Short circuit.
City Council’s Transportation Committee Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers slammed Department of Transportation officials on Tuesday for making excuses for consistently failing to meet mandated bike- and bus-lane benchmarks after initially saying the agency had the “bandwidth” to do the job.
Brooks-Powers (D-Queens) flat out said that the benchmarks, enshrined in the 2019 Streets Master Plan law, is “a top priority for this committee” and that its members “fully expect DOT to comply.”
“DOT gives us their word every hearing and we are not getting results,” Brooks-Powers said at a Tuesday hearing on several DOT-related bills, including her own measure, Intro 1105, that would require the DOT to publish a tracker of the department’s progress on the plan.
DOT First Deputy Commissioner Margaret Forgione attempted to redirect Brooks-Powers’s scrutiny by claiming the department has been busy managing its successful “Dining Out NYC” program and “Open Streets” program, but Brooks-Powers was not having it, reminding Forgione that the DOT itself had advocated for control of both programs and that it “had the capacity and bandwidth for these programs,” she said.
Advocates also said the DOT’s deflection wasn’t a great look, especially as the department opposes Brooks-Powers’s bill seeking more transparency over its failure to carry out the Streets Master Plan.
“Just saying, ‘We have other things that we do also besides our Streets Plan work,’ is not really a particularly compelling argument from DOT,” said Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “They really should be articulating specifically what they need to comply with the [Streets Plan] law so the Council can address those problems through the budget process.”
The DOT’s rationale for opposing the bill is that a tracker would require more paperwork, and a requirement to announce projects in advance would impede on community input.
“Putting out a list of projects in the beginning of the year could hamper community engagement if community members feel that the projects will be moving ahead regardless of their input,” testified Forgione. “We are concerned that requiring such accounting throughout the year will divert our planners’ time away from actual project implementation and engagement to bureaucratic paperwork, slowing down our projects during peak construction season. Monthly updates will also be of limited utility, as many of our projects are completed in the last quarter of the year.”
But Brooks-Powers argued that the department’s failure to meet the plan’s benchmarks proves that there is a real problem, and in order for the Council to help, there needs to be clarity on why the department can’t meet its goals.
“DOT needs to be more transparent about its project pipeline so we can identify bottlenecks. The problem is DOT is not communicating about why they’re not meeting the mandates,” said Brooks-Powers.
The Streets Master Plan, spearheaded by then-Speaker Corey Johnson, requires that the DOT build 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 30 miles of protected or “enhanced” bus lanes. For the third consecutive year, DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez (a former Council member who supported the bill) has failed spectacularly in meeting the legal mandate.
The department has not yet released its official totals, but Streetsblog estimates that in 2024 the administration completed a mere 5.3 miles of bus lanes, and has built (or is close to completing) 25.7 miles, only half way to the goal.
Brooks-Powers reiterated the department’s failures and said she looks forward to discussing the bill further, signaling she plans to advance the bill to a vote.
“It is no secret that DOT has consistently failed and has fallen further and further behind in reaching the law’s five-year target. I haven’t heard today how you plan on catching up after being behind for several years,” said Brooks-Powers. “Help us help the DOT achieve these goals.”
