minor bacterial diseases that have been cured."

While London, Paris, and cities and towns all across Northern Europe are, with great success, developing ways to make their dense central districts less convenient, accessible and free to automobiles, American traffic engineers are still focused on figuring out how to shove more motor vehicles through our nation's roadways. The traffic engineers' solution for congestion is to add a lane or build a new road. In Schwartz's words, that's like "telling an obese person that the way to get healthy is to buy a bigger pair of pants and a longer belt."

After giving Weinshall props for her actions on the Queens Boulevard front (and taking her to task on the Staten Island Ferry crash), the Times goes on to say how much more needs to be done, voicing some arguments that probably sound mighty familiar to Streetsblog readers:

Whoever gets the job should waste no time in helping to secure federal money to study ways of relieving traffic, including the possibility of congestion pricing. Washington has recognized that the nation's cities need traffic controls, and millions of dollars are being offered to municipalities seeking solutions. New York should claim its share.

There has been a lot of pushback on the idea of congestion pricing, in which drivers would be charged a fee in the most heavily trafficked part of the city, Manhattan south of Central Park. Opponents portray the fee as a regressive tax that would be hard on small businesses, but versions of such a charge in London, Stockholm and elsewhere show promising results, reducing traffic apparently without impeding commerce.

As a quick second act, the next commissioner could take a bite out of congestion and set an example for the rest of city government by revoking its workers' parking permits, an idea promoted by Transportation Alternatives, a nonpartisan advocate for reduced car traffic. City workers from all departments, the police in particular, regularly abuse the privilege -- the permits amount to a free pass to park, even double-park, anywhere -- especially in Lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.

In the larger picture, the new commissioner should treat city transportation as the regional issue it is. Much of the traffic on the most heavily used streets originates in outlying areas. Workers are commuting from ever greater distances. Sometimes that is a matter of necessity, sometimes it's a matter of perceived convenience.

The city would benefit greatly from a transportation leader who promotes use of public transit, walking and cycling as not just a way to a destination, but as a way of life.

A long walk across Queens Blvd. at Grand Ave., Elmhurst, circa March 2001. Photo: Jeff Saltzman

Departing Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall often cites the pedestrian safety improvements she ordered for Queens Boulevard as the greatest accomplishments of her six years in office. Before taking over DOT, the Queens Boulevard death machine was killing an average of 9 pedestrians a year, including an astounding death toll of 18 in 1997 alone. Once DOT began focusing on pedestrian safety along Queens Boulevard, the death rate fell to just over three per year. Today, crossing Queens Boulevard on foot is still a challenge but it's a lot safer than it used to be.

As City Hall mulls the future of its Department of Transportation, it is useful to recall the decades of pedestrian carnage on Queens Boulevard and what it took, finally, to staunch the bloodshed. Because it was Queens Boulevard where Iris Weinshall, the city's newly appointed transportation commissioner, overruled her agency's top traffic engineers for the first time and, in so doing, achieved what she often says is her proudest accomplishment.

In late 2000, the Daily News launched a crusade to tame the "Boulevard of Death." Newsday followed suit, and the 7.1 mile long, 12 lane, monster street dominated their contest for Queens readers. The tabloids ran more than twenty-five newspaper articles spotlighting the horrible conditions, including five front pages.

Prodded by the media coverage, the city's new DOT commissioner, a transportation policy neophyte, instructed her traffic engineers to make walking across the boulevard safer and easier. But the engineers resisted. Increasing pedestrian crossing times, they said, would would back up traffic to the Queensboro Bridge and motorists would be stuck fuming. Weinshall, frustrated by her top engineers' apparent inability or unwillingness to trade motorist convenience for pedestrian safety, shared a candid revelation with reporters: DOT's traffic engineers, she said, were "thinking from the motorist's viewpoint."

The traffic engineers may have been surprised at Weinshall's concern. "Accidents" on Queens Boulevard were nothing new. For decades the public and press didn't seem to care. Most years the papers wrote one or two articles about pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard, sometimes none. Previous DOT commissioners did pitifully little about the 4 to 18 pedestrians killed and scores terribly injured each year. Pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard had always just been a fact of life -- collateral damage.

