They drove that bus, so they'd better get their fast-and-free ride on Jan. 1.
Zohran Mamdani's mayoral victory over Andrew Carmo — pun intended! — was built by voters who use transit or bikes and want livable streets that promote dignity, independence, and safety.
Metric after metric reveals that voters were not exclusively embracing Mamdani's "affordability" agenda or his red diaper baby talk as much as they were advancing theirs: a city where decisions about livable streets, buses and road violence aren't blocked by a cabal of corrupt car drivers.
The good news? Mamdani clearly understood that. Whether in his answers to Streetsblog's candidate questionnaire, his constant support for congestion pricing, his visits to McGuinness Boulevard to champion the protected bike lane there, his centering of buses, his talk of greater residential density, Mamdani wasn't just running as a "Socialist" — he was running, and winning, as an urbanist.
No wonder Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas called Mamdani's election "a generational opportunity to create a city where everyone can get around quickly, safely, and affordably, and with dignity."
"Mamdani has made commitments to reshape and rebuild the streets of New York City: He has pledged to finally fully fund and implement the Streets Plan, unstick critical DOT safety projects, regulate the predatory same-day delivery app industry, widely implement Sammy’s Law, build a high-quality bike network, expand school streets and pedestrianization projects, speed up our buses, and transform intersections with universal daylighting," Furnas wrote in a post-mortem statement. "Our time is now." (Not that we're impatient, Zohran, except, man, are we impatient!)
The generational opportunity of which Furnas spoke begins, obviously, with a new generation. Mamdani-watchers were heartened to see that the transition team announced on Wednesday was flecked with youth, not larded with the graying eminences of the corrupt city we all hope to leave behind.
But to paraphrase Mamdani paraphrasing Mario Cuomo, you transition in poetry, but you appoint staff in prose: No one wants the job of Department of Transportation commissioner to go to an apparatchik from the DOT Deep State, which let Adams and his corrupt cronies derail agency priorities for four years.
Mamdani seems aware that he'll need to sideline some ineffective people at the DOT — people who, for example, happily scraped away three blocks of the Bedford Avenue protected bike lane and watered down the McGuinness Avenue plan because a bribe-taking mayoral aide told them to. That wasn't "safety first." It was safety 11th.
Those same craven deputies went silent as Mayor Adams missed legal requirements to build 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 30 miles of dedicated bus lanes every year.
They are the public servants who, for example, cooked up a deeply flawed report in a blatantly partisan attempt to head off a Council bill to require universal daylighting at corners — a bill, mind you, that only sought to have the city adhere to existing state no-parking law. (I texted with a former top city DOT official on Wednesday and this person said that if any of the current DOT leaders are being considered for the top job, it would "be a step backward.")
They are the commissars who bent the knee when Mayor Adams said he didn't want to build the 34th Street busway — which he later used as a bargaining chip in a zoning fight — and complied with the Trump administration after receiving a threatening letter about it. (The facts on the ground are clear: That busway is stalled.)
They are the loyalists who didn't pedestrianize whole swaths of the Financial District, despite strong support from electeds, residents and the business community — and a dramatic reduction in traffic from congestion pricing. (I chatted up a major Manhattan elected in the hours after the Mamdani victory and this person wants to move forward — and will be unhappy if DOT is a roadblock.)
(That's not to say there aren't great people and good ideas inside DOT that should be elevated — and, indeed, the mayor-elect has already said he won't throw out the clean babies in Eric Adams's filthy bathwater. Those ideas and people need to be cultivated and promoted.)
But if any of the revanchists inside the DOT are being considered for promotions in a Mamdani regime, the honeymoon will not only end, but the livable streets movement will be speed-dialing Raoul Felder (yes, that's a reference for the geezers out there; look him up). Indeed, as Eric Adams showed us in such stark relief: campaign promises are so easily broken.
Don't get me wrong — there's reason for optimism. First, when asked about the less-than-bold thinkers at the DOT, transition team member Maria Torres-Springer told Streetsblog on Wednesday that whoever gets to sit in the commissioner's chair will be someone who is "clear about what you want to accomplish" rather than point out all the reasons the agency can't do something.
"And," she added, "you always have to give yourself a little bit of room to fail, because that is the type of risk-taking that allows government to transcend its normal routines."
For Mamdani's part, whenever Streetsblog reporters have asked about his priorities, he has been unwavering: "We [will] transform large amounts of public space [with] pedestrianization and building protected bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes and other street infrastructure..."; "I will improve bus speeds by rapidly rolling out high-quality dedicated bus infrastructure across the city..."; "To run a world-class DOT, we need to attract the best talent..."; "The major obstacles to success have been ... an administration that leverages street design to broker political deals..."; "I would remove enforcement of traffic violations from the NYPD and place it under the purview of DOT..."; "E-bikes are an important transportation mode [and] crucial to ensuring a sustainable future for our cities..."; "I support making outdoor dining a year round program..."; and on and on and on.
And Mamdani has shown amply that he knows that the Adams DOT failed the city and that its leadership needs to be wrested away from the Old Guard, which showed "a lack of political will" to make streets safe, make buses faster, and make cycling easier.
So, as Furnas said, our time is now.
