Perhaps the biggest surprise in Tuesday's city elections was the upset defeat of the Bronx's only Republican City Council member by Democrat Shirley Aldebol — a top union leader in the city who ran with the support of the pro-biking, walking and transit group StreetsPAC.
With much of the district out of reach of the city's subway system, residents rely mostly on buses and personal cars to get around. A plurality of district residents, 46 percent, use personal cars to get to work, according to census data. Safe bike infrastructure is scarce, with just two protected bike lanes on the district's western edge, on the Bronx River Greenway and White Plains Road.
Fortunately, since 2021 residents have been able to rent small electric stand-up scooters as part of the Department of Transportation's shared e-scooter program. Marmorato staunchly opposed the scooters — even as ridership numbers demonstrate their popularity among many of her constituents. She also used her role on the Council to keep costly parking mandates for housing developments at new Metro-North stations coming to the district, in the face of research that such mandates limit the amount of housing developers build and contribute to pollution and traffic congestion.
Aldebol, who bested Republican Kristy Marmorato with 51.59 percent in their northwest Bronx district, is a far cry from her car-first predecessor. Speaking to Streetsblog on Thursday from the Somos political conference in Puerto Rico, Aldebol, the executive vice president of the 32BJ SIEU union, affirmed her support for year-round outdoor dining, protected bike lanes and improved bus service.
"She wanted to get rid of those scooters," Aldebol told us. "I said, we can’t get rid of the scooters! But we can do something about them being thrown around. People are really using them so we have to figure out a way."
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Hi Shirley, congratulations on the win. I wanted to get your thoughts on what you’re looking forward to in terms of transportation for District 13?
I'm looking forward to improving transportation. I'm not an urban planner or an expert, but we have a lot of parts of the district that are transportation deserts. People rely heavily on buses to get around. And so we have to have a better system of buses that are faster and more efficient. It almost feels like we have to rethink the bus system in the district, especially because we have a lot of seniors.
Do you want to see more bus lanes?
It's challenging because we have a lot of streets that are very narrow. How do you get bus lanes and bike lanes — we have a lot of young people that ride the scooters, you know, we have to make our and also for, you know, there are a lot of young people who ride the e-bikes and the scooters, but we don’t have very safe bike lanes. We have the bikes and the scooters but we don’t have the infrastructure.
Do you support more bike infrastructure?
I would like to see more. Quite frankly, our young people — and not just the young people — are using our scooters to get around, and it's just not safe. The bike lanes aren’t safe. People end up riding on the sidewalk, even though there’s pedestrians on the sidewalk. We have a real car culture in the district because of a lack of public transportation. People rely very heavily on their cars to get around. And, unfortunately, that means that now people get in their cars to go around the corner and they complain about not enough parking.
Do you see the things we just talked about, like better bike lanes and better bus service, as a way to pull away from that car culture?
I mean, I think that the scooters and bikes are used a lot, especially by students and young people. From what I have seen, they ride them to the train. But there’s no infrastructure. So, people just throw the scooters everywhere and they’re all over the street, and people complain. So we have to make sure we coexist, and we have to improve. But we really have to improve our public transportation so we are not so reliant on cars. Because that’s the problem. You need your car to get around the district because there is no way to get from one place to another without taking two or three buses. My brother goes to the Veteran’s Hospital in the Northwest Bronx, and he has to take three buses to get there. For other people who don’t have a car, it can take an hour and a half to go a few miles across the Bronx. So in general we probably need some kind of redesign or to rethink how our transportation needs are being met. And we need to create safe infrastructure for scooters and bikes. There has to be a real holistic approach to transportation.
Your predecessor, Kristy Marmorato, really focused on parking minimums and parking mandates and trying to preserve those because, like you said, there is a lot of car-reliance in thsi district. But she never really went the extra step of saying, "We want to see more transit and we want to improve these other things, like bike lanes." How do you think you differ from her?
I think I differ from her in a lot of ways. Parking is not the solution. We are going to have a need for parking, there is going to be some reliance on cars, but there has to be a more holistic approach to transportation and how we get people from point A to point B. And just saying that, “Well, we have a car culture and we need more parking” is not the answer. I think eventually we can get to a point where people are less reliant on their cars. We’re not there yet, but we have to start thinking about what the other types of transportation people need in order to be less reliant on cars.
Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the outdoor dining program. It is currently seasonal, but there has been a push by advocates to make it year round again. Where do you stand on that issue?
If there is already outdoor dining I see no reason to not have it year-round. I think it helps the small businesses in our area to drive traffic to those restaurants. They suffered during the pandemic, we had a lot of businesses close and it has taken a long time to recover from that. Our small businesses are an economic engine for the district and we need to make sure they’re able to survive. So yes, I am for it year-round.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the universal daylighting bill. It would basically ban parking near intersections so that there is increased visibility for pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists. Have you thought about whether you would sign on to support that?
I haven’t thought about that bill, to be honest. I would have to look at it and see. But I do get a lot of complaints about parking, saying we don’t have enough parking. What can I say, people complain about parking all the time, about the ghost cars that come and never move, or people selling cars on the street and taking a space. We have such an entrenched car culture that parking is a huge issue for people. But, again, we have to figure out how to transition people away from the car culture. But that is going to take a lot of work, and a lot of building up of the non-car infrastructure. I just saw some TWU reps and they were talking to me about getting rid of the dollar vans. And I said yes, but you have to understand something, not everybody works nine to five. We have a service economy, people work 24 hours seven days a week and the MTA is still catering to the nine to five schedule. People need to get where they need to go, and they figure out a way to get there if the MTA doesn’t provide it. But I am up for bringing everyone to the table and figuring things out, not just saying “we need more parking,” because that’s not a solution. You’re never going to have enough parking if you don't fix the other issues.
You were the only new Council Member to flip a seat from Republican o Democratic, and I am curious what you attribute it to — do you think your support of these transportation issues was a factor?
I think the biggest factor for folks was affordability. People are paying a lot of money on rent. People feel like the quality of life in the district has gone down. People have concerns about taking the subway and the buses. It's a combination of things. It's a community that has felt neglected in many ways. I attribute it to talking to people that she hadn’t talked to.
So you went broader.
Yes, much broader. And she was an anti-scooter. She wanted to get rid of those scooters. I said, we can’t get rid of the scooters! But we can do something about them being thrown around. People are really using them so we have to figure out a way. We didn’t create the appropriate infrastructure to support scooters and bike riders.
How so?
I mean, look at that bike lane on East Tremont Avenue, who is going to use that with all those double parked trucks? The bike lane is in the street, it's not next to the sidewalk with any guard rails or anything.
When you talk about a bike lane like that, where you see people double parking and there are trucks using it as a loading zone and it isn’t safe. Are you thinking of getting rid of the bike lane? Or is it that you want to make the bike lane better?
This is a completely unprotected bike lane on a very heavy traffic commercial area, Tremont Avenue. When they put the bike lane there, I thought why would anyone put a bike lane here? There are other streets that you could put a bike lane on. Or put a protected bike lane, we need protected bike lanes. Nobody's using the [unprotected] bike lanes because they're unsafe and they're riding on the sidewalk. There's a lot that has to be done. But if we start with making these bike lanes more protected so that people could actually use them it'll go a long way.