But times had changed. Here came a new Transportation Commissioner under relentless media pressure. Overriding their dire warnings of traffic catastrophe, Weinshall ordered DOT's traffic engineers to act. Within weeks, the speed limit was reduced, crossing times increased, and lighting and signage improved. Over the following months and years, traffic lanes were replaced by angle parking, fences installed to reduce jaywalking, median waiting areas built and widened, and a long term plan developed. As the changes took effect, the pedestrian casualty rate on Queens Boulevard plummeted.

The taming of the "Boulevard of Death" was the crowning moment of Iris Weinshall's six years as New York City's transportation commissioner. It was made possible, in part, because a new, perhaps somewhat naive, transportation commissioner was willing to overrule her agency's top traffic engineers and force them to begin looking at one of the busiest, widest, most dangerous streets in New York City as more than just a system for moving cars and trucks -- but as a public space -- a place where people live, work and walk.

Strangely, and much to the detriment of Weinshall's legacy, the key lessons of Queens Boulevard were quickly lost. Whether talking to a Midtown Manhattan Business Improvement District or a neighborhood group in Brooklyn, Weinshall and her borough-level subordinates often deflected requests saying, "I'm not a traffic engineer. We'll have to get back to you on that." Despite her initial insight that DOT's traffic engineers viewed the city from a windshield perspective, Weinshall continued to defer to them. In a near total void of Mayoral-level interest in transportation issues, during the Weinshall years DOT's top traffic engineers became New York City's de facto transportation planners and policymakers.

Today, the very same traffic engineers that Weinshall faced down on Queens Boulevard have as much authority as ever. In their own words, they "own" New York City's streets. They sign-off on every proposed bike lane, speed hump, median, neckdown, sidewalk-widening and hour of car-free park. When, for example, they decide that it is time for a functional, community-friendly, two-way, neighborhood Main Street to become a one-way highway designed to speed  through-traffic and "maximize capacity," that's that. Neighborhood groups, Community Boards and elected officials can tell DOT what to do. DOT will listen. But until a DOT commissioner or mayor says otherwise, the traffic engineers call the shots.

Whomever takes over as New York City's next DOT commissioner should take a close look at how Iris Weinshall's achievements on Queens Boulevard were won and then ask: Whose "viewpoint" do DOT's traffic engineers have today?

Photo: Foodgeek / Flickr

Janette Sadik-Khan is a front-runner to take over as DOT Commissioner after Iris Weinshall leaves the job on April 13. "It's her job. She just has to decide whether she wants it."

Joan McDonald, senior vice president at the Economic Development Corporation, has been ruled out. She will not get the job.

Dan Doctoroff's headhunters are soliciting resumes from the Land of Congestion Charging. One name that comes up is Jay Walder (right) who just resigned after six years as Transport for London's Managing Director for Finance and Planning to take a job at McKinsey. The well-liked New Yorker worked at the MTA with Bob Kiley and joined Kiley at TfL back in 2001 to help get London's congestion charging system up and running.

Testifying before the City Council on Intro. 199, a bill to improve NYC transportation data collection and performance measures, outgoing NYCDOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall challenged the bill's suggestion that New York City's transportation-related data collection efforts don't go far enough. Commissioner Weinshall told the Council, "the City Charter already requires the submittal of objectives and indicators as detailed in the Mayor's Management Report (MMR) and, therefore, any legislation to require additional reporting seems redundant."

Press coverage of the hearing focused on Weinshall's statements that traffic congestion is more a matter of perception owing to bigger vehicles rather than growing numbers of them. Leaving aside the obvious fact that vehicle size matters to congestion-the same number of people driving trucks take up a lot more room than if they were on bicycles - the absence of any real information about traffic or congestion trends in the city in the commissioner's testimony seemed to argue for the Council's proposal.

Tri-State concludes:

The Bloomberg administration missed a golden opportunity to build support through Intro. 199 for new metrics of sustainable transportation. The Council should pass Intro 199, explicitly charging the city administration to come through with a way to measure progress on sustainability goals.

DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald: "It's a very complicated agency, a huge bureaucracy with lots of moving parts and serious work to be done. If they took someone who has been here before, already had knowledge of the agency and who has a flexible approach and is sympathetic to pedestrian, traffic-calming and livable streets issues, that'd be ideal. That's Joan."

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan: "She'd be great and if it were offered and if she were really given a mandate, I bet she'd take the job, though, you've got to think it would be a serious pay cut." 

DOT Commissioner Emily Lloyd: Sources aren't saying anything! 

DOT Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations Michael Primeggia (above): "He still makes all of the decisions. You might disagree with some of them but he takes things seriously and works hard. He's not a bureaucrat."

As Streetsblog reported Monday, New York City's Department of Transportation failed to follow through on a 2004 pledge to build potentially life-saving pedestrian safety improvements along the Third Avenue corridor where a 4-year-old boy was run over and killed last Tuesday.

Streetsblog asked DOT why the pedestrian safety recommendations were never implemented despite a March 19, 2004 announcement by DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall that DOT would make an "immediate review" of the Third Avenue corridor and accelerate "$4 million in funding for capital improvements associated with the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming... from Fiscal Year 2009 to Fiscal Year 2006."

Here is a reply, from the agency's press office:

DOT has acted on many of the recommendations of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Report since it was published in June 2004 and improved conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. On several streets in Downtown Brooklyn, DOT has reduced the number of travel lanes, added medians and left turn bays, adjusted signal timings, converted one-ways to two-ways and added parking, all to slow vehicles down and discourage through traffic. Miles of bike lanes have been installed, including a physically separated path on Tillary Street. Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) were installed at 9 locations and LPI studies will begin shortly at 3 more intersections.

Capital work was delayed because the construction was more complicated than initially anticipated. Preliminary plans for all 250 recommended neckdowns were completed by DOT in March 2005, but underground utilities issues led to the need for more complex designs. The project has been divided into two phases to be handled by the Department of Design and Construction. The first phase, in the capital plan for fiscal year 2008, is fully funded at $5 million and includes the construction of neckdowns at 101 locations at 43 intersections.

To put the 2008 date in perspective, the public demonstrations that led to the creation of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project began in 1996.

Ascher currently works as executive vice president of the city's Economic Development Corporation. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in government from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in political science from Brown University. Prior to her job at EDC she served as assistant director of the Port at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. 

Ascher is also the author of one of my favorite books about New York City, The Works: Anatomy of a City. The Works diagrams, illustrates and lays bare the vast array of interconnected systems required to keep New York City up and running.

Read into this what you will but The Works very first chapter is called "Moving People" and the first section of that chapter is "Streets." If you didn't know any better, reading that chapter, you'd think that New York City's Department of Transportation is actually the Department of Reckless Driver Enforcement, Pedestrian Safety & Traffic Calming.

While the chapter offers no description of Midtown gridlock piling up at the Lincoln Tunnel, there's a two page spread on traffic cameras and red light cameras even though, at the time Ascher must have been writing the book, there were only 50 functional red light cams in the entire city. The two page lay-out on sidewalks and pedestrians goes into great detail about Pedestrian Level of Service, a grading system that I've never heard anyone at DOT refer to in all of my years of working on Greater Downtown Brooklyn transportation issues. And the full-page spread on traffic calming includes illustrations of chicanes, raised crosswalks, diagonal diverters and a few other traffic calming measures that I've seen in Berlin and Berkeley but never in New York City (and certainly not on Third Avenue in Brooklyn).

So, who knows? Maybe Ascher doesn't realize that these great pedestrian-oriented ideas are actually only a pretty minor part of DOT's operations as things currently stand. Or maybe this good stuff would emerge as the focus of an Ascher DOT. Either way, her book is great. Here are some illustrations from The Works...

