The Dave Colon Challenge: Whitney Tilson Is Pro-Bike, Pro-Business And Pro-Police

This is the second in a series of bike rides with mayoral candidates orchestrated by reporter Dave Colon. Mayoral candidates interested in taking the Dave Colon Challenge should email dcolon@streetsblog.org.

"Have you read Abundance?" Whitney Tilson asked me as we waited to cross a grim and wide expanse underneath the Whitestone Expressway.

"One of the main themes of the book is how blue cities and blue states are crushing the working class by allowing NIMBYism and associated regulations, red tape and zoning rules choke off growth, particularly housing. So it's a liberal call for loosening things up [and] not allowing NIMBYism to kill developments," Tilson said about what he learned from the much-discoursed book/manifesto that critiques progressive governance. (For the record, I haven't read the Ezra Klein-Derek Thompson tome. Gersh has, and he said it simplifies everything into a screed that blames liberals for environmental regulations, but I'm paraphrasing.)

Tilson brought up the book after I asked him how he would get the northeast Queens greenway finished over the vociferous opposition from Republican City Council Member Vickie Paladino. Tilson, a loud and proud moderate, promised to turn on the Robert Moses Machine to get a major bike project over the line.

"The problem with this city, one of the biggest problems I've come to see, is that when it comes to any kind of development a handful of loud voices can delay or derail or completely block forever needed infrastructure," he told me.

Whitney Tilson, who made a career in investment banking, is a total newcomer to electoral politics, so he has no record to judge his words against, which can make it hard to determine just what he'll do if he gets the big desk at City Hall. That, and the fact that he already rides his bike everywhere, is why I decided to take him through some truly hostile places to ride a bike — to demonstrate how necessary something like the greenway project is and what he'll be responsible for if he's the mayor.

Tilson was perfectly comfortable going from the calm of the Flushing Bay Promenade to industrial Flushing onto some less than ideal conditions in College Point, which was the only way really to get from the Flushing waterfront to Powell's Cove Park — showing the need for a sane waterfront-adjacent route east of Flushing Creek.

Among the handful of candidates who've answered the Dave Colon Open Challenge, Tilson was the first who could able pedal along with no hands and still thoughtfully answer questions at the same time. He's also the one I probably put in the most physical danger after I almost brought us up a Whitestone Expressway exit ramp when I missed the turn that brings you to a pedestrian and cyclist path next to Northern Boulevard.

As we rode, Tilson made the case for cycling as the best way to get around the city if you really want to get somewhere on time, which you don't always hear from people running for office.

"I'm never late to meetings because I'm stuck underground or stuck in traffic in an Uber or something like that. It's a very efficient and quick way to get around," he told me.

Tilson also occupies a unique lane in a mayoral election where so many candidates are running as a rebuke of Eric Adams's own center-right politics. He wants to talk about quality of life and he wants to hire more police, but unlike Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he wants to talk about quality-of-life in terms of bike lanes and pedestrianization, not just ticket stings. (Though he does also believe in those ticket stings.)

"What I think [bike lane opponents] are missing is sort of in intangible about quality of life. If you survey New Yorkers about how they're feeling, they're feeling pretty negative about the city, feeling pretty negative about quality of life relating to crime and disorder. Creating a more pedestrian and bike friendly city, I think helps offset that," he told me.

A cyclist in the city for three decades, Tilson recalled many horror stories and close calls — like the time a SUV driver slammed on brakes just in the nick of time to bump Tilson on his bike instead of running him over completely.

Tilson told me he makes sure he's lit up when he rides, with lights on his helmet and bike that he hopes keep him safe. But, I ask him, isn't there more to do to make sure cycling doesn't involve the two of us swapping stories of being run over by drivers?

"I've biked in a lot of the European cities, and particularly Stockholm for their bike safety, both in terms of having the dedicated lanes but also just the way both the cyclists but also the cars are super conscious of [safety]," he told me. "And so there's, I think it's, you know, it's a structural infrastructure element, but also, I think a cultural element."

But how does New York City under Mayor Whitney Tilson break through that "culture element" then?

"Being a loud as mayor, urging people, both cyclists and cars. But also having the street cameras and speeding cameras and having police. They're understaffed and can barely handle the major crimes, much less enforcing traffic scofflaws and speeders. So some of it might be enforcement, and some of it might be using the bully pulpit," he said.

For Tilson, that includes building on the NYPD's extremely controversial policy of giving criminal summonses to cyclists who run red lights or stop signs. The policy was put in place after Tilson took his bike ride with me, but when I asked his campaign whether the candidate supported the crackdown, Tilson tried to thread the needle by promising to send the cops after e-bike "drivers."

"I have been vocal about the dangers posed by reckless e-bike drivers. That’s why I would impose a 20 mph limit on e-bike throttle capacity and require all drivers to be registered and insured, putting the onus for compliance on the companies that employ the drivers," he said in a statement.

But, the statement added, "ordinary cyclists simply do not pose the same threat to public safety as the people driving what are effectively slow motorcycles."

"To the extent that ordinary bikers are swept up in the NYPD’s crackdown, that’s wrong," Tilson said. "The NYPD should explicitly limit its stepped-up traffic enforcement to e-bikes and scooters, rather than cyclists of all kinds. And as mayor, I would make sure that is the case."

So in a sense, what Tilson offers is the same kind of thing we heard from Eric Adams before he became mayor — but with more personal experience with traffic violence and a firmer philosophy around where he thinks the city is going.

In addition to Tilson's own brush with a reckless driver, Tilson's wife was once concussed by a cyclist who hit her on the Central Park loop, and his children's pediatrician was Dr. Daniel Cammerman, who was killed riding his bike on the 96th Street Central Park Transverse.

That makes it fair to wonder if Mayor Tilson might find himself on an island, talking up the benefits of bike lanes and street safety on the one hand, but relying too much on the NYPD to make that street safety happen. Tilson's safe streets agenda has its limits, or at least its blinders. Among the candidates who answered Streetsblog's campaign questionnaire, he was the only one who said he was interested in preserving on-street parking, particularly he said, in "low-density" neighborhoods.

As we biked on 120th Street, I asked him about that pledge and whether that would limit what he could do as far as reducing car trips further out from the Manhattan core.

"What’s the case, what benefit is there to pedestrians or cyclists or whoever, reducing street parking in an area like this?" he asked.

When I suggested the possibility of universal daylighting, or putting bike and bus lanes on some of the bigger streets in the neighborhood, he conceded there could be a case to remove street parking in northeast Queens. He seemed to think the larger conversation around reducing street parking spots was about just removing the parking for the sake of it.

"This is why I like something like the greenway plan," he said. "It's not, 'We're going to just take away street parking across your neighborhood or something.' It's focused in a particular area for a particular need that improves livability for everyone in the city, opens up neighborhoods for all New York City residents. So that's a changing of street parking and putting out bike lanes where you can make a strong case for them."

In the end, if you're a moderate but you're also juggling that centrism with your interest in casting a cycling vote, you have a candidate in Tilson much more so than you do in Andrew Cuomo. But outside of that, Tilson bears the weight of trying to put together a coalition that the city hasn't seen since the Bloomberg days — pro-business, pro-police and pro-livable streets, but with a more personal investment that comes from living these streets on two wheels.

"I think congestion pricing, bike lanes and the other things we've been talking about are part of creating a more attractive, livable city that people are moving into, that people want to invest in, and I think that benefits everyone," he said.