Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, NYC Streets Plan Oversight, March 2026

Chair Shaun Abreu (00:00:00)

— for the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. At this time, we ask you to silence all electronic devices, and at no time is anybody to approach the dais. Chair, you may begin. Welcome to the Super Bowl of Streets Plan, everybody. Good morning and welcome to today's hearing on the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I am Councilmember Shaun Abreu, Majority Leader and Chair of this committee. Today the committee is holding an oversight hearing titled Streets Plan Update: Assessing the State of the Streets Plan in 2026. We will examine Department of Transportation's latest progress in implementing the streets plan, how they intend to comply with the law's requirements in 2026, and what more can be done to improve upon the streets plan in the years ahead. We will also hear several pieces of legislation related to street safety, accessibility, transportation equity, and the use of public space. Intro number 13, sponsored by Speaker Menin, in relation to the installation of solar-powered crosswalks. Intro number 93, sponsored by Councilmember Brewer, in relation to expanding the bicycle parking station program. Intro number 163, sponsored by Councilmember De La Rosa, in relation to a study and report on the feasibility of providing ferry service to Inwood. Intro number 202, sponsored by Councilmember Gutierrez, in relation to the time permitted for the installation of a traffic calming device or traffic control device on any street adjacent to a school. School. Intro number 310, sponsored by Councilmember Marte, in relation to requiring the Department of Transportation to install bilingual street name signs. Intro number 628, sponsored by Councilmember Ressler, in relation to expanding access to sidewalk and roadway cafe applications. Intro number 655, sponsored by Councilmember Ressler, in relation to expanding access to roadway and sidewalk cafes. Preconsidered intro sponsored by Councilmember Hanif in relation to requiring curb extensions at certain dangerous intersections. Preconsidered intro sponsored by Speaker Menin in relation to maximum clear path requirements for sidewalk cafes. And preconsidered intro sponsored by Councilmember Ressler in relation to the expansion of pedestrian space. The streets plan was enacted to move New York City towards safer streets, faster buses, better bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and to create a more equitable transportation system. It established clear mandates, clear legal mandates, and timelines to ensure that the city took actionable steps to ensure street safety. Since the launch of Vision Zero, New York City has made important progress, and the recent decline in traffic fatalities is somewhat encouraging. But we all know that the city experienced years in which traffic deaths increased and far too many New Yorkers—pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers—continue to be killed or seriously injured on our streets. For many advocates and communities, the concern has not been whether we know what works, but whether we are moving quickly enough to implement it. That is why the streets plan matters so much. It is the city's central mandate to deliver protected bus lanes, protected bike lanes, transit security, transit signal priority upgrades, bus stop upgrades, accessible pedestrian signals, pedestrian space improvements, and intersection redesigns. Yet, as prior years have shown, the Department of Transportation has repeatedly fallen short of these requirements, particularly with respect to bus lanes, bike lanes, and bus stop upgrades. Today marks a turning point in the Streets Plan. We have a new mayor and a new commissioner, and the next 5-year plan is due at the end of this year. So today we will find out where DOT stands in its fulfillment of the Streets Plan mandates and how the agency plans to meet the next phase of street plan requirements, and of course, how we can make up for lost time. In addition to the streets plan update, today's legislative agenda reflects the broad scope of DOT's work and the many ways transportation policy intersects with public safety, accessibility, economic activity, and neighborhood quality of life. From safer crossings near schools to clearer directions through bilingual signage to the administration of sidewalk and roadway cafes to safety improvements like curb extensions and illuminated signage, These proposals speak to how New Yorkers experience the city every day. As always, our goal is to understand what is working, what is not, and what changes are needed to move forward. It is our goal to ensure that the city's transportation investments are advancing safety, accessibility, reliability, and equity for all New Yorkers. Before we begin, I'd like to thank my staff and the committee for their hard work in preparing for today's hearing. Jalisa Quigley, my Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Legislation and Budget. Mark Chen, Senior Counsel to the Committee. Theodore Miller, Counsel to the Committee. Kevin Katowski, Senior Policy Analyst to the Committee. John Bazile, Senior Policy Analyst to the Committee. And Adrian Drepal, Principal Financial Analyst to the Committee. I would also like to thank Sarah Swain, Senior Counsel, and Natalie Meltzer, Senior Policy Analyst, from the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection for their assistance. I will now pass it over to Councilman Marte to speak on his legislation. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank Majority Leader Breu for holding this hearing and for all the advocates that are here today. If you visit Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, you'll see one of the most unique pieces of infrastructure in New York City: bilingual street signs, both in English and Chinese. While there is few specific streets in the city that have bilingual signs, Only in Chinatown does every corner in the neighborhood have these bilingual signs. For the thousands of residents in Chinatown and the 10,000 more who visit from across the city and world, these street signs aren't just a nice amenity, they're a lifeline. For 60 years, Chinese immigrants who don't read English have been using these street signs to navigate around their community. They could not live in Chinatown without the help of these street signs. But unfortunately, they are disappearing. While the DOT installed these signs in the 1960s and '80s, there has not been an investment in bilingual street signs since then. Intro 310 would change that. The bill will require DOT to commit to a permanent bilingual street sign program in Chinatown, but even more exciting, this bill will expand bilingual street signs citywide, allowing councilmembers to request these signs in their district. By passing this bill, we can give all immigrant communities the same benefit Chinatown has. Expanding bilingual street signs would not only provide language access to those who need it, but it will also add the culture and character of these immigrant communities, giving them even greater ownership of their neighborhoods. At a time when the federal government is trying to criminalize our immigrant neighbors, this bill is just one easy way we can push back and make it clear that our city welcomes everyone and embraces immigrants. I look forward to hearing the administration testify today and working with my colleagues to pass this bill. