The Mamdani Administration's New Vision Zero

Brian Lehrer (0:01)

Almost here for some things on the station that are new or different. Many things change as we get older, including our finances. So coming up later on our new call-in show, please advise, hear advice on money and aging from financial expert Amanda Holden, author of the book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady. That's on our new call-in show, please advise right after Alison and all of it. That'll be at one o'clock this afternoon. Tonight, Thursday night, tonight at seven o'clock, I will be back co-hosting a three-city special called Haiti on the Line, about this TPS emergency for the Haitian community, along with colleagues from public radio stations in Miami and Boston, two other cities with large Haitian-American populations. Tune in tonight at seven, tell your friends and family in Boston, Miami.

People will be able to call in, even tell your friends and family in Haiti. If we get some calls from there, it will be great. We'll also be streaming that on YouTube, so you'll be able to see us as well as hear us. That'll be at wnyc.org/haiti on the Line.

wnyc.org/haiti on the Line. Please advise at one o'clock today, Haiti on the Line tonight at seven here on WNYC.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll talk about the Mamdani Administration's new Vision Zero Plan. It's the first major traffic safety update of his tenure, arriving after a summer of hit and run deaths that you've probably heard about, maybe you even know people involved, and a die-in staged by advocates at City Hall. The plan calls for pedestrian-only districts, calls for a crackdown on reckless and impaired drivers. But some of that depends on Albany. And the mayor's team hasn't spelled out exactly how or where a lot of it will take shape, even if they get all the laws from the state legislature that they want. We'll also see if it includes anything new on mopeds or e-bikes. WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen has been covering the plan and the response to it, and he joins us now. Hey, Stephen, welcome back to the show.

Stephen Nessen (2:19)

Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer (2:21)

And listeners, you are invited too. What's your idea for making New York City streets safer for pedestrian, cyclists or drivers? What would you add to Vision Zero? And if you've been following the story of this new Vision Zero reimagined by the Mamdani Administration, how do you assess it? Or what questions do you have? Your friendly neighborhood transportation reporter Stephen Nessen will answer all of those to the best of his ability.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. All right, Stephen, what's new in Mamdani's version of Vision Zero?

Stephen Nessen (3:00)

Well, one of the things that I thought was maybe most interesting was his or is his plan for redesigning intersections. You've heard about the phrase daylighting, I assume?

Brian Lehrer (3:15)

I've heard of it. You want to explain it?

Stephen Nessen (3:17)

Yeah, absolutely. Basically, you know, like when you get to an intersection and you want to cross and there's a car parked right at the intersection, you sort of have to look around the car to see if traffic's coming or if a cyclist is coming. And that's really dangerous. And obviously, a lot of accidents happen at intersections. So one of the plans, and this is not necessarily new per se, because Eric Adams also, former Mayor Adams had the same idea, is to fix a thousand of those intersections every year.

And it became a little bit of a controversy because the DOT came out with that announcement during the Adams administration and then sort of walked it back. Former DOT Commissioner, Edonis Rodriguez, even wrote an op-ed in which he said that's a bad idea and it's actually dangerous because some cars can take a faster turn if there's not something physical at the intersection to slow them down. So it became kind of mired in this sort of back and forth over how to fix these intersections. But ultimately, Mamdani says they're committed to fixing a thousand intersections a year. And they say during Adams' administration, that team often just put up a sign that said, no parking here and people of course would just park there.

So they're committed to hardening, like putting a physical barrier to make it harder for vehicles to park there of course, like a rock or bike parking, things like that. So that's one of the big things. They're also committed to expanding Sammy's Law, which folks might remember empowers the city to lower speed limit without asking permission from Albany, which is something that got passed last year, but a couple of years ago, it just slowly been introduced into the city. So they're going to ramp that up so we could see more 15 mile per hour zones around the city as opposed to 20