This week's journey. Complaints about the bus and subway fare hike; a lack of complaints about congestion pricing; who decides when to turn on the heaters on subway cars, and more.
As Mamdani pushes bike lanes, Brooklyn's Bedford Ave. looms large
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has dedicated a significant portion of his first week in office to transit issues both big and small.
He framed the completion of a full, protected bike lane on McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint as righting a wrong tied to corruption in his predecessor Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. He restarted the planning process on the 31st Street bike lane in Astoria because he said it was the fastest way to get the project, which has been tied up in court, back on track. And he readily admitted that fixing a speed bump in the bike path at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge was an easy win.
But one bike lane controversy remains unaddressed: a short stretch of Bedford Avenue near South Williamsburg.
The three blocks of unprotected bike lane have pitted the neighborhood’s politically powerful Orthodox Jewish community against street safety advocates who see Mamdani as an ally committed to their cause.
Last summer, as his independent re-election bid was on life support, Adams abruptly removed the section of bike lane between Willoughby and Flushing Avenues that had been protected by parked cars. The move came after an e-bike rider slammed into a small child in the bike lane in a crash that was captured on video. The removal was widely seen as Adams’ attempt to win support in the Orthodox Jewish community, which typically votes in a bloc and has a lengthy history of opposing the Bedford Avenue bike lane.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani criticized Adams for putting interest groups over street safety projects that were the result of years of preparation and outreach by the Department of Transportation.
But Mamdani also accepted a key endorsement from Rabbi Moishe Indig, a leader of the Satmar Hasidim, before the general election. Indig lobbied Adams to kill the protected bike lane. Indig did not respond to requests for comment.
“Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, chair of the Transportation Research program at Hunter College, said Mamdani should move aggressively on street projects as soon as possible.
“ My advice to Mayor Mamdani is to strike while the iron's hot. Your first 100 days is your honeymoon period, and that's when you could get the most done,” said Schwartz, who wrote a transit to-do list for Mamdani in an op-ed. “After 100 days you begin to build up political relationships that then affect your decisions going forward.”
Baruch Herzfeld, an activist in the Orthodox community who is in favor of restoring the bike lane, said he’d like Mamdani to go further and add safety protections all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge.
“I understand why this bike lane hasn’t been a day-one project for the mayor. The issues around this bike lane are more complicated than the one in Greenpoint — there are questions of religious practice, neighborhood change and a very dense community with lots of kids,” said Herzfeld, who joined a lawsuit that unsuccessfully sought to block Adams from removing the stretch of the Bedford bike lane.
Street redesigns on Bedford Avenue have been controversial around South Williamsburg from the moment a 14-block unprotected bike lane was installed in 2007. After pressure from the Orthodox Jewish community, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg removed a section that runs through the neighborhood, creating a glaring gap in Brooklyn’s cycling network.
Ben Furnas, the executive director of the street safety group Transportation Alternatives — which was also a plaintiff in the suit against the city last year — signaled he was willing to negotiate about the lane.
“ I would love to see a spirit of problem solving be brought to this where you're bringing people around the table. Streets projects often have very intense emotions associated with them, and sometimes there genuinely are questions of street use, of being able to accommodate floating, pick up and drop off of young children,” Furnas said.
Street safety advocates and the Orthodox Jewish community are waiting to see what Mamdani will do next.
When reached for comment, City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec said, “We’re going to have to keep to what was said on the campaign trail.”
Curious Commuter
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“Subway cars have heaters under the seats but these never seem to be turned on, even on the coldest days. Is it just up to the conductors whether to switch them on or does the MTA have a policy on heat?”
- Robert from Manhattan
All subway cars have heat that comes from under the seats and a thermostat that controls the temperature. It’s most definitely not an arbitrary decision from a conductor, according to the MTA.
We were curious if the MTA’s newest train cars, the R211s, are any different. MTA officials report they’re largely the same, but have an extra heat source that the older cars lack: overhead heaters.
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We're also talking about...
Complaints over the 10-cent fare hike. The MTA raised bus and subway fares to $3 on Sunday, and some commuters are upset about it.
“It sucks, but I get why they’re doing it. [But] I think affordability is a big thing these days, right? If things aren’t affordable, people are going to complain and I think they have a right to.”
Congestion pricing complaints? Not so much. Much of the controversy over the tolling program has all but disappeared, mirroring the change in public sentiment seen in other cities that introduced congestion pricing.
Congestion zone traffic? Not as much. The MTA said 27 million fewer vehicles entered Manhattan below 60th Street in the first year of the tolling program, marking an 11% average reduction in daily traffic in the zone.
