New York City's Open Streets program — a success birthed in the pandemic in 2020 — has run out of federal Covid funding and Mayor Adams has lost interest in supplementing it, Streetsblog has learned.
Federal pandemic aid that funded the program has dried up and the city Department of Transportation is so worried about Hizzoner's failure to find another funding source that the agency last month asked open streets volunteers to lobby the City Council for the money, according to sources involved in the discussions.
On a March 14 call with open streets organizers and other advocates, DOT Chief of Staff Ryan Lynch said the agency had nearly exhausted all the federal funding that had mostly enabled the open streets program. Lynch said the DOT was trying to lobby its own boss for money to replace the pandemic aid, he was also asking the volunteers to turn to the City Council to make up the gap.
That move came about because DOT has tried and fail to get the mayor on board with funding the program, according to sources familiar with City Hall budget negotiations.
The DOT has never put a line item in the budget with a specific price tag for open streets, but on the phone call, Lynch said if the agency had $5 million a year, it could run the open streets program as it currently is. That's significantly less than the $16 million per year that organizers sought last month in their letter to City Council leadership — an ask that reflected the need for the city to support these limited-capacity volunteer organizations by investing in permanent design solutions that don't require as many staff on-hand to set up and enforcement open streets restrictions.
Budget negotiations between the mayor and the City Council are ongoing, but the DOT's confab with the open streets volunteers indicated to some on the call that Hizzoner no longer considers open streets a priority.
"Ultimately City Hall is just saying that this program is not worth any money," one volunteer who participated in the call with Lynch told Streetsblog.
An official in the City Comptroller's office said Adams should not have let the open streets funding situation get to the point where the DOT had to ask the City Council to rescue the program, even indirectly.
"This was a knowable issue and ... if the administration actually cared about or prioritized the open streets program, they should have been planning for this funding source to continue years ago," said Louise Yeung, Comptroller Brad Lander's chief climate officer. "From our perspective, this is a really frustrating and disappointing place to find ourselves." (Lander was running in the Democratic primary for mayor against Adams, who just declared himself an independent.)
Another insider familiar with DOT's strategy questioned why the agency, which presumably has the ear of the mayor, is asking advocates to lobby the Council.
"The DOT is running around like a chicken with its head cut off and asking advocates to create a plan for them, but can't be bothered to advocate for themselves inside City Hall," the person fumed.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams previously said that any baseline funding for open streets would require collaboration with the mayor's office. The City Council's recently released preliminary budget response doesn't put money into the program.
During the March phone call with advocates, DOT's Lynch said that the open streets program can't end even if replacement funds for the federal money don't materialize — because it's been legislated by the City Council.
Without a baseline level of funding, however, open streets will have to compete with every other piece of the DOT budget, Lynch said. One City Council member told Streetsblog that "a number" of Council members "are deeply concerned about these potential cuts to the program."
"It's deeply misguided to cut funds from the open street program, especially at this moment," said the Council member, Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens).
"We will be putting a lot of pressure at our hearings coming up on the budget, and pushing on this issue, because in this moment, what we need to be doing, frankly, is investing more funding to care for open streets," he said.
Krishnan also took Adams to task for what he said was a pattern of forcing the mayor's own agencies to get bailed out by the City Council.
"I understand the desire to turn to the City Council to reverse funding cuts. We will absolutely fight for that," he said. "But let's be very clear the responsibility for those cuts in the first place and the responsibility for restoring those cuts should lie squarely and properly with the mayor who made them in the first place."
City Hall did not respond to a request for comment, specifically whether the mayor would put money in his executive budget for open streets.
Since open streets began, DOT has relied on a hodgepodge of funding sources to support the program — including federal stimulus funding the city was legally required to spend by 2026.
DOT's funding provides things like signage, street cleaning, sanitation services and on-street programming for open streets.
Even with that help, one volunteer who had been on the call told Streetsblog that open street organizations struggle every year to get enough resources from DOT every year.
DOT also has a three-year, $30-million contract with the Horticultural Society of New York and Klen Space to fund programming and labor at some open streets, which won't be affected by the end of pandemic-era federal funds according to Lynch.
The funding shortfall is yet another blow to the program, which has seen high several locations shrink in recent years, including this year's cuts to the hours and season length on Vanderbilt Avenue and cuts to the total size of the Avenue B open street from eight blocks to three. Weekly open streets on Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant will go from more or less weekly to once-per-month this summer, the Tompkins Avenue Merchant Association recently announced. On Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, Council Member Shahana Hanif is seeking a compromise between merchants for and against open streets despite overwhelming support in the community, Brownstoner reported on Thursday.
