This summer, workers began installing the cashless tolling structures that will automatically charge drivers to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Congestion pricing, already two decades old in London, is finally arriving in New York. For Janette Sadik-Khan, who was transportation commissioner when Mayor Michael Bloomberg first proposed the system in 2007 and is now at Bloomberg Associates, the development brings both vindication and anxiety. The program could be transformative, she believes, but there’s a lot to do before the first fee gets rung up. I spoke to her about the opportunity for reinventing New York’s streets and the dangers of getting it wrong.
Would those ideally be protected lanes? Bikers hate painted lanes and sharrows. Some experts say those make riding less safe than not having any lanes at all.
They should be physically separate, yes. You could build them alongside existing bike lanes, or on the opposite curb, so you allow for clear separation and channel e-bike traffic to discourage speeding. You’d be doubling a street’s carrying capacity.
E-bikes engender so much hostility and fear from pedestrians. Wouldn’t creating dedicated lanes bring more of them, and so more dangers?
Safety is at the heart of everything we do. The city has to create and enforce rules to govern faster e-vehicles. When I first saw those toll-collection gantries this summer my heart skipped a beat because I saw it’s finally here. But my heart sinks when you see that it’s still a daily street fight, with everyone going every which way. The rise of riding has moved faster than street design. We weren’t ready for e-bikes, and we don’t look ready for congestion pricing.
How do you balance more rules and more robust enforcement with the recognition that these are the vehicles of choice for low-income and new immigrant workers?
When I was commissioner, we put the burden on restaurants to equip delivery people with safe bikes, lights, and reflective vests, and we held the businesses liable for violations. We did outreach to virtually every individual restaurant in every neighborhood. There was very high compliance — everywhere you looked you saw delivery workers wearing high-visibility vests and helmets, and complaints went down. It can be done.
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