DOT's announcement of $4 million in funding for the installation of "median extensions, neckdowns and other traffic-calming" measures recommended by the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming plan was made after the February 9, 2004 deaths of Juan Estrada and Victor Flores. The Park Slope fifth graders were run over and killed by a gravel-filled truck at Third Avenue and 9th Street in circumstances eerily similar and almost exactly three years prior to Tuesday's tragedy

Last week, 4-year-old James Nyprie Rice was killed at the intersection of Third Avenue and Baltic Street in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn (newspaper stories had him incorrectly named as James Jacaricce). The boy and his 18-year-old aunt were walking in the crosswalk with the pedestrian signal giving them right-of-way when a yellow General Motors Hummer, driven by 48-year-old Ken Williams of Brownsville, made a right turn off of Third Avenue and ran them over, killing the boy and injuring his aunt. Juan Estrada and Victor Flores were also killed by a right-turning truck while walking in the crosswalk with the right-of-way. In both cases the drivers walked away with a summons from police.

As reported Thursday on Streetsblog, the May 2003 final report of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project had recommended a set of pedestrian safety measures -- a "gateway treatment" consisting of "neckdowns" and a "raised crosswalk" for the intersection of Third Avenue and Baltic Street. These particular traffic-calming measures (illustrated at right) are designed specifically to protect neighborhood streets from through-traffic and help prevent the type of "right turn conflict" that killed all three boys.

The pedestrian safety recommendations were never implemented despite a March 19, 2004 announcement by DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall that DOT would make an "immediate review" of the Third Avenue corridor and accelerate "$4 million in funding for capital improvements associated with the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming... from Fiscal Year 2009 to Fiscal Year 2006." These funds, according to the commissioner's statement would "enable DOT to install median extensions, neckdowns and other traffic-calming initiatives." Fiscal Year 2006 ended on June 30.

The 2004 deaths of Estrada and Flores made the front pages of all of the dailies and Commissioner Weinshall's commitment to accelerated traffic calming was made following an unusual and emotional joint meeting of City Council's Transportation, Education and Pubilc Safety Committees. The March 1, 2004 public hearing, which opened with a moment of silence for the two Brooklyn boys, was convened to press DOT for pedestrian safety improvements around city schools and at the location where the two boys died.

Since March 2004 the Department of Transportation has accelerated the planning of its once-moribund Safe Routes to Schools program and provided Downtown Brooklyn and surrounding neighborhoods with a number of spot traffic-calming, pedestrian safety and bicycle infrastructure improvements, many of which are illustrated in this PDF document. At Third Avenue and 9th Street where Estrada and Flores died, DOT "granted to pedestrians" a seven second head start across the intersection ahead of motor vehicles, a traffic-calming measure known as a Leading Pedestrian Interval.

Yet, three years after Commissioner Weinshall's apparent commitment, DOT has not built neckdowns, median extensions or any other significant, physical pedestrian safety measures along the dangerous Third Avenue corridor.

The three fatalities above aren't the whole story either. On December 7, 2006 a 6-year-old boy named Andry Vega, was fatally struck at 3rd Avenue and 46th Street in Sunset Park by a truck running a red light.

Though pedestrian fatalities, on the whole, have declined in New York City in recent years, Third Avenue appears to be bucking the trend.

A senior vice president at Parsons Brinckerhoff and former Director of the Mayor's Office of Transportation for New York City during the Dinkins Administration, Sadik-Khan would be an ideal candidate for the job, though, to be successful in the post it is clear that she would need a strong reform mandate from the Mayor and the political cover to shake things up.

Sources are also saying that Judith Bergtraum (right), DOT First Deputy Commissioner and a key Weinshall aide (she's also the daughter of local education legends Murry and Edith), has been ruled out as a possible replacement for Weinshall.

You've already weighed in on what you'd like to see in the next DOT commissioner. Now members of the City Council and Transportation Alternatives have weighed in too, with a press conference yesterday highlighting qualities they would like to see in the city's next Transportation Commissioner. Here is Council Member Yassky's press release.

Council Member David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) and transportation advocates today urged the Bloomberg Administration to appoint a new Department of Transportation commissioner with the credentials and experience to tackle the traffic congestion and pollution problems that are plaguing New Yorkers.

