Here’s What Mamdani Can Steal From Other Candidates To Strengthen His Livable Streets Platform

It’s time to broaden the tent.

Zohran Mamdani cruised to an all-but-certain victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, defeating former-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and against a crowded field of formidable opponents.

Mamdani’s platform is filled with ideas to improve the public realm — like making buses fast and free, adding more protected bike lanes, and increasing car-free public space — but there are some areas where the young leader can look to his former rivals to make his platform even stronger from a livable streets perspective.

Mamdani, Brad Lander, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, Scott Stringer and Whitney Tilson all filled out Streetsblog’s questionnaire — and their answers were judged by a panel of experts.

Mamdani came close to the top in all of the categories, but there were some areas where the experts thought someone else had him beat. Here’s what Mamdani can glean from other candidates' campaigns to strengthen his livable streets platform.

Public transit

Mamdani’s campaign mobilized a broad coalition of young voters who see affordability — their basic cost of living — as a main issue facing the city. His proposal to make the city’s bus system “fast and free” and to create a true bus rapid transit system in the city by building more designated bus lanes was central to that vision.

Other candidates' visions weren't as bold or as simple, but some of their policy ideas are worth noting.

Comptroller Brad Lander proposed lower in-city fares on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road to expand mobility for city residents, especially in the Bronx and Queens. This $2.90 intra-city ticket would lower the cost of pubic transit for those not served by the subway or the bus.

Lander also proposed an expansion to the Fair Fares program, which offers lower prices for low-income New Yorkers using the transit system. Lander's plan calls for increasing the threshold from 145 percent of the federal poverty line to 200 percent, to include more low-wage workers in the program, as well as expanding it to CUNY students.

Delivery app and e-bikes

Mamdani’s defeat of Cuomo is already a signal to the billion-dollar app-delivery industry that more regulation is on the horizon. DoorDash threw $1 million at the Cuomo-aligned SuperPAC, Fix The City, in a now-futile effort to stop the socialist Mamdani from taking the reins at City Hall. 

Mamdani said he would push to license the app companies and design streets for all users – including adding more wide protected bike lanes, and ensuring that e-bike riders are not singled out or criminalized for doing their jobs. 

But Lander’s plan goes further. Last year, he released the Strategic Plan for Street Safety in the Era of Micromobility, which took an industry-first regulatory approach to the growing public sentiment that e-bikes were greeting chaos on the streets. Lander's proposed licensing system for app companies specified that it would be modeled after the Taxi & Limousine Commission, which governs ride-share apps. 

Lander’s plan also would require apps to share "real-time" anonymized data with the DOT to inform infrastructure decisions, would require apps fund and implement more safety training, use their algorithms to promote safety, rather than speed, follow an "accountability protocol" where they are penalized when their workers break safety rules, pay a fee for each illegal moped seized during a delivery trip, and stop deactivating workers' accounts “arbitrarily,” with strict consequences. 

Lander’s plan also acknowledges that there is fear and discomfort around the increase in electric micromobility on the roads, but the data show that cars still cause the vast majority of pedestrian injuries and deaths. And that it is the workers themselves who are in danger, with workplace fatality rates five times higher than that of even construction workers. The acknowledgment of this “bikelash” allows Lander to create policy proposals based on reality, not vibes. 

“The phenomenon of 'bikelash' ... has been a fixture of New York City transportation politics since at least 2010," the report reads. "The void of proactive management around micromobility has exacerbated what is sometimes referred to as 'mode rage' (drawn from the concept of 'road rage'), in which individuals feel hostility for other modes of transportation, even those they may utilize at other times.”

Fortunately for people who want Mamdani to go further on the issue, he and Lander had a bromance for the ages on the campaign trail, even riding electric Citi Bikes together to a campaign event. It's clear Lander will figure somehow in a likely Mamdani administration.

Housing policy

Mamdani has embraced many YIMBY ideas on his road to becoming the democratic nominee. He even discussed his housing policies with podcast host Derek Thompson, the co-author of the somewhat controversial pro-building book Abundance.

Central to Mamdani’s housing plan is a commitment to building city-funded permanently affordable housing. To do this, Mamdani plans to invest $100 billion to build 200,000 new affordable homes over 10 years for low-income households, seniors, and working families.

But no one’s housing plan went quite as far as state Sen. Zellnor Myrie’s Rebuild NYC. In that white paper, Myrie promised to create or maintain one million homes throughout the five boroughs.

Mamdani's housing policy focused on freezing rents for the city’s around one million rent-stabilized apartments, but Myrie would revitalize NYCHA and add 95,000 units of mixed-income housing to help sustain the public housing’s crumbling infrastructure. He would also build more residential towers in Midtown by increasing allowed density, create new neighborhoods throughout the city, rezone industrial areas sandwiched between residential neighborhoods, reallocate funds for shelter construction into permanent housing for voucher holders, create templates for building mixed developments on sites with aging public infrastructure, and create more housing units in small buildings.

Political will

Mamdani told Streetsblog he would have the “political will” to implement proven street safety measures, unlike the current mayor, who has rolled back his own agency’s initiatives after a few complaints (looking at you, Bedford Avenue, McGuinness Boulevard, Ashland Place and Fordham Road et al).

But getting "political will" is like growing a new spine — and it doesn't happen very often.

“In my time, the Council members were willing to spend political capital to do things that were publicly unpopular, but were the right thing to do,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso told Streetsblog of his time as a Council member.

Today's limited transportation success is a symptom of a vacuum of leadership, Reynoso said, but Mamdani promised he would be a different type of leader — one with "political will."

“The policy and infrastructure solutions to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities have been well known for years,” Mamdani told Streetsblog, in response to our mayoral questionnaire. "The major obstacles to success have been a lack of political will and an administration that leverages street design to broker political deals rather than advancing the well being of New Yorkers."