Different first name, same sort of Adams.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams enters the mayoral race with an indifferent record on transportation — but also some occasional meddling to maintain car dominance in a city where most people don't drive.
Speaker Adams has accomplished far less than her recent predecessors, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Corey Johnson, on expanding bus and bike lanes and making city streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Mark-Viverito and Johnson passed bill after bill to advance the city's Vision Zero goals, hold reckless drivers accountable, improve bus service and expand biking and walking in the city. Speaker Adams, in contrast, has mostly stood by as Mayor Adams (no familial relation) failed to meet the bus lane and bike lane mileage required by the Council's Streets Master Plan law while creating a seasonal outdoor dining regime that dramatically curtailed the popular, all-year pandemic-era program.
The Eastern Queens Democrat entered the mayoral race this week, reportedly at the urging of top Democrats who see her as an alternative to the scandal-ridden current mayor and scandal-ridden ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But who is she on issues important to the livable streets movement?
Adrienne Adams 101
The Southeast Queens pol started in politics as the chair of her local community board. She has represented the 28th district — encompassing the neighborhoods of Jamaica, South Ozone Park and Springfield Gardens — since 2017, and became speaker in 2022. She is the Council's first Black speaker, and one of only two speakers not from Manhattan.
Adams preached “partnership over patriarchy" in her recent State of the City speech. But that approach has manifested itself during her tenure as deference to the Council's various NIMBY factions. Speaker Adams did pass the city's most comprehensive zoning reform since the 1960s, but she did so by giving out egregious carve outs to low-density districts. She's also given a platform to anti-bike proposals as well as bills intended to make it harder to claw street space away from cars.
The speaker's approach has deadly consequences: Last year 120 pedestrians and 25 cyclists were died in traffic crashes, pedestrian injuries soared to more than 9,500 and cyclist injuries topped 5,100. Including the more than 37,000 injuries suffered by people inside cars, the carnage amounts to 142 injuries per day on New York City streets. When asked to justify her inaction against these numbers, Speaker Adams has insisted the Council had done plenty for safety more broadly, further distancing herself from the responsibility to make streets safer and more livable for New Yorkers.
Empowering the anti-bike crowd
In Adrienne Adams’s City Council, parking rules.
The Council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure heard 32 bills in 2024, and passed seven. Most of the bills had nothing to do with road safety. The committee held hearings about public bathrooms, minority owned businesses, redoing medians for stormwater drainage and, of course, parking.
Instead of taking action to make the city’s streets safer, the Council passed small-in-scope bills that appease car-loving members of the so-called Common Sense Caucus, which comprises conservative members.
Two such bills — Intros 103 and 104 — required DOT to notify Council members when it repurposes parking in some situations. The bills were watered down from GOP Council Member Joann Ariola’s original proposals, but still created extra work for DOT while eschewing proven practices that make city streets safer, experts and the DOT said.
The bills reinforce a worldview seemingly shared by Speaker Adams that parking spaces belong to those who use them for free car storage, instead of the reality that the curb and the street are a public good, not private property for drivers.
The Common Sense Caucus advocates pro-law enforcement stances and opposition to housing construction, bike lanes and congestion pricing. Its members played no role in electing Adams speaker, but Adams has handed the group the reins of the Council’s transportation agenda.
Last year the Council, under Speaker Adams’s direction, also held a hearing on Holden’s Intro 606, sometimes called “Priscilla’s Law” after Priscilla Loke, who was killed by the rider of an electric Citi Bike The bill would force DOT to license and register all e-bikes (Citi Bikes are already registered) — something the agency said would cost over $19 million to set up.
Experts across the board agree that registration has no proven street safety benefit. Rather, requiring e-bike plates would give cops an excuse to target the mostly immigrant delivery workforce and discourage New Yorkers writ large from using e-bikes at all. That could inadvertently push more people to use dangerous, gas-powered mopeds on city streets and bike lanes — a recipe for tragedy.
Ruining outdoor dining
If the Speaker’s willingness to pass Intro 103 and 104 wasn’t enough to prove that she values parking spaces over the public good, her putting parking over people on outdoor dining is clear as day.
In the run-up the new program's passage, Speaker Adams hinted at not supporting roadway dining at all.
"Outdoor dining, in my perspective, should be sidewalk," she said in September 2022. "The street extensions were designed to be temporary."
Adams's Council ultimately passed an outdoor dining law in 2023. It was intended to make permanent the pandemic-era program that was a lifeline to struggling restaurants, but the law created several pathways for outdoor dining opponents to block both curbside and sidewalk dining, dramatically undermining the program. It also banned roadway outdoor dining during winter, forcing restaurants to lay off staff while also saddling them with the costly headache of putting up and taking down their set-ups.
