Michael Bloomberg has been a very popular mayor of New York. The city has done well under his tenure, hurt less by the financial crash and bouncing back from recession better than almost anywhere else in the US. No wonder he feels in a position to offer advice on how to govern nationally – provoking speculation of a possible, if firmly denied, presidential run as an independent in 2012.
But when Bloomberg's third term is up in three years' time, it is likely that many of his appointees will have to move on as well. In that case, none will have left so visible and indelible a mark on the city as his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. Sadik-Khan's job is broadly equivalent to that of Transport for London chief Peter Hendy – only bigger (besides the road system, she is responsible for many of the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan from the other city boroughs, as well as the Staten Island ferry and more).
You can't talk to the people at Transportation Alternatives, New York's long-established sustainable transport campaign (and leading pro-bike group), for more than minute without hearing their admiration and excitement about what Sadik-Khan has done for the cause. (How many city transportation chiefs do you think have an "I Love …" Facebook page devoted to them? And in New York magazine's December 2007 list of reasons to love New York, No 35 was "Because the head of the department of transportation is a cycling radical".) Sadik-Khan is, in fact, a more than occasional bicycle commuter: she doesn't just talk the talk; she rides the blacktop, too.
New York is in the middle of the same transformation of the philosophy of what urban public space is for that London underwent during Ken Livingstone's mayoralty. And Sadik-Khan, armed with the Bloombergian blueprint for a greener city, PlaNYC, has been the key player in delivering this new New York.
Just as in London, a radical shift in priorities – though Sadik-Khan would never put it this way, a "Robin Hood strategy" of robbing roadspace and investment from the transport-rich (ie, motorists) to pay the transport-poor (ie, public transport users, cyclists and pedestrians) – has been brilliantly marketed as "what's best for business". Congestion – sclerotic city arteries clogged with traffic – is economically inefficient, ergo making mass transit work serves the city's economy. Since 96% of Wall Street's workforce goes to the office by subway, bus, boat, bike or on foot, keeping the city moving and making it prosperous are of a piece. As Sadik-Khan has been known to tell top executives, "Biking is the new golf."
Now in her fourth year in the post, Sadik-Khan is so in the groove and in mastery of her brief that pertinent points and argument-clinching stats trip off the tongue quicker than a yellow cab can change lanes. A rangy 50-year-old (though, like every well-groomed Manhattan professional, ageless), Sadik-Khan was formerly a senior VP of a large civil engineering firm and on the board of an environmental transport non-profit. After meeting her at a green transport NGO function before Christmas, I caught up with her recently by phone.
"The goal has been moving as many people as possible as quickly as possible – and safely," she says. "Re-engineering streets is about re-imagining streetscapes, but it's also about making streets safer." Briefed as ever, she's looked up a blog I'd written earlier expressing mild scepticism about segregated bike lanes. Her response is that the bike lanes – such as the ones down Broadway or up Eighth Avenue, where a broad green strip at the side of the highway is separated from motorised traffic by kerbed islands and car parking – are a big safety success, calming traffic and facilitating safer crossing for pedestrians.
"What we've found is that we've not only achieved a 50% reduction in cyclist injuries where we have these lanes, but a 40% cut in all injuries because of the pedestrian refuge islands," she says.
Looks as if I might have to accept that segregated bike routes work for New York City's six-lane avenues. According to Sadik-Khan, bike use was up 13% in 2009-10, and has doubled in the five years since 2006. "More cyclists are voting with their pedals," she says. Can't argue with that.
But cyclists are going to have to change, too. Last year, the NYPD handed out 29,000 tickets to bikers for traffic infringements. And 2011 will see a major media campaign aimed at persuading cyclists to follow the rules and use the road considerately. The campaign slogan is deliciously New York: "Don't be a jerk!"
Getting the message across is very much part of Sadik-Khan's expertise. A political science major, with a law degree to boot, Sadik-Khan also founded a communications consultancy. So, while she talks technocratic, she knows the power of symbols. Some of her boldest and most controversial strokes have been the pedestrianisation of iconic Manhattan spaces such as Times Square and Herald Square. As one commentator put it, that "sends a signal of pedestrian pride". Shrewdly, though, Sadik-Khan sticks to making the business case, leaving the ideological rhetoric for outsider campaigners.
"Our streets are our most valuable real estate," she says. "In Times Square and Herald Square, retail rents have gone up 71% this year, so we're seeing that the value of this new public space is being recognised." She cites a TfL study showing that pedestrians spend more than any other "modal" group. Many of these "re-imagining" measures resulted from her bold move, in 2007, to hire the Danish guru of pedestrianisation and urban planning, Jan Gehl.
Such transformation has been far from freewheeling: as with the congestion charging zone in London, infringing upon drivers' "freedoms" involves winning a political fight. "We're talking about change – and the very idea of change makes people uneasy," she says. But her argument is that change is coming anyway, as New York continues to grow economically and pull people in. "The city is growing more and more dense, and that density makes the city creative and innovative. But building more roads is not the answer to that development. We need to focus on other investments and strategies."
One of those investments will be a bike share programme, like the cycle hire schemes up and running in Paris and London. It will start in August this year, and the aim is to have a pool of 10,000 bikes by 2012. Presuming Sadik-Khan, as a mayoral appointee, will be looking for a new job sometime after that, is there anything on the sustainable transport wishlist she won't have delivered? Only a congestion charging plan for Manhattan.
When, in 2008, the New York state assembly shelved Bloomberg's proposal for an $8 (£5) charge for motorists to drive into Manhattan, that was perhaps the only major strategic defeat of Sadik-Khan's tenure. She remains undaunted. Time – and the times – are on her side, she reckons. New York state's budget is notoriously overstretched and on the brink of bankruptcy, the city's not much better. It's in this context, she points out, that the Metropolitan Transit Authority (which manages the subway, buses and railways and maintains the tunnels and bridges) has an annual funding deficit of $800m. The revenue-raising potential of road-pricing in Manhattan (where drivers are already accustomed to paying tolls for bridges and tunnels) makes it all but inevitable, in her view.
"Congestion pricing passed the city council. It got the backing of four major newspapers in New York," she says. "The mayor's plan remains up in Albany [with the state legislature].
"I do think it's a matter of when, not if."
That strikes me as a surprisingly bullish statement, given the generally circumspect tenor of her remarks. I check she really means this, but I needn't have asked. Yes, she confirms, New York will get congestion pricing.
If Janette Sadik-Khan says it, I wouldn't bet against it.
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