New York’s transportation chief says there’s more work to be done

Starts & Stops

October 02, 2011|By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff

Janette Sadik-Khan made street safety a top priority. (Ramin Talie/Bloomberg )

If you’ve been to New York recently, you’ve seen the work of Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner since 2007.

Best known for converting Times and Herald squares to public plazas and closing a frenetic stretch of Broadway to automobile traffic, Sadik-Khan’s citywide campaign to promote biking, walking, and riding transit is even bolder and more ambitious than a similar effort in Boston.

New York Magazine likened Sadik-Khan to a cross between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs - the master builder who razed neighborhoods and defined the highway-building era, and the urban activist who stood up to Moses’s bulldozers. New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser dubbed her “the psycho bike lady’’ and “Janette ‘Sadist’-Khan,’’ while New York Times columnist Frank Bruni urged her on as an unflinching visionary whose full recognition would come later.

Obscured amid the attention is the fact that the vast majority of Sadik-Khan’s transportation budget still goes to road and bridge repaving and reconstruction, with the bike and pedestrian improvements folded in on a shoestring. The changes, which in some cases actually improved traffic flow, boosted bike and bus riding and reduced bike, pedestrian, and car-accident injuries.

Sadik-Khan was in town recently to speak at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, hosted by its Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure and the LivableStreets Alliance. She agreed to an interview, an edited version of which follows.

Q: You’ve become a household name in New York, but how would you describe your approach, work, and goals to readers unfamiliar with you?

A: Just a small question. What’s your theory of the universe? [Laughing]. I’m proudest of our safety record. The fact that our streets are safer than they’ve ever been is really important, and the fact that we still have 4,000 people a year killed or seriously injured on the streets of New York City is unacceptable.

We did this landmark pedestrian safety study two years ago, with an $800,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration, and it was really our Rosetta stone of where crashes happen and why. That guides all of our work on the streets and where we do projects, and you’re starting to see the payoff.

You’re not going to get on a bike if you don’t feel safe. And we’re an aging society. You’ve got to make streets work better for seniors. We have kids out there. So it all works together, and streets that have protected bike lanes are safer for everybody.

Q: Are you surprised at the resistance you’ve met?