New York state exempts New York City from a statewide law banning parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. As a candidate for mayor, Zohran Mamdani said he would end that exemption and implement "universal daylighting" citywide — in spite of well-publicized concerns about the concept within the Department of Transportation.
As mayor, however, Mamdani is siding with his hand-picked Transportation Commissioner, Mike Flynn, who last week told City Council members that DOT still stands by its Eric Adams-era position that a parked car at an intersection is better than daylighting without "hardening" in the form of street furniture or other objects. On Friday, Streetsblog asked Mamdani if he'd changed his position. The mayor declined to answer our question directly, but said he is "fully confident" in Flynn.
In short, Mamdani has yet to "push back on" the anti-universal daylighting position of Adams's DOT, as he pledged to do when we asked him about DOT's position on the campaign trail.
DOT's 2025 daylighting study found a higher rate of crash injuries at intersections with "unhardened" daylighting. But it had some serious methodological flaws: It didn't account for whether drivers were illegally parked at day-lit intersections when crashes occurred, or whether a crash occurred at the day-lit leg of the intersection or somewhere else. It also factored corners with fire hydrants and bus stops, which aren't technically daylighting and are often blocked by parking cars (or moving buses). DOT's findings contradicted a evidence from across the country, yet the agency went wide with its findings — which have fueled the talking points of parking-first elected officials.
Of course, Mamdani could have responded to our question in October by saying he supported universal daylighting, but would hear from the experts at DOT if he won the election. But that's not what he said. What he said was, "If there is opposition to initiatives that would create that safety from within DOT, we have to get to that safety, and that's opposition that has to be pushed back against."
As such, we reset the number of days since Mayor Mamdani disappointed us to zero on Friday. It now stands at two, with the potential to go to three if he gets through the day.
A bill to require universal daylighting had a majority of City Council members as co-sponsors last year, but failed to pass — even after the Council scaled it back at DOT's request. Who knows how much the specter of an incoming mayor who claimed to support the bill weighed on that Council inaction, but with Mamdani now ceding ground to DOT's opposition, advocates are back at square one trying to convince the Council to take action on its own.
In other news:
- A chaotic scene near Gracie Mansion on Saturday culminated in one man throwing a faulty homemade bomb into a far-right anti-Muslim demonstration, and another man igniting one nearby. (NY Times)
- This winter's extreme cold caused a surge in traffic signal malfunctions across the five boroughs. (Gothamist)
- Another hit-and-run driver struck and killed another pedestrian in Brooklyn just five blocks from Thursday's hit-and-run that killed 4-year-old Zachariah Padilla. (Daily News)
- Padilla's mom banged on the car whose driver struck her son as the driver fled. (NY Post)
- Nice cry: Riverdale businesses are blaming their "falling sales" on ... MTA automated bus lane enforcement. (Riverdale Press)
- Fortunately, amNewYork's Ethan Stark-Miller put the spotlight back on Bronx bus riders for the Bronx Times.
- "This is our common heritage": NoHo's "historic district" designation is holding up a developer's bid to turn a parking lot into housing. (NY Times)
- A driver struck and killed a crossing guard on Long Island. (PIX11)
- Vickie Paladino is suing the City Council over its toothless "censure" for her offensive comments on Muslims. (NY Post)
