This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC-area transportation.<\/p>\n
Sign up<\/a> to get the full version, which includes answers to reader questions, trivia, service changes and more, in your inbox every Thursday.<\/p>\n New York City\u2019s new transportation commissioner is looking to cities like Bogot\u00e1, Tokyo and Paris for inspiration as he seeks to realize Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s mandate to make NYC\u2019s streetscape \u201cthe envy of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNew York is the greatest city in the world, but that doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t things that we can\u2019t learn from our global peers,\u201d Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn<\/a> said Thursday on WNYC\u2019s \u201cMorning Edition,\u201d specifically calling out the capitals of Colombia, Japan and France.<\/p>\n Bogot\u00e1 has received global acclaim in recent years for its expanding rapid bus network and bike lanes. In 2022, the city received a sustainability award from the Institute for Transportation and Policy Development.<\/p>\n Tokyo has long been light-years ahead of New York City when it comes to reorienting its streets, with an efficient subway system and sprawling network of pedestrian plazas that discourage commuters from driving.<\/p>\n And in Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has over the last decade prioritized banning cars from the city center and expanding pedestrian space. Last year, Parisian voters passed a referendum<\/a> to close an additional 500 streets to traffic \u2014 and remove 10% of the city\u2019s parking spaces.<\/p>\n Cyclists represent more than 10% of all commuters in each of the cities cited by Flynn. In New York City, only about 2% of people commute by bike.<\/p>\n Mamdani rode into City Hall declaring he would make the city\u2019s buses \u201cfast and free.\u201d While Flynn has little influence over the free<\/a> part, he could do a lot to speed up bus service.<\/p>\n New DOT boss Mike Flynn believes he has the political air cover from Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make drastic changes to the city’s streets.<\/p>\n Michael Appleton\/Mayoral Photography Office<\/p>\n Flynn\u2019s vision represents a departure from former Mayor Eric Adams, who repeatedly declared<\/a> New York has \u201cthe best transportation system on the globe,\u201d despite ample evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n Under Adams, the DOT shrugged at a City Council mandate to install 150 miles of new bus lanes and 250 miles of bike lanes over a five-year period. The city installed less than 30 miles of bus lanes and less than 100 miles of bike lanes during his tenure.<\/p>\n The Adams administration repeatedly blocked the DOT from moving forward with aggressive street redesigns, including one on McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint that became the center of an alleged bribery scandal<\/a> with the former mayor\u2019s senior adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin.<\/p>\n But Flynn said the DOT\u2019s staff wasn\u2019t at fault for the shortcomings and scandals, saying those problems were \u201creally happening at City Hall\u201d and the department \u201chas a top notch team\u201d with \u201clots of processes in place to make sure that we\u2019re always operating above board.\u201d Mamdani has already directed Flynn<\/a> to move forward with the full McGuinness Boulevard redesign that the Adams administration blocked.<\/p>\n Flynn is a technocrat who\u2019s spent his career working in the nitty gritty of transit, and his resume differs from those of recent DOT leaders. His predecessor, Ydanis Rodriguez, was a former city councilmember who scored the job after supporting Adams\u2019 campaign.<\/p>\n Flynn worked at the DOT under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg before going to work for Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant considered the godfather of the MTA\u2019s congestion pricing tolls. His mother was a public school teacher in the city, while his father was once a bike delivery worker.<\/p>\n Flynn\u2019s familiarity with agency bureaucracy could help him move fast on Mamdani\u2019s transit priorities.<\/p>\n \u201cMy bottom line as DOT commissioner is, let\u2019s look at the data, let\u2019s work with our stakeholders, let\u2019s find the best solution, and then let\u2019s move forward with urgency because safety shouldn\u2019t wait,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n NYC transportation news this week<\/p>\n The dilapidated Rockaway Park station. The Rockaway Park\u2013Beach 116th Street subway station is so run-down, the MTA has fenced off nearly half of its platform, forcing some riders to walk through several cars just to exit the train when they reach the stop. Bill Amarosa Jr., the head of subways at NYC Transit, said the platform poses “no safety risk” and his team is waiting for “warmer weather” to fix the problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prepare for a lot of snow. Authorities are warning New Yorkers to brace for up to a foot of snow into Monday, so consider not going anywhere you don\u2019t have to<\/a>.<\/p>\n Penn Station plans. Amtrak has named the three finalists vying for the contract to overhaul and then operate Penn Station, with at least one pitch calling for Madison Square Garden to be moved<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jamaica station upgrades? Gov. Kathy Hochul said she wants the state to pitch in $50 million to redesign the busy transit hub<\/a> in Jamaica, Queens, where the City Council recently approved a rezoning plan that could bring 12,000 new apartments to the area.<\/p>\n Death of the MetroCard spells trouble for airport workers. The MTA stopped selling the vinyl swipe cards at the start of the year, but the Port Authority, which runs the city\u2019s airports, still sells them \u2014 and they\u2019re the only way for airport workers to score steep discounts on the pricey JFK AirTrain fare<\/a>.<\/p>\n Curious Commuter<\/p>\n Have a question for us? Use this form<\/a> to submit yours and we may answer it in a future newsletter!<\/p>\n Question from Gregg in Queens<\/p>\n Inside the Houston Street station on the F is a track that seems to have been unused. Why can’t the Q be directed onto it as part of a future Second Avenue subway extension?<\/p>\n Answer<\/p>\n Those tracks are part of a long abandoned plan for a downtown Second Avenue subway. The Second Avenue station on the F has four tracks, two of which were meant to serve the subway line that never made it downtown. Riders shouldn’t hold their breath, though. Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this month put the line\u2019s downtown extension on the backburner<\/a>, opting instead to build a subway extension in Harlem. For now, the MTA uses those tracks when it has to re-route trains, for planned work, or the annual holiday train rides. Fun fact: The tracks were used as a terminal during the brief reign of the V line (2001-2010).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This column originally appeared in On The Way, a weekly newsletter covering everything you need to know about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-110157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}