Streetsblog New York City

Sources say...

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.

In the latest issue of Mobilizing the Region, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign questions how the Bloomberg Administration's purported commitment to long-term planning and sustainability squares with the Department of Transportation's opposition to Intro. 199, City Council legislation aimed at collecting better data on how New York City's streets are managed and used:

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 Kate Ascher: "It's not happening. It's not possible. That information is incorrect."

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."

DOT has gotten back to me with some answers.  

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.

Sources say that Mayor Michael Bloomberg will name the replacement for outgoing Department of Transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall later this week. Word has it the job may be going to Kate Ascher.

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...

Read more...

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.

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.

Sources say that Janette Sadik-Khan (left) is a top candidate to replace Iris Weinshall when she resigns on April 13. Sadik-Khan met with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff this week to talk about the job.

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.

Chairman of the City Council Transportation Committee, John C. Liu, praised outgoing DOT commissioner Iris Weinshall and called for an innovative thinker as her successor.

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."

From today's Crain's Insider:

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.

New York Daily News, September 9, 2000:

"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?