Just as we do every year, we throw out the old year and ring in the new one with our Streetsie Awards, a multi-post compendium of the best and worst projects, people, policies and politics of the year that was. If you want to read the entire series, it's archived here. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa and a Happy New Year to all.
This year the livable streets movement took some hard “Ls” – even if the Mayor seems intent on counting his “Ws.”
In fact, it was easier for Streetsblog to tally up the failures this year than it was the successes. That's because we had a City Council so obsessed with on-street car parking it even tried to get the DOT to send thousands of notices a week warning residents that “their” parking spots would be “removed.” A mayor so obsessed with “law and order” that his police department began chasing down suspected petty criminals, injuring and killing New Yorkers in the process. And a Transportation Department so bad at following through on its promises that there are projects on the 2024 list of failures that are leftovers from last year’s roundup of failures.
What is the New Year for if not reflection? Let’s just hope the leaders of our great city can learn from these mistakes.
And the nominees are…
The definitive death of outdoor dining
Last year, Streetsblog included the truncation of the pandemic era outdoor dining program in our round up of failures. The Council, with the support of the mayor, whittled down the beloved program, creating an expensive and onerous process that makes it basically impossible for small businesses to take part. This year, we watched it all play out, and it wasn’t pretty.
The late summer and early fall in the city are usually some of the best times to be outside. But this year, it felt like a funeral. In November, New Yorkers watched as the outdoor dining sheds that had come to symbolize taking public space back from cars vanished entirely, the majority of them for good. New Yorkers took to social media to express their mourning, posting before and after photos that show thriving community spaces turned into parking for just one or two private vehicles.
It’s all because the permanent program forces businesses to pay steep fees to use the curb and use DOT mandated designs that have to be stored all winter long, another expense. DOT has received just 1,414 applications for roadway dining as of late November, down from as many as 8,000 restaurants actively participating during its peak, the agency estimated.
So, R.I.P. officially to one of the only good things to come out of the pandemic.
Queensboro Bridge fakeout
It's a classic will-they-or-won't-they story.
The DOT has been teasing a dedicated pedestrian path on the Queensboro Bridge since 2017 when the department first announced it would look into separating the currently combined two-way bike-ped lane to protect walkers from the growing number of cyclists using the bridge.
Mayors and DOT commissioners have come and gone, but the bike-ped path remains cramped and dangerous. And the crowding has only gotten worse.
Nearly 10,000 cyclists and pedestrians use the bridge each day, outnumbering the fewer than 8,200 daily drivers that use the South Outer Roadway, according to DOT. Bike counts continue to break records, with upwards of 200,000 monthly crossings at peak season. Of the four East River bridges, all of which have separate bike and pedestrian paths, only the Williamsburg Bridge saw more daily trips.
This year it seemed like the new bike lane would finally be a reality. The department installed fencing along the South Outer Roadway, indicating it was finally ready to repurpose the lane for bikes. But a delay in the construction project that the DOT has been using as an excuse to keep the roadway as a car lane (even though there are four other functioning lanes) has pushed back the project yet again.
So here we are, the year coming to a close, without separate biking and walking lanes.
The department that never was
The administration announced early in the year that it would create a “Department of Sustainable Delivery” to address the general concern that the streets have become overrun with underpaid, overworked private contractors working for delivery apps.
But with no definitive updates or details since the original January announcement, we can be sure that the city will start and end 2024 without a clear plan to regulate the app companies that are shaping our city.
Currently, the city imposes piecemeal regulations on these companies, all run by different agencies. The Department of Transportation maintains city streets and bike lanes, but the NYPD enforces traffic laws. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection oversees enforcement of the uncertified lithium-ion batteries that power e-bikes often used by delivery workers — but violations have gone to the NYPD or FDNY. DCWP also enforces and manages the restaurant delivery worker minimum wage, which the Council now wants to expand to include workers delivering all types of goods, not just meals from restaurants.
In the absence of a guiding agency to lead the city’s quest for regulation, many have thrown their hat in the ring to offer solutions. City Comptroller Brad Lander released a report advocating for a registration system for app-based food delivery companies much like the Taxi and Limousine Commission oversees Uber and Lyft. He is attempting to address the growing perceived threat to safety that is stoking anger at delivery workers, instead turning the focus to the profit-making companies that send them speeding far distances to keep their jobs.
