Q and A: New MTA Board Member Janette Sadik-Khan Yaps With Streetsblog
This month, former Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan joined the MTA Board as one of Mayor Mamdani’s four appointees to the agency’s governing body. A legendary figure in the city’s transportation planning landscape from her days in the Dinkins and Bloomberg administrations, Sadik-Khan’s selection signals that Mamdani wants serious, pro-transit voices to represent the city’s point of view at the MTA.
Following her first meeting as a board member on Wednesday, Sadik-Khan spoke to Streetsblog about what she hopes to accomplish, her view of new DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn and how she’ll use her perspective as the chair of the National Association of City Transportation Officials to bring some new ideas to the MTA.
Streetsblog: Can you talk a little bit about your vision for your role on the Board? What do you think you’re here to do, what you think you’re tasked with?
Janette Sadik-Khan: It was an honor to be appointed by Mayor Mamdani, and I think he’s made it very clear what he would like to see board members focus on. I’m very much looking forward to implementing the fast bus program, the collaboration with the MTA that really builds on the Select Bus Service program that Mayor Bloomberg started that we worked on many years ago, which delivered real benefits — 28 percent improvements in travel time, increases in ridershi0 — and it’s a great foundation for the fast bus program that the MTA and the city are working on.
I thought it was really a good sign that Commissioner Flynn came to the Transit Committee meeting to talk through what the benefits of the program were and highlighted the fact that there is a strong partnership that’s underway. So I feel very confident that they’re off to a good start with this fast bus program.
I think that the work that the MTA is doing on things like the subway bottleneck report is so important. It’s not only about expanding the transit infrastructure. That’s super important, like projects like the IBX, but also reimagining the infrastructure that we have right now. So initiatives like the bottleneck report are really critical and I’m hoping to see more of that in the years to come.
Streetsblog: Select Bus Service was something that Mayor Bloomberg and you were involved in that presumably had some crossover between DOT and MTA. You needed things from each other. What do you think the city needs from the MTA this time around to make the fast buses program work?
Sadik-Khan: I think it’s both a collaboration on the planning, design, and funding side. Much like last time, we had created a task force of the top people in both agencies to work through the logistics of delivering a fast bus program. When we started the program, we were looking to have off-board fare collection, which had never been done before, and it was going to be too expensive to buy separate fare machines. So we brought the fare machines from the subways and brought them to the surface, and then repurposed them, and they became the off-board fare collecting machines on the bus system.
That highlights the kind the kind of collaboration and working together that needs to get done. On the funding side, we put in a joint proposal to the Federal Transit Administration so that we would get federal funding for the road work and the MTA would get funding for the buses and the bus infrastructure. That type of collaboration, whether it’s funding, whether it’s planning the routes, whether it’s the logistics of implementing them, I think that it’s going to be really important that that task force stick together to be able to deliver that program, which has a lot of both promise and actual on-the-ground changes that will happen this year.
Streetsblog: I know he’s new on the job still, but you mentioned you were happy to see him, how do you think Mike Flynn’s doing so far?
Sadik-Khan: I think Mike Flynn has completely delivered on the DOT program and the vision that Mayor Mamdani has outlined. You can walk around the streets right now or ride around the streets and you see visible changes in the street. My neighborhood, the bike lanes have been refreshed, new bike stations are there.
You’re seeing safety improvements, you’re seeing crosswalks get put down, and they’re delivering on a lot of the projects that have been stalled for so many years. I think it’s a great foundation that’s been laid and because they both share such a strong vision I think it’s really great to see a transportation leader like Mayor Mamdani hire a transportation commissioner like Mike Flynn who can actually implement that vision.
Streetsblog: What aren’t people talking about, what’s under-discussed in terms of transit transportation issues in the city?
Sadik-Khan: There are 8.5 million New Yorkers, and there are 8.5 million traffic engineers and transportation planners. I think everything is under-discussed. As transportation commissioner, everybody had a strong opinion about the potholes or the signals or the crosswalks. It’s the same thing on the MTA board, people have very strong feelings about the fare or the signal changes on the 1, 2 and 3. I think that New Yorkers are not shy to get their points across about what they want to see done on the streets of New York, and I think that our elected leaders take that seriously.
If we were talking 2025, we would be definitely looking at ways that we could build a better bus network. Buses have been the stepchild of our transportation network, and it’s great to see them back in the center where they should be. Our roads are the rails for our buses, and it’s great to see an administration that’s really focused on delivering, you know, fast, affordable buses.
Streetsblog: You worked here in the city, but you’re also involved with NACTO, which has a national eye on things. Is there anything that you think you learned on the national side of things, running a place like that gives you any insight into what you want to see from the here, from the MTA, anything that you bring to the board?
Sadik-Khan: One of the things with NACTO is you’ve got a national organization of transportation leaders, transportation commissioners from around the country. Every city is different, and every street is different so there’s no one single answer to transportation problems. You have to really take it at a granular level, and I think it brings an understanding of trying different things. What works in one city can work in another. It needs to be tailored to what your specific needs are, but the kind of innovations that you’re seeing in other cities, bringing that that imagination muscle to New York City, is something that I look forward to doing on the MTA Board, and it’s certainly informed by the experiences and the innovations that we see in other cities, not only around the country but around the world.
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