Exclusive: Mamdani Administration To Add More Speed Control Devices Inside City-Owned Cars
This fleet is slowing down.
The Mamdani administration says it will dramatically expand an effort by his predecessor to install speed governors inside city-owned vehicles, rising from 1,000 today to 3,000.
The devices — called Intelligent Speed Assistance — prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit, a technology that was shown in 2024 to reduce speeding by 64 percent. At the time, ISA technology was in 500 city cars.
The Department of Citywide Administration Services, which oversees the 30,000-vehicle city fleet, reached the 1,000 mark in June. A July executive order on making the city fleet safer mentioned reaching that threshold, and the city previously announced funding to retrofit an additional 1,100 cars. With additional funding obtained, the Mamdani administration now says it will bring the safety measure to 3,000 cars by June 2029.
“Our administration holds all New Yorkers to the highest standards of street safety — and that starts with our city workers,” Mayor Mamdani said in a statement announcing that 2,000 more vehicles would be retrofitted with the devices. “We are tripling our investment in technology that helps prevent speeding and makes our streets safer for all New Yorkers, whether they’re behind the wheel, crossing the street or riding a bike.”
All new city fleet cars come equipped with the devices; the new promise pertains only to speeding up the retrofitting of already-owned cars.
The announcement on Thursday also includes a promise to install 100 pedestrian alerts on city school buses (similar to technology showed off by Streetsblog this summer). Such alerts will be installed on all 4,000 large city-owned trucks by the end of June 2029.
The announcement comes before members of the City Council will rally at City Hall to announce their bill to formalize how the Mamdani Administration will implement the state’s “Stop Super Speeders” law, which passed earlier this year.
Under state law, the city now has the power to order the installation of speed governors inside all cars owned by drivers with 16 or more speed-camera tickets on any one car in a 12-month period.
But so many details need to be worked out: where the drivers obtain the devices, who installs them, how drivers appeal if they feel they’ve been wronged, and what happens if they fail to install the devices. All of that is in the still-unnumbered Council bill that Council Member Kayla Santosuosso will introduce at Thursday’s stated meeting.
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