Meet the New DOT… Again


Members of the Department of Transportation "Dream Team"

Nearly nine months after her appointment, the alternative weekly newspaper City Hall notes that there’s someone new in charge at New York City’s Department of Transportation and, guess what? She’s taking a different approach to the job than her predecessor.

Monday’s profile of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan also introduces some of the, umm, new members of her "Dream Team," Bruce Schaller, Jon Orcutt and Andy Wiley-Schwartz.

While Sadik-Khan’s actual quotes are pretty mild and the accompanying photo, above, includes some notable faces from Old DOT, City Hall, like New York magazine a few weeks ago, describes the bike commuting commish as a "revolutionary."

"The team I put together for sustainability weren’t just transportation
advocates before they came to work for the administration," Sadik-Khan
said. "They were experts in understanding the dynamism of our transport
network and seeing opportunities where some may have seen unmanageable
problems."

She said the key was to be revolutionary. "It’s a
vision for the future that’s not dictated by how things have been done
in the past," she said.

Photo: City Hall 

  • fdr

    Is it significant that the New DOT people are on the left and the Old DOT people are on the right?

  • Angus Grieve-Smith

    Is it significant that the New DOT people are on the left and the Old DOT people are on the right?

    In true revolutionary spirit, they reenact the French Legislative Assembly of 1791 at every staff meeting. I’m not going to speculate on who are the Girondins and who are the Jacobins.

  • IfYerGonnaBeAWiseass…

    The old-timers are on _her_ left.

  • In the Legislative Assembly of 1791, the conservatives rushed to sit on the the right side of the chairman, who was facing them, because this was considered the more honored place, so the radicals had to go the his left. That is why we still call conservatives the right and liberals the left.

    So I think the wiseasses are right: it depends whether people are on the right or left as you face them, not on whether they are on _her_ right or left.

  • Chris in Sacramento

    It’s fabulous that reformers are getting a crack at running a major city’s DOT. I know of nothing similar happening in California.

  • Maybe the DOT has a chance of being a functional agency.

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