Mayoral frontrunner Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani reiterated his commitment to banning parking near intersections citywide – a well-established street design also known as daylighting – even as the Adams administration has in its waning days worked against a popular Council bill to enact the policy.
Upon his election, Mamdani's support could undo the bureaucratic knot at the Department of Transportation, whose leaders have vigorously pushed back against the legislation, Introduction 1138, and a growing grassroots movement behind the bill, which would to ban parking within 20 feet of intersections. The ban is already state law, but the city has long been able to carve itself out of the regulation to avoid angering drivers who leave their cars in public space for free.
In the state legislature, Mamdani represents the Astoria neighborhood where the grass-roots push to stop drivers from hogging the space against crosswalks began two-and-a-half years ago, after a driver mowed down 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun at a local intersection that was not daylighted.
As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani has continued to support daylighting.
"We deserve to have universal daylighting, and furthermore, we deserve that the vast majority of that daylighting be hard daylighting," Mamdani said at a mayoral forum on street safety in February, referring to infrastructure such as bike racks or boulders that keep drivers out of "no parking" zones.
"I have stood there at a vigil for a child, Dolma ... who lost her life as she crossed the street and a driver blew through that crosswalk, and now there's daylighting there, but we've already lost her."
If elected, Mamdani said during an "Ask Me Anything" session on the influential subreddit MicromobilityNYC that he would lay out a schedule for universal daylighting with physical protection to keep out illegally parked cars "at every intersection in the city."
He also signed on to a bill in the state legislature to end New York City's exemption from state daylighting law.
A Mamdani campaign spokesperson, Dora Pekec, confirmed that nothing had changed since earlier in the campaign, even as the DOT has doubled-down on its opposition to the dayighting bill.
"We stand by our commitment," Pekec told Streetsblog.
Advocates lauded the pol's backing, yet called on Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to not delay getting the city legislation over the line.
"We’re grateful to Assembly Member Mamdani for reaffirming his support for universal daylighting," said Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy at Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "Time is of the essence —New Yorkers deserve safer streets, and the Council has the power to make that happen this legislative session."
The bill's prime sponsor, Council Member Julie Won (D–Long Island City), also urged her colleagues to pass her bill before Jan. 1 so that it is already law and will not hinge on who is in City Hall. Won argued that passage would give the new mayor a mandate to implement the law without delay.
"The majority of the 253 traffic deaths last year in New York City took place at an intersection. Glad to know that Intro 1138 has the support of Zohran Mamdani so that it can be implemented next year on a timely manner,” Won said in a statement. “Codifying this law will only strengthen the new administration’s mandate to safe streets and protect hundreds of lives every year."
It would also discourage car ownership by lowering the number of free on-street storage, and free up DOT planners from having to account for any spot that it repurposes into pedestrian islands, bike racks, or other redesigns, because those areas would no longer be street parking – much like spaces in front of fire hydrants today.
"The main thing that it accomplishes is that we wouldn’t have to have this sporadic approach to daylighting, it would just be the law," said Alex Duncan, founder of the MicromobilityNYC subreddit. "It would give Zohran a lot of coverage for including a lot more spending in the budget for it."
No 'Johnny-come-lately'
Duncan, who also goes by Miser online, said he was not surprised by Mamdani's continued pro-daylighting stance, even now that he's moved from the hyperlocal to citywide – if not global – spotlight.
"He’s not just a politician searching around for policy positions to take now that he’s running. This is something he’s been deeply involved with the entire time," said Duncan. "This is not like a Johnny-come-lately opinion."
The Astoria resident recalled how Mamdani joined him and other locals in the aftermath of Dolma's death to strategize for better street safety in Western Queens.
The area's Community Board 1 was the first of 23 (of the usually car-friendly) civic panels across the city to back universal daylighting, and Council Member Won introduced legislation to do just that late last year.
Stalled momentum
The daylighting bill has been hovering at around a 50-percent support in the 51-member Council for months, but its momentum has stalled amid pushback from the Department of Transportation, who claim that getting rid of the corner parking could encourage drivers to make careless turns and increase crash injuries. The implication? It's safer to let drivers park there and obstruct views for everyone instead.
The official line of reasoning comes from a flawed study of some 8,000 intersections that DOT published early this year – a study that the report's authors themselves admitted couldn't conclude that parking-free corners caused an increase in crash injuries.
It marked another blatant example of New York City swatting away solutions that have worked near and far, from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Hong Kong. The universal daylighting law would merely bring the city in line with what is already standard practice across more than 40 states – including New York – and abroad. The idea of parking restrictions near intersections dates back nearly as far as the automobile itself.
Instead, DOT's campaign has aligned the agency with some of the city's most car-first politicians and succeeded in peeling off at least one supposedly pro-street safety lawmaker last week when Council Member Gale Brewer (D–Upper West Side) took her name off the bill.
Brewer's abrupt backpedal came after DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez penned an op-ed in the Daily News and because agency officials high-balled the number of street parking that could have to make way for the upgrades at as many as 13,000 spots in one district.
DOT's press office later clarified that in Brewer's area it would be closer to just 2,800 spaces, and that the larger figure was for a southeast Queens district, though advocates found that even this number was likely an overcount, and calculated 1,200 spots that would be daylit uptown – less than half the city's estimate.
A spokesperson for DOT made clear that they were going to try to sway an incoming mayor on their belief in the supposed dangers of daylighting.
"DOT’s position on daylighting is based on its experienced career professionals who have reviewed thousands of intersections in New York City and research from around the world," Vin Barone said in a statement. "We look forward to briefing any new administration on the efficacy of universal, un-hardened daylighting compared to other more effective ways to improve safety."
New mayors typically bring in their own teams to run the crucial Department of Transportation, so perhaps the briefing will go the other way.
The campaigns of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, both of whom trail in the polls, did not respond for comment.