"This City has been fortunate to have such a hard-working DOT commissioner in Iris Weinshall for the past five years," Council Member Yassky said. "But now that she is moving on, we must look toward the next five years and beyond and choose a commissioner who will tackle our quickly increasing environmental and transportation challenges. Our next transportation commissioner will be making decisions that will effect the health, business and general quality of life of all New Yorkers, make sure she or he makes the right ones."

Council Members and advocates called on the Mayor to meet his 2030 PLANYC sustainability goals by appointing a DOT commissioner with a mandate to reduce automobile traffic while improving surface transit, walking and bicycling options.

"There is so much a transportation commissioner could do to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers by reducing traffic and encouraging transit use," said Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign. "We need a dynamic leader - like Commissioner Thomas Frieden has been in the area of health - to improve air quality and neighborhood life by taming city traffic."

"Commissioner Weinshall has steered the Department for many years and her shoes will be hard to fill," said Council Member John C. Liu, Chairperson of the Transportation Committee. "New Yorkers need a Transportation Commissioner who can get up to speed quickly and also change the internal inertia that sometimes dampens innovation, especially if we are to truly create a system for the free flow of people and goods in the City."

"It is crucial the Administration selects a new Department of Transportation commissioner who will make pollution, traffic congestion and parking issues a priority," said Council Member Bill de Blasio. "The next commissioner will play a vital role in making sure the City reaches its future goals of increasing and improving our transportation alternatives."

Insiders say Joan McDonald, senior vice president of transportation for the city's Economic Development Corp., is the leading candidate to replace Iris Weinshall as transportation commissioner. McDonald has a broad resume, having worked for Jacobs Engineering Group, the city Department of Transportation, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mayor Mike Bloomberg's office would not comment on her candidacy. Weinshall is leaving the job in mid-April to take a vice chancellor's post at CUNY.

"The city's new transportation chief [Iris Weinshall] said yesterday she will take office with three things in mind: 'traffic, traffic, traffic.'"

What three things do we hope New York City's next transportation commissioner has in mind as he or she takes office in April 2007? 

Transportation Alternatives has come out with its statement on the resignation of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall along with a brief to-do list for the next commissioner. Executive Director Paul White isn't pulling punches. From T.A.:

Iris Weinshall upheld the cars-first status quo at a time when New York City streets desperately needed innovation and change.

To her credit, Commissioner Weinshall stabilized an embattled agency that just prior to her arrival had seen four commissioners in a period of six years. Commissioner Weinshall filled potholes better than her precedessors, and made pedestrian safety improvements to some of the city's most dangerous streets. But these successes were eclipsed by Commissioner Weinshall's failure to redress the enormous economic, heath and quality of life costs imposed by the City's outdated car-based surface transportation system.

To reduce the cost of congestion and meet the challenges of growth and global warming, New York City needs a new cadre of expert transportation planners led by a progressive-minded DOT Comissioner who can institutionalize and apply modern street management practices that will shift driving trips to cleaner more space efficient modes. The Mayor should look to London and other big cities for the right candidates.

Road pricing, parking reforms and streets redesigned to maximize walking, biking and surface transit are solutions that the new commissioner needs to make happen if New York City's 6,000 miles of streets are going to perform better for residents and business alike. Tasks that the Commissioner should tackle:

• Adopt new universal street design standards that would make traffic calming, pedestrian, bicycle and bus improvements the routine rule, not the ad hoc exception
• Expand annual data collection to better understand how New Yorkers travel, and what they need to drive less and walk, bike and take transit more.
• Begin a comprehensive study of how variable road pricing can be effectively and fairly applied
• Reform on-street an off-street parking policies to reduce unnessary driving and traffic
• Improve community based planning and outreach to make streets work for residents first and through-traffic second.

Says Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, "New York City needs a new DOT commissioner with a new mandate. The old mandate was to move as many cars as quickly as possible. The new DOT commissioner must figure out how to move the most people around the city, using all of the available tools including mass transit, walking and bicycling."