Public transit in NYC: How Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to get New Yorkers to drive less

Slower speed limits. Fewer driving lanes. Fewer parking spots, both paid and free.

New York City's longstanding war on cars has kicked into another gear under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. His administration has considered or adopted a range of plans that could make it harder and costlier to drive in the five boroughs for the typical motorist — but easier to ride mass transit while making city streets safer for New Yorkers, most of whom don't drive.

Mamdani's streetscape revolution is unfolding at a faster pace than those of his predecessors. While their policies transformed swaths of the city including by bringing pedestrian plazas to Times Square and lowering the citywide speed limit to 25 mph, the current mayor has made a flurry of potentially transformative moves in his first months.

"He is the first mayor to come into office as a rider-in-chief," said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the pro-transit Riders Alliance. "When somebody during the campaign threatened to blow up his car, thank God he was able to say he doesn’t have a car."

In a city with one of America’s lowest rates of car ownership, Mamdani wants New Yorkers to drive less and use other ways to get around. In addition to improving public transit, his administration has argued that the new policies — such as lowered speed limits — will make the city's streets less dangerous.

Advocates have hailed the new measures while critics have argued that they hinder those who say they need to — or simply want to — drive. That likely includes some on Long Island where, according to the U.S. Census, 94% of households have access to a car, compared with 54% of New York City residents.

Mamdani spokesman Jeremy Edwards told Newsday on Friday that the transportation agenda is yet another example of how the administration is making the city more affordable for more people.

"Building an affordable city starts with giving New Yorkers real transportation choices — so no one is pushed into the high cost of owning a car just to get around. This isn’t about punishing drivers; it’s about making our streets work better for the people who use them every day," he said. "When we design streets to move buses quickly, protect cyclists and keep pedestrians safe — while still accommodating cars — we create a city that works better for everyone."

Among the changes Mamdani has announced:

• Private cars will soon be banned from half of Downtown Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue, where expanded bus-only lanes will be protected by physical barriers to keep other drivers out.
• Motor vehicles are expected to be banned entirely from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, returning it to be similar to its original pedestrian design.
• Long-stalled projects are being restarted citywide to restrict cars from soon-to-be-former general purpose lanes and to give more space to pedestrians, cyclists and buses, including in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.
• To reduce traffic crashes, the speed limit will soon be 15 mph near every school in the city — and Mamdani wants to lower the general citywide speed limit to 20 mph from the current 25 mph.
• About 6,500 parking spots could be taken away to be used for curb garbage-bin storage — and the administration has not ruled out installing meters on as many as 750,000 currently free parking spots; there are roughly 3 million citywide, almost all of them free.

"Our overall approach to on-street parking in New York City hasn't changed dramatically since the 1950s, when overnight parking was first allowed, which really was the beginning of the era of lots and lots of parking on our streets," Mike Flynn, Mamdani’s transportation commissioner, said on a recent podcast.

Mamdani — who doesn’t own a car and sometimes still rides mass transit or a Citi Bike — installed Flynn as the first act of his nascent mayoralty, minutes after being sworn in at a disused subway station beneath the City Hall complex. One of Mamdani’s signature campaign pledges, as yet unmet, is fast and free public buses.

Cheers and jeers

Past mayors also aimed to make New York City less car-centric, less crash-prone and more friendly to people who walk, bike and ride mass transit. Mike Bloomberg created swaths of pedestrian plazas in Times Square and beyond, opened hundreds of miles of bike lanes and debuted the Citi Bike program. Bill de Blasio banned cars from Central Park and Prospect Park, lowered the citywide speed limit to 25 mph from 30 mph and implemented Vision Zero, a plan to cut traffic-related injuries and deaths.

But those policies in some cases unfolded over the course of years. Mamdani’s streetscape revolution is unfolding at a faster pace.

It’s in contrast with his immediate predecessor, Eric Adams, who all but ignored the law requiring bus lanes and bike lanes and slow-walked or sometimes overruled the experts at the city Transportation Department who had spent years redesigning a street to prioritize pedestrians and bus passengers in a city with snail-pace bus speeds.

Under Mamdani, the changes to the streetscape have drawn both cheers and jeers.

Pearlstein is happy with the changes Mamdani is making — and has promised to make.

"We are seeing something completely new in terms of a mayor’s identity with the majority of New Yorkers who depend on public transit directly, as well as everyone else, who depends on it indirectly for goods and services," he said.

New York City is a rarity in America — most people don’t commute to work via car and nearly 90% use mass transit to get to and from Manhattan. About half of households, mostly on Staten Island and in eastern Queens and southern Brooklyn, have access to cars.

Even from Long Island, more than 80% of commuters take mass transit into Manhattan. And with the city’s congestion-pricing toll, which went into effect last year, most vehicle owners are charged $9 to drive below 60th Street.

Mamdani has long been a supporter of the toll, which in some cases has actually made it easier to drive in the city — for those willing to pay.

Alexa Sledge, a spokeswoman for the group Transportation Alternatives, was elated as she rattled off a list of projects that Mamdani is greenlighting, including safety-focused redesigns of McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a bike lane on Brooklyn's Ashland Place, which has been nicknamed "Crashland" for its danger to cyclists.

"Honestly, I can’t think of anything that’s been ruled out as far as things that are moving forward," she said, adding: "When there’s streets that are killing people, it should really be a call to action for everyone with power in New York City to transform them into streets that aren’t killing people."

Brendan Sexton, president of the Independent Drivers Guild, which represents for-hire vehicle drivers for Uber, Lyft and other services, said that adding more bus lanes allows his drivers to drop off and pick up passengers without having to double-park.

"A city with a robust public transportation system is good for our guys, because it means that people are leaving their personal cars at home, and our members are filling in the transportation gaps," he said. "So any way that clears out the roads of personal vehicles means that our members can get more rides, make more money, and be able to feed their families."

Not everyone is thrilled with Mamdani’s transportation policies.

Rafael A. Mangual, a fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, said although many people don’t have cars, some do, particularly those with families.

"I think what people struggle with is the sense that, you know, maybe these decisions aren’t always being made via a real, meaningful cost-benefit analysis, as opposed to, say, an ideological commitment or an ideological opposition to driving," he said.

For those who want to drive, New York City will never be the most hospitable place in the region.

Mangual moved from Queens to Long Island in part, he said, because he wanted to drive.