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilman Martí. I'm now going to pass it over to Councilwoman Ressler to speak on his legislation. Chair, I can beatbox. Do you? Can you beatbox? Is that a thing? No. All right. Wonderful. Well, let me just say, Chair Breyeu, it is wonderful to be here. This is my first Transportation Committee. I have the chance to join you. So thank you, Majority Leader, and thank you, Chair. Excited to have you in this role and to have such a great champion for improving safe streets across our city. I'm really excited to have not one, not two, but three bills on the agenda today. First, we're hearing preconsidered legislation to expand pedestrian space. And this was frankly a missed opportunity in the last version, the original version of the streets plan. Walking is the primary way that we all get around as New Yorkers. And frankly, the city does far too little to ensure that we have adequate pedestrian space across our communities, especially in the most congested areas. This legislation would require the city of New York to add 1 million square feet of pedestrian space every single year for the next 5 years. This would be expanding sidewalk space around the busiest subway stops and bus stops. This would be adding more open streets, adding more public plazas, adding more daylighting so that we all have the necessary pedestrian space that we need to get around. As a New Yorker, I don't think there is anything more frustrating than being stuck behind a slow-walking person. And it often happens in these highly congested areas because we just don't have enough space for all of us to get around. If you want to walk on Fordham Road with Councilmember Sanchez or on J Street with me in downtown Brooklyn, or 125th Street with the majority leader, you will see that we do not have enough pedestrian space for our communities. Secondly, we are hearing Intro 655 that will restore year-round outdoor dining and relax hurdles and make it easier for small businesses to participate in the program. I am thrilled that Speaker Menin has been a champion of restoring year-round outdoor dining and supporting my legislation. New Yorkers have been clamoring, clamoring for year-round outdoor dining since the program was ended some years ago. It's one of the few— during the pandemic, you know, we saw 6, 7, 8,000 restaurants secure permits for roadway dining, and it was a tremendous success. It was great for restaurants, it was great for restaurant workers, it was great for our neighborhoods. Most of all, it was great for all of us to be able to enjoy a wonderful meal sitting at a favorite restaurant outside on a favorite block. But instead, this new version of the program has essentially decimated the outdoor dining program. I think 450 restaurants— we'll get the updated numbers from DOT today— but 450 restaurants have secured the full permits, not the conditional permits, but full permits for the spring. It's just, it's abysmal, and we have so much improvement to do to make this program better. Year-round outdoor dining will make it easier for restaurants to participate in the program, and I want every restaurant in New York City to have confidence this spring that year-round outdoor dining is coming back and coming back swiftly. We do absolutely need to keep rules in place for high standards of cleanliness to help avoid rats. We need to address snow removal and safety concerns. We need to address quality of life impacts to make sure that outdoor dining, established outdoor dining structures, are not negatively impacting neighbors who live upstairs or down the block. But we can do all of this with clear standards and enforcement while ensuring a successful year-round outdoor dining program. And lastly, we're also hearing Intro 628, which will require the Department of Transportation to establish in-person application locations and allow restaurants to save their progress on the application and return at a later date when they're applying for outdoor dining permits. This is an extensive application, probably too extensive, with lots of information required, and filling out the application itself should not be yet another burden that gatekeeps restaurants from participating in this valuable program. I am grateful to so many partners who have worked with us on this package of bills, especially Transportation Alternatives, Open Plans New York, Hospitality Alliance, and many, many, many small businesses and restaurant owners from across my district and across the city. I cannot wait to bring back this dynamic year-round outdoor dining program and hopefully expand pedestrian space with this package today. Thank you to the chair and look forward to good updates on the streets plan. I don't know what that was. Oh, but, um, hopefully it was nothing I said. Um, and I'm just thrilled that we have a mayor who actually cares about these things for the first time in some years. Thank you. Sergeants, sergeants, can we have another seat here please to have 5 people testify? So we're going to have the pre-panel testify: Lizzie Rahman, Chris Sanders, Diane DeQuane Mays, Rafael Orlove, and Joyce Race. Some folks are in the overflow room and they're gonna make their way here. And after this panel testifies, Abby Jura will be on virtually. You may begin. Hello, my name is Lizzy Rahman, and you already have seen that I have been holding onto a picture, and I have been holding onto this picture not only now, for the last 18 years. This boy, he is my son, and he was only 22 years old when he was killed by a reckless truck driver on a wide street without a bike lane in 2008. Which is Queens Boulevard. You know, Queens Boulevard was known as Boulevard of Death at that time, but after my son's death, I promised to myself somehow I'll get bike lanes on this treacherous, dangerous street, and I fought for it. I got help from a lot of people, a lot of organizations, a lot elected officials, and finally we got it. It was finalized, completely done in last year, but work started after my son's— 6 years after my son's death. It was so slow, and the thing is, he He can't be saved anymore. He's gone. But the thing is, his life, his blood, my tears, it all paid for a clear path for all the other bikers, people, those who bike on Queens Boulevard and other streets in New York City. And my Plea to the new mayor and this committee is that we should make sure that all the people in New York City— bikers, pedestrians, you know, drivers— they are safe. And to do that, we have to take a lot of measures. And you can't alone fix the system. You got to get experienced people. So, you know, we hope you will make sure that Transportation DOT has more experienced and qualified people to do the job. And mayor has to make sure, and we have a lot of hope on this mayor. We know the past 4 years, not that not much has been done, or maybe nothing has been done. But we are hopeful that in the beginning of this mayor's term, we have seen progress and we have seen hope. And we hope that things will move in the right direction and we will make pedestrians and bicyclists and drivers and children safe in our city. And I urge you to make sure that Sammy's Law is passed all around, um, New York City schools. Speed limit should be 20 miles per hour. And another point is bike lanes. There are bike lanes. Queens Boulevard has bike lanes, and a lot of major streets, they have bike lanes, and many they don't have. But those bike lanes, they have to be connected. Like, people, they ride their bikes on a bike lane, and then like they're stranded in the middle of a pool, a bridge, and they just fall down because there is no protection, nothing to save them, nothing to protect them. So I request, I urge that there are connected bike lanes from one street to another street, and there are more bike lanes to keep bikers safe. And we people already discussed, and they will be discussing more, that biking serves a lot of different purposes. It serves, saves global warming, and it saves time. It's good for the health. And more and more young people and older people, they are riding bicycles. And, um, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for listening to me. I appreciate your testimony and for sharing your very personal experience. And that's why we're holding today's hearing, so that we can prevent, you know, what happened to your son from happening in the future. Again, thank you so much for sharing that. All right. Thank you, Shawn. Thank you, Transportation Committee. My name is Chris Sanders. I am the co-chair of the TA Manhattan Activist Committee. I have fought for better bike infrastructure in this city for roughly 6 years now. And let me tell you, the fight has not been easy. I lived in Harlem for 12 years before moving to Midtown last year, and Harlem and neighborhoods like it have far too little protected bike lanes. When I ride up to my barber shop in— in, I'm sorry, in Washington Heights, um, like everybody's parked in the bike lane. Um, you know, Adam Clayton Powell, not safe. The bike lane stops at 116th Street and that's all you get. Um, so, um You look, I experienced getting run down by cars, people swerving, not paying attention. And I would feel the differences when I would come downtown. So I used to work at Clear and I would go into the office like 2021, 2022. And, you know, I would, you know, down below 110th Street, the bike lanes, you know, are nice and fancy and they're protected. And the reason I would still choose to bike then and now is because it's literally the fastest way for me to get around most of the time. Like the fastest, like I don't have to wait on the subway platform. I can go straight into work, all that. And recently I've been traveling around to other global cities and some of these cities are prioritizing bike lanes, like London and Barcelona and Zurich, shockingly, Amsterdam, which everybody already knows. And I think we should use this second streets plan to get New York to where it needs to be. It is a global city. It's not competing with the rest of America. It's competing with the rest of the world. And we need to bring our streets