Members of the Council, on the other hand, have focused on individuals, proposing Draconian laws that will create a bureaucratic nightmare before the new bureaucracy is even functioning (more on that later).
The 'Common Sense Caucus' getting the last word
This year, the City Council heard three bills under the guise of increasing street safety, all from the Council’s "Common Sense Caucus," which includes all the Council’s Republicans, plus Queens Democrat Bob Holden and Brooklyn Democrat (no, really) Susan Zhuang. Known for their pro-law enforcement stance, opposition to the mayor’s City of Yes housing plan, and resistance to bike lanes, the Caucus has come to set the tone for the Council’s transportation agenda:
- Intro 104: Requires the DOT to contact local firehouses before building bike lanes, even though the FDNY already coordinates with the DOT.
- Intro 103: Forces the DOT to notify lawmakers when parking is repurposed.
Intro 104 and 103 passed unanimously through the Transportation Committee and were approved by the full Council last week.
These proposals clash with the city’s goals of reducing car dependency and contradict efforts to streamline DOT processes. But the most contentious of the three is Holden’s Intro 606, which he called Priscilla’s Law. The bill is backed by people who believe registration would make roadways safer (not that the same idea works for cars, but go with it for a second), but it is not supported by street safety advocates or the DOT, which testified the bill would do nothing to improve safety.
Priscilla’s Law is named after Priscilla Loke, killed by an electric Citi Bike rider in 2021. Loke’s death revealed a problem, but not one that licensing would solve (Citi Bikes already bear a registration number on them — plus the cyclist who hit Loke remained on the scene).
Wasn't there a Streets Plan?
You know what they say, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well, call us insane for thinking that the mayor would deliver on legally mandated benchmarks of the Streets Master Plan.
For the third consecutive year, Mayor Adams has failed spectacularly in meeting a legal mandate — which this year was 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 30 miles of protected or “enhanced” bus lanes.
This year the administration completed a mere 5.3 miles of bus lanes, not even close to meeting the target. For protected bike lanes, the city has built (or is close to completing) 25.7 miles, only half way to the goal.
NYPD's need for speed
Since 2022, the number of police chases, and, in turn, the number of crashes caused by them, have skyrocketed. The NYPD has been silent on why this is happening, instead regurgitating department guidelines while overtly ignoring them, and the mayor has defended the practice.
In most cases, cops are not supposed to chase. The official guidelines are somewhat subjective, telling officers that the suspected scofflaw's danger to the public must be weighed against the danger of the chase. In theory, non-violent offenders like suspected burglars, would not a chase make. Yet cops in the 114th Precinct in Astoria chased a suspected burglar down a residential street on October 22nd, the fleeing driver then hit and killed cyclist Amanda Servedio. And she is not the only victim of this police-instigated road violence.
The City reported this month that at least 13 people were killed in the last two years in the course of police chases. And this problem is a direct result of the current administration's priorities. The uptick began after Mayor Adams promoted John Chell to Chief of Patrol and Jeffrey Maddrey to Chief of Department. (Maddrey has since resigned in a sexual harassment scandal and Chell was moved internally by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.)
Adams defended the NYPD, saying officers use caution and that chases are the result of violent crime.
“Under my term as mayor, we made a complete shift to stop letting dangerous bad people think they can commit a violent crime and just flee," he said. "Let’s be clear. We have far too many people who are extremely dangerous that have become comfortable."
Now, the NYPD has a new top boss. We'll see if the newly appointed Tisch can pump the brakes.
Honorable mentions
This year it was hard to choose which failures to highlight, given it has been such a rough year for the livable streets movement. So, we have some honorable mentions:
- The DOT rolled back the successful open holiday street program on Fifth Avenue from three Sundays in December to just one.
- A deteriorating section of the Hudson River greenway uptown keeps closing for repairs, without a permanent fix in sight.
- The DOT dropped the ball on Bedford Slip a potential one-block pedestrian plaza in Greenpoint. Instead of keeping the space car free after the plaza was created during the G train shut down, the DOT sided with a local locksmith — the sole business against the pedestrianized street – and closed it down.
- A Staten Island roadway got even wider.
- And the DOT crystalized the curb for cars by installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure on sidewalks.
Now it's time to vote (if the ballot isn't below, refresh the page):
