The town’s woeful makes an attempt to increase the variety of lanes reserved for buses and bicycles earned failing grades Tuesday from members of the Metropolis Council.
Established in 2019, the NYC Streets Plan set mandates for the town to construct not less than 150 miles of protected bus and 250 miles of protected bike lanes between 2022 and 2026. However Division of Transportation numbers present the company fell wanting its targets repeatedly underneath Mayor Eric Adams.
Council Majority Chief Shaun Abreu (D-Manhattan) stated the town is “making an attempt to make up for misplaced time” after two years of hovering close to the midway level of its mandate for brand new bus and bike lanes.
“A 50% is a giant, fats F,” he stated.
New DOT commissioner Mike Flynn and his high lieutenants had been referred to as on the carpet in entrance of the committee and badgered over what one councilmember referred to as an “uninspiring” file on road redesigns which might be speculated to prioritize the security of cyclists and speed up slowpoke buses.
“The best way issues have been working shouldn’t be ok,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) stated. “And I hope that you’re listening to that clearly from this Metropolis Council, that we wish to see important enchancment.”
In his first official transfer firstly of 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani named Flynn head of DOT, a precedence hiring that pointed to his administration’s concentrate on dashing bus service that averages 8.1 mph — among the many slowest within the nation, in accordance with a February 2025 Impartial Finances Workplace report.
Mamdani made the supply of “quick and free” bus service a key element of a mayoral marketing campaign that featured different transportation proposals.
Advocates stated that’s in distinction to Adams, testifying that the enhancements mandated underneath the NYC Streets Plan didn’t bear a lot fruit underneath the one-time “bus mayor.”
“It was a protracted 4 years combating for bus riders underneath the Adams administration,” stated Jolyse Race, of Riders Alliance, an advocacy group. “And for 4 years, the streets plan was ignored and bus riders had been utterly disrespected by the elected officers.”
Flynn inherited a backlog from the earlier administration on bus lane tasks, with the town finishing simply 20.8 miles towards its 30-mile objective for 2025 — which was an precise enchancment from the 13.5 miles constructed out the earlier yr.
“The mayor has been clear that we will and should do higher, and that protected and livable streets are a precedence for this administration,” Flynn stated.
The DOT chief additionally cited Mamdani’s latest revival of motorbike and bus-lane tasks that had been placed on ice due underneath the Adams administration.
“Our most vital steps have been to renew vital road redesign tasks that stalled because of political issues or authorized challenges,” Flynn stated.
These embrace placing in protected bike lanes alongside McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn and lengthening a double bus lane alongside Manhattan’s Madison Avenue from forty second to twenty third streets and redesigning long-planned bus lanes on Fordham Street in The Bronx.
The McGuinness Boulevard mission confronted opposition from the “Preserve McGuinness Transferring” marketing campaign. THE CITY reported in 2023 that the trouble appeared to have important ties to the politically wired Argento household that owns a movie manufacturing firm and several other different companies within the space.
The Fordham Street bus lane mission, in the meantime, was scrapped after operating into highly effective opposition from the likes of Fordham College, the New York Botanical Backyard and the St. Barnabas Hospital Well being System, a transfer that the then-head of New York Metropolis Transit referred to as “perplexing” and “disappointing.”
Earlier this month, Mamdani introduced the revival of the Fordham Street bus lane mission whereas standing alongside the pinnacle of the MTA, who stated the town must comply with by on “long-overdue commitments.”
“The underside line is that this: The buses can solely transfer as quick as situations on the road degree enable,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief government, stated Feb. 13.
For the bike lanes, Chris Sanders of Transportation Options testified that the town is lagging far behind cities equivalent to Barcelona, London and Zurich in prioritizing house for many who journey on two wheels.
“It’s a world metropolis, it’s not competing with the remainder of America,” stated Sanders, of the group’s Manhattan activist committee. “It’s competing with the remainder of the world and we have to convey our streets as much as that top, excessive, excessive normal.”
Councilmembers put the DOT leaders on discover that they should comply with by on the commitments specified by the subsequent five-year streets plan.
“We don’t wish to be coming again to you in six or 9 or 12 months with failures once more on not constructing sufficient bike lanes, not constructing sufficient bus lanes, not constructing the pedestrian house all of us must make our communities safer and to make it sooner for all of us to get round,” Restler stated.