up to that high, high, high standard. A new streets plan gives me hope that a bike lane network can work for everyone. Biking makes us healthier, makes our community stronger. It's imperative that bike infrastructure feels safe, well-integrated, well-connected for the whole city. The gaps in the network lead to confusion, unnecessary conflict. Um, you could please wrap up your thought. Thank you. Oh, okay. Yeah, so basically The current bike network, it's not a network. It's just luck if they happen to connect together, and ideally, I'd like the new streets plan to focus on connect— making the bike lanes a network and expanding them to the areas that don't have it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Jolice Race. I'm with Riders Alliance. We are a grassroots organization that fights for better public transportation in New York City. And I want to thank the council for giving us the space to speak as a group here today. So for the past 6 years, I've been organizing bus riders across the city. And 4 years ago, I stood outside of City Hall and rallied with other transit advocates to ensure proper funding for the streets plan, which we won. Unfortunately, this plan has not yet resulted in meaningful speed, bus speed or service improvements for most riders in New York City. As a transit organizer, it was a long 4 years fighting for bus riders under the Adams administration. And for 4 years, the streets plan was ignored and bus riders were completely disrespected by the elected officials, save a few, whose salary is quite literally paid for by the working class people that are riding the bus. Riders cannot afford another administration like our last one, and our hope here today is to encourage DOT, Council, and our mayor to bring the changes we need to give bus riders the dignified commutes they deserve. For the past 2 years, I've been focused on organizing riders to bring faster bus service to Flatbush Avenue. We've held dozens of community meetings, canvassed, and talked to thousands of riders taking buses along the corridor. And we hear the same thing over and over and over again. Riders are waiting too long in extreme weather conditions only to board crowded buses that get stuck in traffic. Bus lanes are not respected by individual vehicles, and bus riders are showing up late to work, interviews, picking up their children, appointments, and everything else. And I can't even count the amount of times that the B12 has made me late to meetings. And this kind of stress adds up over time and seriously impacts the overall quality of life for millions of people in this city. 50% of riders, bus riders, are essential workers, the very people who are keeping our cities educated, healthy, and fed. So why are they treated like their commutes don't matter? I hear that I have to wrap up. So we are calling on the mayor to speed up buses citywide by 20%, and we are asking the council and DOT to use the streets plan in order to do that, because it's possible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Rafael Orlov. I'm here with Riders Alliance. I've lived on and around Flatbush for over a decade now, and the buses improved over that time in so many ways. It is much easier now to pull up an app to find the right bus route and know when that bus is coming, but that has only made it so much more painful to get on that bus and be stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. I'm a reporter writing about transportation. I own a car and have covered car ownership and car culture in the city for 15 years. But the city gives too much leeway to cars, and nowhere is that more clear than on Flatbush Avenue, where double- and triple-parked cars regularly hold up traffic and delay bus after bus. These are riders who depend on the bus. They're predominantly women. They're predominantly people of color. They are essential workers, often commuting to Downstate Hospital. Even me, I don't commute by bus. I don't depend on it to get to work., but this is how you get across this part of the city, and unreliable service makes the whole side of Brooklyn cut off. And while there are many proposals to speed up the neighborhood's buses, whether it's all-door boarding, reducing the number of stops, even making all buses free, none of this tackles the problem of buses getting boxed out by someone double or triple parked. We don't need new enforcement. We don't need new fines. We can't rely on painted lines in the road. We need protected bus lanes. And it's not right to have them only in the richer, touristy neighborhoods of Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn. We need them in Flatbush too. It's the backbone of Brooklyn. The mayor needs to commit to speeding up buses by 20% citywide. The only way we're doing this is with dedicated, protected busways on Flatbush Avenue and beyond. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Hello, my name is Daquan Mays, and I'm a member of Riders Alliance. As a regular member in the Bronx, I have experienced consistent issues with service reliability and overall ride quality. Bus arrival times displayed on applications such as Google Maps and Transit frequently do not align with actual arrival times. On multiple occasions, I have arrived at a stop several minutes before the bus is supposed to arrive, only to find out that the bus has left and have to wait an additional 15 to 20 minutes for the next bus to arrive. And at times, a lot of chance, the buses are normally overcrowded. As a working-class New Yorker who relies on public transportation daily, I believe we deserve a system that is dependable, clean, and respectful of riders' time and financial investment. For someone like myself who is actively seeking employment, service unpredictability can directly impact access to job opportunities and economic mobility. These are one of the many stressors I have to endure to make ends meet. On top of that, with the rising cost of housing and living expenses, we can't afford to lose opportunities due to preventable transit inconsistencies. I urge leadership to prioritize on-time performance, service accountability, and rider experience improvements so that public transportation fulfills its roles as reliable supports for the communities it serves. I believe we deserve ridership in every corner of the Bronx. What we demand is that the mayor act now to speed buses up by at least 20% citywide. We've seen what less gets us. It gets us delays, overcrowding, and missed opportunities. The Streets Plan law is the city's chance to deliver on its promises. And it's about that time we put words into action. Thank you. Thank you. This panel is hereby excused. Thank you so much for coming in. Abby Juro on Zoom. They're not on the Zoom. If they're not on Zoom now, then we'll call on Abby later on. I will now call on— before I call on Committee Counsel to administer the oath, I want to recognize we've been joined by Councilmembers Epstein, Wong, Marte, Ressler, and Pierina Sanchez, and Gail Brewer. And Gail Brewer has remarks on her opening. I just want to talk about Intro 93, which is the bike parking expansion. And as we know, micromobility is growing in our city. We all know that because that's why we're here. Since 2002, we've seen a huge increase in ridership, average daily trips from 550,000 to 620,000. 26, 13% increase in 4 years. And of course, the, the liveristas, 65,000 of them, and the 56% of New Yorkers who are car-free. I'm one of them. Manhattan, 76%. So bike parking inventory has reached 36,000 racks, which is about 72,000 spaces. But we still have a deficit, and that's why we have the bill. Into 93 would require DOT to install at least 5,000 bicycle parking stations over the next 5 years. It would require potential sites to be found, at least 400 stations to be installed on commercial blocks. Hopefully reducing sidewalk clutter. We've been doing that on 71st, 72nd, Amsterdam, Broadway, working with DOT and the community board to do exactly that and make sure that we improved street safety, because then you have more street curbside space for bike parking. It's also sometimes used in daylighting, same, same space. Equity and also soliciting input from entities is incredibly important. I do want to thank the Transportation Alternatives, Bike New York, New York League of Conservation Voters for their support. This all came about with an Upper West Side Micro Mobility Task Force meeting. And I certainly want to thank Chair Abreu for holding this hearing. I want to thank Nick Wiedowski, committee staff, Mike Chen, and Theodore Miller. And to say I actually see it in Community Board 4, where the community board, DOT came up with specific locations is making a huge difference. Thank you very much. Thank you, council member. We've also been joined by council members Areola and Thomas Henry on Zoom. I will now call on the committee counsel to administer the oath for the administration. Thank you. I'm Mark Chen, counsel to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Our first panel will be from DOT: Michael Flynn, Margaret Forgione, Paul Ochoa, Eric Beaton, and Rick Rodriguez. I will now administer the oath. Please raise your right hands. