Mamdani’s FDNY Commish Backs Protected Bike Lanes, Putting Bikelash Firefighters And Brass On Notice

The heat is on.

The Fire Department actually really does support the city’s expansion of protected bike lanes, the agency’s commissioner said on Monday — a revelation that shouldn’t be newsworthy at all, but for the fact that several FDNY rank-and-file as well as a key chief have recently criticized the life-saving street designs that the city has been implementing for decades.

“We are a life-saving agency, it’s our mission – our core mission, to save lives – and we appreciate the fact that bike lanes put people in a safer place and they save lives,” FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore testified at a Council budget oversight hearing on Monday. “The Fire Department has no problem with bike lanes.”

Bonsignore noted that there are some situations where “maneuvering around them are an issue,” but added that they work with the Department of Transportation to resolve those conflicts.

The FDNY has become a central player in street redesign fights, despite the fact that DOT consults with the agency experts and gives area firehouses a chance to weigh in on projects.

Opponents of bike lanes often claim that the safety infrastructure impedes emergency response — the opposite is true — and often find support from individual firefighters or the FDNY union.

Indeed, some smokeaters and their union bosses showed up en masse and in uniform to protest the 31st Street redesign in Astoria, Queens last month after a Supreme Court judge paused that overhaul because DOT allegedly did not get the proper paperwork to indicate that the agency had consulted with local firefighters.

And at a bizarre Council hearing in February, Chief of Fire Operations Kevin Woods, a 36-year veteran of the department, rattled off bikelash talking points – while senior DOT officials sat right next to him – claiming without evidence that protected bike lanes hobble first responders and adding the agency was against protected cycle paths.

DOT’s bike lanes are, in fact, wide enough to serve as a clear emergency lane free of cars – vehicles that are the actual impediment to fast response times, as Streetsblog has previously reported:

Chief Woods walked back his stance on protected bike lanes after Streetsblog flagged them with the press office. But later, Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn Heights) wrote to Bonsignore to confirm that the agency was not obstructing DOT projects.

Woods also told Streetsblog at the time that he does not tell first responders to use bike lanes for faster access to a fire or other emergency, but the below video indicates otherwise.

The agency did not say whether Woods or other rogue agents in the Department have faced any discipline for using their bonafides to rail against city safety policy. In fact, an agency spokesperson suggested that Bonsignore’s comments and Woods’s previous remarks were aligned.

At the Monday hearing, Restler also asked Bonsignore to commit to giving DOT feedback within 30 days, barring extraordinary circumstances, so as not to add to the already extensive bureaucracy lawmakers have dumped on the agency, which delays any bike or bus project exceeding three blocks.

The Firefighter-in-Chief declined to do so, but said the agency would do its “very very best.”

“Sometimes it’s not only the process, it’s not only the Fire Department I would say that slows things down, it may be something a more complex thing that needs to be reviewed, it takes a little longer,” Bonsignore said. “But we certainly will commit that we’ll do our best to get them a timely response.”