As a result, outdoor dining may end up to a few wealthy parts of the city where restaurants can afford to go through the process and pay the fees. A program that once boasted 8,000 participating restaurants at its peak has shrunk to slashed just 800 that have been approved out of only 1,400 total applications. The program’s inefficiencies and reliance on community board approval drastically reduced the amount of outdoor dining in the city.
Advocates and restaurant owners hope Adams and the Council can fix their mistakes.
“It’s time for the Council to acknowledge that the outdoor dining program they created is fundamentally flawed," Sara Lind, the executive director of Open Plans, posted on Bluesky. "We need a new bill that addresses the critical problems of seasonality, a burdensome application, and hyperlocal veto. They need to fix this."
Silence on congestion pricing
After a long and tumultuous road, New York City finally has congestion pricing — no thanks to Adrienne Adams.
The $9 daytime congestion toll to drive into Manhattan below 60th Street is already clearing up congestion, speeding up city buses and school buses, reducing dangerous traffic crashes, and increasing pedestrian foot traffic and transit use within the congestion relief zone.
You wouldn’t know that talking to Speaker Adams. When it comes to congestion pricing, she has been lukewarm at best, issuing a statement in November that did not express any opinion about the toll beyond calling transit the “lifeblood" of the city.
Instead, Adams focused on “affordability," not the benefits of having fewer cars enter the most congested part of the city.
“Affordability for New Yorkers must guide our decisions and be a priority we all share," the statement said. "As this plan moves forward, it is critical for all stakeholders to focus on making our city more affordable and accessible to ensure New Yorkers are able to sufficiently meet living requirements and responsibilities."
The speaker's suggestion that a $9 toll is unaffordable ignored the fact that those who drive into the central business district toll zone for work are overwhelmingly wealthier than their transit-riding counterparts, and that close to 90 percent of congestion zone commuters get there via the bus or subway.
"The speaker has long viewed transit through an affordability lens, most notably by championing the expansion of Fair Fares, which has now happened twice during her tenure," said Danny Pearlstein the policy and communications director of Riders Alliance.
"The next challenge for organizers in general is to help our leaders appreciate how much time is money and how essential fast, reliable transit is to addressing New Yorkers' legitimate concerns about the cost of living."
Letting reckless drivers off the hook
In contrast to other recent speakers, Adams has done little to hold dangerous drivers accountable for killing or injuring people.
Former Council Speaker Corey Johnson passed the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program aimed to hold reckless drivers accountable, but the program expired in October 2023 — leaving reckless drivers to continue to rack up automated enforcement speeding and red light tickets with no consequences as long as they pay the low fines.
Neither Speaker Adams nor Mayor Adams has shown interest in revamping the program or passing resolutions demanding state-level legislation to get reckless drivers off the road.
Speeding is one of the most dangerous driving behaviors, with speedsters killing more than 200 New Yorkers between 2021 and 2023, according to DOT. And recidivist speeders, the estimated 12,000 vehicles that rack up 20 or more violations per year from automated enforcement cameras, are five times more likely to kill or seriously injure a pedestrian, according to DOT.
After the sunset of the DVAP program, Streetsblog pushed Adams to explain what she would do to protect New Yorkers from road violence.
"As we consider possibilities going forward," she said, "we are going to take a look at next steps."
Two years law, no "next steps" have occurred.
At the same time, Adams has declined to exercise the Council’s power to lower the speed limit in New York City.
Last year, Gov, Hochul signed the so-called Sammy’s Law, which gave the City Council to lower city speed limits without further state approval. But when asked by Streetsblog whether the Council would use its power to lower the city speed limit from 25 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour, Adams hesitated.
"The bill is very, very significant to this Council. And each Council member is going to have to weigh in on how they feel it should be enacted or should not be enacted in their district," Adams told Streetsblog after the law was passed. [Lowering the speed limit] is something for me to discuss with the community, in different meetings with civic associations with block associations and with community residents."
The response reflected Adams's typical deference to community input — continuing a pattern of inaction and deflection when it comes to street safety.
Not suing over the Streets Plan
Passed under Johnson with then-Council Member Adams's support the Streets Master Plan set a clear path for a more bike-able, walkable and transit-friendly city, by providing benchmarks for protected bike and bus lane construction, plus adding new public space. Mayor Adams failed spectacularly to meet those benchmark, and Speaker Adams has failed to do anything to hold him accountable.
In 2023, she announced plans to create a tracker that would force the DOT to update the Council and the public monthly on their progress with the benchmarks. It took a year for a tracker bill — introduced by Council Member Selena-Brooks Powers, an ally of the Speaker — to get a hearing. It still hasn’t been brought to a vote.
Adams has failed to sue the mayor for the administration's failure to meet the plan’s requirements.
"Just like you have to comply with the law and I have to comply with the law, the administration has to comply with the law as well," Speaker Adams told Streetsblog last February after she was ask about suing the Adams administration.
A year later, no court papers have been filed — even as the DOT continues to miss the master plan requirements.