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions? I do. Thank you. You may begin when ready. Good afternoon, Chair Abreu and members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I'm Mike Flynn, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. With me today are First Deputy Commissioner Margaret Forgione, Paul Ochoa, Executive Deputy Commissioner; Eric Beaton, Deputy Commissioner for Transportation Planning and Management; and Rick Rodriguez, Assistant Commissioner for Intergovernmental and Community Affairs. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of Mayor Zoran Mondoni on the New York City Streets Plan. I also want to acknowledge the advocates who spoke before us. Your experiences are deeply felt. Your hard work is seen and appreciated, and it's having an impact. Although we're only a couple months into the new year, we're already making great strides in achieving the Streets Plan's goals, with efforts built on the bold and ambitious work of previous years. In 2025, we made significant progress in improving transportation, and the city achieved some major milestones. We ended the year tied for the fewest traffic deaths in New York City's history, with traffic fatalities down 31% since the launch of Vision Zero in 2014. These successful results are a direct reflection of our safety-focused approach to street redesign and education and enforcement. In addition to historic progress making our streets safer, Manhattan also benefited from the MTA's congestion pricing initiative— the city benefited— which led to an 11% reduction in traffic, faster bridge and tunnel crossings of up to 50%, and increases in transit ridership and walking trips. Combined with our major street redesign projects, it's easier and safer to walk, take transit, and cycle throughout the city. Speaking of street redesign projects, across the 5 boroughs, we completed over 130 projects in 2025 that support safe and sustainable transportation. These include expanded pedestrian and cyclist space on the Queensborough Bridge, a transformational bike boulevard on 31st Avenue in Astoria, bus lanes on Hillside Avenue in Eastern Queens that improve service for more than 215,000 daily riders, a new pedestrian plaza in Washington Heights, a new segment of the Harlem River Greenway on Bailey Avenue in the Bronx, and many, many more. But there's much, much more to do. When Mayor Mondani selected me to serve as DOT Commissioner, he tasked us with thinking big, being ambitious, and making our streetscape the envy of the world.. And that's exactly what we're going to deliver. We're going to do it with a focus on safe, affordable, and low-pollution transportation and building a vibrant and equitable public realm. As someone who spent his career focused on this work, it's deeply personal to me, and I recognize the special opportunity that I have in this important role serving my fellow New Yorkers. As I know from the nearly 10 years that I previously spent serving our city at DOT, The agency has some of the world's best minds in transportation and is full of hardworking, mission-driven employees. So we're ready for the challenges that lie ahead. Our most immediate steps have been to resume important street redesign projects that stalled due to political considerations or legal challenges. These projects include implementing parking-protected bike lanes along McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, extending the Madison Avenue double bus lane south from 42nd Street to 23rd Street in Manhattan, and restarting the process to redesign the 31st Street corridor in Astoria. Just last month, we also announced the revival of two stalled bus and bike lane projects, which include finalizing the designs for the Fordham Road offset bus lanes and completing the final segment of the protected bike lane on Ashland Place in Brooklyn. This spring, we'll also implement other Brooklyn bike lane projects, including a long-delayed plan to build a bike lane network work across Midwood, Flatbush, and East Flatbush, and we'll also install parking-protected bike lanes on East New York Avenue, and conventional bike lanes will be added in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood. And that's just the beginning. Later this year, we'll release the Second Streets Plan, presenting the city's comprehensive vision to make our streets even safer, more welcoming, and more sustainable. This time, we'll focus squarely on outcomes, not just miles. We have to be attuned to how the work we do improves the lives of New Yorkers, will ask clear, measurable questions. Are buses moving faster? Are fewer people being killed or seriously injured? Are more New Yorkers choosing to bike? Is it easier and more affordable to get around our city without a car? Is the public space we're creating high quality and equitably distributed? These are metrics that matter. I want the agency to go big and be bold, but ambition alone is not strategy. The next streets plan should be a blueprint that aligns aspiration and execution to deliver real results for New Yorkers. The scale and pace envisioned in the original streets plan reflected a significant and immediate shift. Experience has shown that sustained delivery requires aligning goals with an ability to execute at scale. If we're to move faster and deliver more impact, the agency needs the flexibility to prioritize its resources and the projects that produce the greatest results. We want to focus on strategies that ensure scalable long-term progress and prioritize investments that maximize impact. This is something that mandates alone cannot achieve. We'll expand proven tools, designs, and treatments across the city while introducing new programs and commitments to transform our streets into vibrant, dynamic public spaces, and we look forward to working with the council to deliver these results in every district district, with shovels in the ground building protected bus lanes, expanding pedestrian space, building protected bike lanes, and delivering life-saving street safety projects. No New Yorker deserves lesser results based on their council district. Turning to the legislation before the council today. First, Intro 13, sponsored by Speaker Menin. This bill would require DOT to install at least 100 illuminated solar-powered traffic control devices at crosswalks annually over the next 5 years and to study the efficacy of these devices in comparison to regular crosswalks. DOT frequently tests new materials to enhance safety on our streets, and we're always open to testing new technologies to increase safety. However, we have done some preliminary studies on the types of technologies envisioned in the bill, and we have some concerns about their efficacy. Our previous tests found no notable difference in compliance compared to regular stop signs, and crashes did not significantly change at the 5 pilot locations when testing rectangular rapid flashing beacons, or RRFBs. Additionally, MUTCD guidelines would only allow for a limited universe of intersections since in-roadway warning lights cannot be used at intersections controlled by traffic signals, stop signs, or yield signs. Analysis from other jurisdictions across the country identifies greater benefits in higher-speed, lower-traffic streets, which are typically in non-urban settings. Research also indicates a flashing light fatigue effect in which the more widespread the treatment, the less effective it is. Finally, this bill would require DOT to install a large number of devices, significantly more than is needed to determine their efficacy. We look forward to discussions with the council and appropriate stakeholders on this legislation and the best strategies to explore new technologies. Next, Intro 93, sponsored by Councilmember Brewer. This bill would create a bicycle parking station program. In the first year, it requires DOT to identify 5,000 locations of potential sites for bicycle parking stations, 2,000 of which are to be within commercial corridors. Over the next 5 years thereafter, DOT is to install bike parking stations in at least 1,000 locations a year, 400 of which must be in commercial corridors. It also requires DOT to make a map of all locations installed and submit a report to the Council within 6 years of the effective date analyzing the program. Our city's cycling trends continue to grow, and with more than 600,000 bicycle— bicycling trips taken in the city each day, we know accessible bicycle parking is critical for New Yorkers. Currently, we're aiming to install at least 2,000 bike racks per year on the sidewalk or roadway, but we're often exceeding our goal as we strive to offer free short-term bike parking to keep our city moving. We install our large and small hoop racks along with our bike corrals based on bike parking demands, and we're also looking to the future to include secure bike parking. Similar to current practice, we plan to use public input to identify locations for secure bike parking access, which will continue to fuel New Yorkers' embrace of cycling, a safe and environmentally friendly transportation option, while balancing operational considerations, and competing roadway and sidewalk needs. We look forward to ongoing conversations with the council to identify initiatives that meet our shared goal to support continued cycling growth. Next, Intro 163, sponsored by Council Member De La Rosa. This bill would require DOT, in consultation with the Department of Small Business Services and the New York City Economic Development Corporation, to conduct a study on the feasibility of providing ferry service to Inwood in Manhattan. Although DOT owns and operates the Staten Island Ferry, we do not oversee or operate New York City Ferry contract and defer to our sister agency, EDC, who does. Turning to Intro 202, sponsored by Council Member Gutierrez, this bill would require DOT to complete installation of any necessary traffic calming device or traffic control device on any street adjacent to a school in no more than 60 days after DOT issues its traffic study determination. DOT shares the goal to act as expediently as possible, and we're continually striving to deliver more efficiently. We work to enhance safety through a variety of traffic calming and traffic control design changes that together make streets safer by encouraging slower speeds and reducing opportunities for aggressive driving. For traffic control devices, we have a detailed process called an intersection control study to determine if traffic signals or multi-way stop signs are appropriate. We also consider weather conditions and active site constraints like construction and sidewalk sheds. Even in a perfect scenario, we still need to consider factors that are out of our control when determining timing for installation. Additionally, our traffic calming design guidelines determine the appropriate conditions for installation based on a field study. Many of our traffic calming measures are dependent on weather conditions,, and some treatments may fail, deteriorate, or lead to increased risk if installed during suboptimal conditions. Regardless of the treatment, we're taking unprecedented steps in our safety engineering efforts with thoughtful and comprehensive review that may take time prior to installation, and we welcome collaboration in identifying specific areas of concern where we can bring additional safety intervention. We look forward to discussions with the council on this legislation and the best strategies to ensure efficient yet thoughtful treatment installation timeframes. Next, Intro 310, sponsored by Councilmember Marte. This bill would require DOT to establish a program to ensure each sign in Chinatown has the street name in Chinese and English. As part of the program, DOT would also conduct a study to determine the Chinatown borders and then add the Chinese name of the street to each English-only sign within the borders. This bill would also require DOT to replace any damaged bilingual street name sign in the city with a new bilingual sign and enable a council member or the public advocate to request DOT add a street name in English and another language. Lastly, this bill would require DOT to create and maintain a website regarding bilingual street name signs for the council members and the public advocate to enter sign requests, a searchable map and a searchable database. With over 1 million street signs citywide, our teams work quickly to prioritize the repair and maintenance of signs with designs following federal guidelines, which have a direct impact on safety. At the same time, we're committed to maintaining the current set of signs in Chinatown and would want to make sure not to add new administrative burdens on that process. We think Council's current practice of working with the city to identify street co-naming locations is the smart strategy when there's an interest in celebrating cultural influences at specific locations. We'd be happy to have further discussions with the council about this bill. Turning to Intro 655, sponsored by Councilmember Ressler. This bill would expand the city's outdoor dining program by allowing grocery stores to apply for a sidewalk cafe license, removing seasonal restrictions on roadway cafe operation, and providing the option to expand frontage for certain cafes upon consent. This bill would also streamline the review process for restaurants applying to operate a sidewalk or roadway cafe by restricting community boards from requiring applicants to supply additional materials. We're continuously exploring new ways to increase program participation and remove barriers to access for Dining Out NYC and support the bill while also acknowledging some operational and other considerations. We're exploring new rules to address heating and winterization standards, strengthen sanitation and quality of life requirements, and enhance enforcement protocols. As we prepare for the program's second season, we look forward to using lessons learned from the program's first year to continue improving upon the program's success. We're happy to have more discussions with the council and stakeholders about adapting our program processes. Next, Intro 628, sponsored by Councilmember Ressler. This bill would require DOT to issue and receive applications to operate a sidewalk cafe and roadway cafe online and at a physical location accessible to the public. This bill would also allow applicants to save partially filled out online applications in order to complete the application at a later date. Our Dining Out NYC team works diligently with, with applicants to provide support on the outdoor dining application process, both virtually and in person, based on applicant preference. We already offer robust resources in partnership with sister agencies to provide free services for applicants to submit applications in person, and applicants already have the opportunity to apply online or in person. We're continuously exploring how to improve our online application process and are pleased to announce that the function to save in-progress applications is available for applicants. We look forward to continuing the ongoing work of enhancing our application process by working with the sponsor on bill. Turning to preconsidered Bill 1336, sponsored by Speaker Menin, this bill would limit the clear path requirement for pedestrian paths in front of sidewalk cafes to no more than 8 feet or 50% of the width of the sidewalk, whichever is greater. Sidewalk space is becoming more competitive than ever, and it's critical to prioritize the sidewalk as being a safe place for New Yorkers to walk, use a wheelchair, or push a stroller or shopping cart. Further, sufficient clear path requirements are necessary for our planners to meet various needs, including providing space for bike racks, EV charging stations, Citi Bike stations, bus shelters, and other street furniture. It's also imperative to maintain sufficient space for pedestrian access and people with disabilities. As we have seen all too well from the winter weather, overcrowded sidewalks during storms can lead to additional accessibility issues. Currently, there are 3 tiers of clear path in the Dining Out NYC program based on DOT's Innovative Pedestrian Mobility Plan: 12 feet on global corridors, 10 feet on regional corridors, and 8 feet on all other streets. The global and regional corridors exist largely in the central business district of Manhattan, the most heavily foot-trafficked part of the city. 97% of all streets in the city already fall into the 8-foot clear path requirement. We're thrilled with the growing interest in the program, but we're also wary of creating sidewalk congestion and compromising the accessibility needs for New Yorkers in the busiest sections of the city. We're happy to discuss our current clear path requirements to determine if any adjustments can be made while maintaining our commitment to making our pedestrian space safe and accessible for all. Next, preconsidered Bill 1335, sponsored by Councilmember Hanif. This bill would require DOT to identify intersections that pose the greatest danger to pedestrians based upon incidents of traffic crashes involving pedestrians and implement curb extensions prohibiting parking within 15 feet of a crosswalk at a minimum of 5 intersections in each borough. While curb extensions are an important tool in our traffic calming toolbox, we strongly believe that mandating specific treatments across the board without considering the specific issues at a specific location is inadvisable. Through the Vision Zero Borough Pedestrian Action Plans, the agency utilizes crash data as well as engineering judgment to determine the locations most in need of safety interventions and what safety interventions are best suited for that location. While we support the overall goal to focus safety investments where they're needed most, we will want to ensure our engineers retain flexibility to make holistic determinations on where safety treatments are needed and which treatments will be most effective in those areas.. We always welcome input from council members on any suggested locations to explore additional safety improvements. Finally, preconsider Bill 1338, sponsored by Councilmember Ressler. This bill would require DOT to include in its next streets master plan to be issued by December 1st, 2026, a benchmark to expand pedestrian space by 1 million square feet per year for the next 5 years and to prioritize expanding pedestrian space in the areas around bus stops and subway stations that have the highest rates of pedestrian traffic. Since streets make up 27% of the city's total land area, we maintain and manage a large portion of the city's public space. Pedestrian spaces transform reclaimed roadway into vibrant social public spaces for all to enjoy, and these projects simultaneously work to increase safety by enhancing pedestrian comfort and flow. As demand for pedestrian space increases, We're responding by expanding opportunities that prioritize pedestrians at the block, corridor, or district-wide scale. We're also developing some exciting new programs and commitments on this topic that we intend to incorporate into the upcoming new streets plan. These new commitments will complement our existing goals, which result in approximately 500,000 square feet of new pedestrian space a year. We look forward to ongoing conversations with the council to identify initiatives that meet our shared goal to increase pedestrian space citywide. In conclusion, I would like to thank the council for the opportunity to testify before you today. I'm really looking forward to partnering with you and your colleagues to ensure that all New Yorkers, and especially our least advantaged neighbors, can benefit from safe and livable streets that offer many different choices for how to get around. We would now be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Commissioner. I'd like to add that we've been joined by Councilmember Brooks Powers remotely, and in person, Councilmembers Dinowitz and Krishnan. Commissioner, Local Law 195 of 2019, also known as the Streets Plan or the Transportation Master Plan, was passed in October 2019 by the council to expand the city's biking, bus, and pedestrian safety infrastructure, and to enable a holistic approach to developing the city's transportation network. The council has held numerous hearings with DOT about the progress made towards the requirements of the streets plan. While DOT has had some successes with respect to intersection redesigns, accessible pedestrian signals, and new pedestrian space, it has lagged significantly with respect to bike and bus infrastructure, including bus shelter upgrades. The numbers for protected bus lanes and bus stop upgrades are almost too low to believe. And while DOT has made a fair effort to install protected bicycle lanes, they still fall short of what is required. The first question on our mind is, with the new Mayor administration and under your new leadership, Commissioner Flynn, is the department prepared to invest more to fulfill the requirements of the Streets Plan and ensure its success? Thank you, Majority Leader. The mayor has been clear that we can and must do better and that safe and livable streets are a priority for this administration. And we've already received an initial down payment as part of the January plan, as well as the mayor announcing the lifting, uh, and, and loosening, uh, of our ability to hire, which has really been a constraint, uh, in the past. Um, the, uh, we're committed to delivering more transformative and ambitious street redesign projects going forward. We are doing everything to make 2026 a great year and expect to significantly outperform the last couple of years while also building significant internal capacity to aim much higher and be bigger and bolder in the years ahead. Thank you. And we'll ask about whether or not that down payment is enough or is the full loaf for what what we are expecting. And at the same time, thank you for sharing that perspective and commitment. The Streets Plan also requires that DOT submit a report to the council and publish it on its website on February 1st of each year. This report is required by law to provide an update regarding any changes to the plan from the previous year and to include the status of the implementation of each benchmark mandated by the plan. As of this morning, this year's report has been shared with the committee but has not been made publicly available. Why has there been a delay in publishing this required report? It's— I believe it should be posted as of today. And I can say the, the deadline, the delay in publishing it was due to two things. One, we were still finalizing the end of year totals from 2025. And there was a delay as well in the publishing of the U.S. Census American Community Survey data, which we use to calculate some of the metrics in the report. It wasn't up at 9 o'clock, but my team tells me it is up now. Well, what will DOT do to ensure it meets next year's February 1st deadline? We'll do everything in our power for sure to, you know, to get ahead of it, to compile the numbers, Uh, in this case, like I mentioned, um, sometimes we're at the mercy of some of the data sources that we need, so we tee up 95% of the update and then we just need to wait to fill in a couple of the blanks. You mentioned in your opening testimony that as part of the Second Street plan, there are metrics, measurable questions, you know, measurable, uh, questions, metrics that you'll be using. Are buses moving faster? Are fewer people being killed or seriously injured? Are more New Yorkers choosing to bike? Whether or not it's easier, more affordable to get around our city without a car. Is this public space creating high quality and is it equitably distributed? Are those metrics going to be in the Second Street's master plan? We're still developing the content of the plan, but absolutely it's a priority for us to also look at what I would call outcomes, right? Not just output. So measuring mileage and, you know, square footage and things like that is one important way to measure our output. But we're also very interested in how it affects the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers. We want to make sure, you know, not only that we're creating infrastructure, but that the infrastructure is high quality, that it's equitably distributed across the city, and that we have good means of measuring those kinds of things, too. I was at a press conference this morning with the advocates and Transportation Alternatives, including other important advocates who were there, they speak to not only the high volume that is needed in terms of having more bus lanes and bike lanes, but that the quality is being matched with that, that ridership is going up, that commute times are improving. And so are you able to commit today that these metrics will be added in the Second Street's master plan? I believe it's very likely that those metrics, and possibly others as well, will be in there because I think that they're meaningful ways of looking at how New Yorkers get around. Um, you know, and I, and I think that there's some good examples even this year of projects that kind of illustrate this. Um, for example, the center-running bus lanes on Flatbush Avenue that are being implemented, uh, which, you know, I will have very dramatic impact on, on the commutes of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. Things like widening sidewalks on 9th Avenue in Manhattan and widening the bike lanes on 6th Avenue in time for the World Cup is emblematic of how it may not actually contribute to our streets plan mileage targets, but it can have a really major impact on how people experience the city. Or something like Ashland Place, which is just a block basically, but is going to, you know, the, the sum is greater than the parts in a way, right? The impact of creating that continuous north-south protected bike connection through Brooklyn will be huge. So those are, those are a few examples. Great. Based on what I can tell, it seems that this year's streets plan is much shorter than in previous years. What is the reason for that, and is DOT planning to publish any additional materials to supplement this report? Right. So the 1-year update for the 2025 update, which we just published, is smaller than the previous ones. And that's honestly, that's a reflection because we're very focused on the new plan and going forward and kind of resetting the vision, reinvigorating it, aiming higher. And some of the things I mentioned earlier about also kind of how we measure it, measure progress. So that's, you know, we wanted to obviously comply with the law. We wanted to provide the update on those metrics that we're required to report on. But we're really focused on the new era. Is it shorter because there was less work being done? I think 2025, by some metrics, there was more output. By some metrics, there was less. We could talk more. And I'll get into that shortly. Okay. Okay. Since the report has now been publicly available, we'd like to sort of take a deeper dive, you know, on the record on some of those numbers with respect to the streets plan in 2025. So how many bike— how many protected bike lanes were installed for 2025? We installed 18.2 miles of protected bike lanes. And what was the requirement? The requirement was 50 miles. Uh, and, and why, and why was, why was, why was it so woefully short from the requirement? I think there's two basic reasons. Uh, one is, is that, um, you know, to be honest, the implementation of the streets plan and the capacity to do that was not, um, I think, fully prioritized by the previous administration. That's one reason. And the other reason is that a certain number of projects were paused or delayed or canceled, either because of political considerations or lawsuits. It is encouraging to see that DOT completed more miles of bus lanes in 2025 than the 13.5 miles it completed in 2024. What enabled DOT to do better with respect to the bus lane installation requirement in 2025? Sure. So the definition of bus lanes in the Streets Master Plan law is a little bit different from, I think, how people usually think about bus lanes. It includes either bus lanes that are physically protected, which is a relatively small portion of the total, or bus lanes that are protected by cameras. So working in partnership with the MTA, we were able to very dramatically expand the, the on-bus camera enforcement program, their ACE program, which makes a very dramatic difference in helping the bus lanes that we have stay clear. So the MTA did great in rolling that out. We work with them. We process those violations, and we look forward to continuing to work on that rollout this year, even as we add more of the actual bus lanes on the street as well. Is it your position that the underage of the construction of bus lanes, was that under the legal requirements? That were set out? Yes, the legal requirement was 30, and we completed 20.8. Okay. And do you— you know, I have to ask, uh, do you find that the benchmark set out at the streets plan, do you find that to be a mandated requirement by law or as a suggestion? Well, it's— it— the numbers are set in the law, uh, and, um, you know, we, uh, We're very focused moving forward on creating the capacity to meet those kinds of numbers and, and really take our output to the next level. And we're, you know, we're excited that we have a mayor for whom this is a top priority, and, and we're ready to move ahead with that. So you see it as a requirement, not as a suggestion? Correct. While While 20.8 miles completed is better than in past years, it was still below the 30-mile requirement. Um, and so what is DOT going to do moving forward to meet the 30-mile mandate? Well, as I mentioned a little earlier, um, we're very focused on increasing our capacity to deliver, and that's And that's, you know, that's partly— look, government's a big ship to turn, right? And so we're basically building back from a few years where maybe the capacity wasn't quite there. And we're focused on building it going forward. That's things like staffing up. It's things like the contract capacity for the, you know, putting markings or signals or things like that. It's the facilities and the vehicles that we need to actually go out and install these things and maintain them. So, you know, I want to be realistic that that takes some time, but I feel confident that we're going to well outperform last year this year. I think it also underscores, because the resources and the capacity is one half of the equation, but the other half of that is the conversations and the way we work with communities. And I think it really underscores the leadership of the council and community members to help us work with communities to advance these important projects. So communities are serving as impediments to meeting this legal obligation? No, but I believe that, you know, we've seen streets are some of the most highly valued and sometimes contested space in the city. There's a lot of different opinions. Sometimes there's louder voices. Sometimes there's voices that aren't as well heard. Sometimes there's special interests, right? And so I think it really takes thoughtful discussions and engagement to work with communities to, uh, to advance the best possible solutions. Look, the city council passed this law in 2019. There was a lot of community input that went into that bill. Now you have the legal obligation to fulfill this requirement. And so to the extent that there's a hurdle, I mean, again, I don't want there to be excuses for not fulfilling that legal obligation. I understand that folks can get riled up. I mean, when I had trash containerization come to my district and we lost 500 parking spots in 40 blocks, I mean, that was part of the impediments that came with it. But the community, there was also another side of the coin where the community also made their voice known to say that we want open streets, that we want on-street containerization. So this is now the law. And so it is our hope that those targets will not only— you will not only outperform last year's, but outperforming last year's targets could also mean that you do 2 extra miles and that can still fall short of the legal requirement. And so my question is, by outperforming, do you mean that you're going to meet the legal requirements? Your points are well taken, Majority Leader. I— we're in the process of developing our 2026 implementation program. I, I don't think that I could commit to a specific number today. That, that brings me a lot of concern, um, as the chair of this committee, but also as someone who is speaking on behalf of the council. We take the laws that we pass very seriously. And so when you speak about capacity and resources about implementing bus lanes in our city, what's— what does the capacity look like what's the headcount you need to get to reach the— these legally mandated targets, and how much money do you need in the budget to make that happen? And I need precision here because I need to know what I need to advocate for in this year's budget and to making sure that we're having the same conversation on what is needed. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Um, as the commissioner mentioned, you know, resources can mean a lot of things. We are in with conversations with City Hall and OMB to make sure that they understand those numbers. We're going to have a preliminary budget hearing in 2 weeks, I believe, where we can dive deep into the— what current capacity we have. At this point, you know, at this moment, we don't have an exact number of headcount and OTPS needs, but it is a part of a conversation that we're having with City Hall and OMB to make sure that we have those resources to meet these mandates. Look, I know this is very important to the mayor. It is certainly important to the council members here. That, you know, we talk about fast and free. The fast part, that's the bus lanes. The fast part is a, is a budget that is fully funded to meet these legal requirements. And so at the preliminary hearing, I expect the administration to tell me whether or not you achieve it on your end is one thing, but I expect to know exactly what is needed in terms of headcount, in terms of capacity, in terms of resources and budget. In order for the legally mandated requirements to be done? Because we're also trying to make up for lost time, right? We've lost— under Eric Adams, I mean, I believe in the last 2 years there were 57% of bus lanes that were done and 48% of bike lanes that were done. A 50% is a big fat F, you know, for our school students. And so the other 50% is something that we need to make up for lost time. But also moving forward, I would also like to hear what you need from us. And so I hope that at this next hearing we can get that information. Yeah, and, and Councilmember, listen, preliminary budget hearings is the start of the budget process. We're going to have another hearing in May at exec, so there is multiple steps that, you know, the council and the administration goes through to make sure that agencies have the proper resources to deliver what New Yorkers and the mayor is expecting from them. Now pivoting to bike lanes, DOT completed 29.3 miles of protected bike lanes in 2024. Why was the department only able to complete 18.2 in 2025? Again, I understand this happened under Mayor Adams' watch, but if to the extent we can answer that here, I know Commissioner Forgione served under Mayor Adams, so if we can get information from her, that would be great. Well, I think, I think the response would be similar to, uh, to what I mentioned about bus lanes in terms of what the constraints were its capacity at that time and maybe being less of a priority for that administration. And it's also the— sorry, I lost my train of thought. The— oh, yeah, right. Sorry. Projects that were canceled paused or delayed. Yeah, and I'll go into contractual procurement delays shortly. Um, with respect to bus shelters, my understanding there was only 18— sorry, bus stop upgrades— was that there were only 18 done last year and the requirement was 500? Is that right? Um, Chair, so I'm going to take blame here because— I was part of the team that was negotiating the original law in 2019. That should have been an or. And so the way, the way the current law was written is in order for it to count as a bus upgrade, it needs to be a bus shelter installed and a real-time passenger information device. And so we usually do one or the other. So we do have a little side note that says that if you count either or, we meet that, we well overmeet that target. Why can't you do both? So there's, you know, we're going to get into RTPI and our future plan, but usually it's, it's, we can get into a contracting thing, but we had to make some hard decisions last administration in rounds of pegs, and RTPI was one of those projects. But we are looking at restarting the real-time passenger information in the next few months. But I do want to clarify that we did— we well exceeded the installation if it had been an or. It is just unfortunate the way the lot was written that it needs to be both, uh, to be counted. It was 600, um, over 600 bus stops improvements, um, if, if it was an or. What is the current state of the contract and procurement issues involved with the bus stop upgrades? To the extent that bus stop upgrades are low due to contract issues, I'm not sure that's an issue. We don't have huge contracting issues. I would say though, towards the end of the last administration, we did announce a huge investment in bus stop improvements that we're going to be rolling out in the next few years. I think we expect to get about 10,000 bus stop improvements and benches throughout the city over the next, I believe, 4 years. Sarah could correct me if I'm wrong, but, um, 4 or 5 years. That is a very exciting, uh, investment that, um, you know, we're looking forward to working with the council and implementing and installing. So given that, um, a lot of these benchmarks, you know, you know, we fell short of— the department fell short of these benchmarks in 2025. The DOT in 2025 have 50 miles of protected bike lanes planned out for 2025 to begin with in its plan for last year? So we— among the things that the commissioner talked about is, you know, we have to build the capacity all through the place. So, yeah, but was there a plan in 2025? So we do have a plan each year for meeting or exceeding these targets. We don't have signed engineering— did a total 50 miles in the plan last year. Did it total— did that plan total 50 miles last year? Our plan had 50 miles, but it's, it's not that we left 20 miles or 30 miles that was fully designed. Part of what we need to do is hire the planners, hire the engineers, like hire all the steps in the process. Is that plan publicly available? Well, we have, we have the streets plan which shows our priority corridors and areas where we want to expand the bike network. Framework, and that helps guide our team's work. So you could think of it like a hopper, right? We have a lot of bike lanes in the hopper, and then we take them through the process of designing and implementing them. And each year, as Deputy Commissioner said, you know, we basically, we advance the maximum amount that we can with the resources we have. Further along into design, engineering, and implementation. But we have, we have, you know, my point is that we have the, um, we have that longer list, we have that universe of projects that could move forward. How does DOT prioritize and pick locations for specific treatments when working towards the streets' planned benchmarks? So the, um, I could start and anyone is welcome to add detail. Um, The— yeah, so the streets plan really is the starting point, and we're very proud that the original streets plan for the first time created an equity-driven framework for prioritizing our investments. So that's, you know, that's kind of the starting point in terms of how we decide where to focus. We also are continually looking at things like crash data, speeding data, volumes of different modes. Also always listening to the community and hearing from our elected officials and community boards. And we have teams of planners basically who kind of take all those inputs and use it to determine where we can have the greatest impact. How long does the— so is community input being implemented, or does it inform the streets plan? Absolutely. It's kind of an ongoing process, right? We, we hear from the community, whether it's through 311, whether whether it's through council hearings or community board meetings, whether it's through community board budget priorities, you know, all the different ways that we hear from communities about what they want. And, and, and we also have our borough offices, right? So they really know the intimate details of their borough and, and can work with our technical staff to basically take what they're hearing from the community and have it inform our technical work program. How long does DOT take to respond to specific street calming measure requests? I, I believe the answer is that it kind of depends on which channel it's coming from. I don't know if others would like to add. And what are those channels? So I would say, um, for one thing, we work carefully with each community board to take their feedback. So oftentimes when we hear from a community board, as well as an elected who's speaking on behalf of the larger folks in that community. That's a very critical piece of input for us. We also, as you can imagine, receive, you know, thousands of pieces of correspondence. When we do receive requests, we also do look, as the Commissioner said, back on the crash and injury stats to look at whether there are issues in those neighborhoods or we have plans in those neighborhoods, and we try to incorporate that feedback. So there's no time— there's no specific any timing that you can provide to us on the response times? We have response times for all kinds of correspondence, and in some cases we talk about an upcoming project. In other cases, we see if there's something we can do, or we may not feel that a measure is necessary there, but we respond to all of those. I would like to have a breakdown on response time for different, you know, requests. I mean, just speaking from my experience before you started, Commissioner, Um, you know, my office puts in requests on a lot of traffic calming measures and, and calls for street designs and improvements, street lighting. And either we get responses— sometimes we don't get responses. And sometimes— this is before you started, Commissioner— sometimes we would get responses, and then there'll be times where we get responses and then no follow-through. And so, you know, um, to have that breakdown for us would be very, very important. Um, Chair— oh, Chair, just one other thing I want to mention about responses. There is also, um, factors that have to do with the time of year, and also for different requests we have different volumes, of course, right? So for example, if we're looking at a traffic signal, um, we're not going to look at it during summer vacation if it's in the vicinity of a school. Um, if it's the middle of the winter and we have holiday traffic Patterns, same thing. We're not going to do things on certain days. Some things we're pretty quick about. I'll be very upfront about that. So if you're looking at a parking regulation change, that is something that we can usually do within a matter of weeks to get an answer back. If it's something like a speed hump, we have a bit of a backlog in doing those studies. It might take a little bit longer. So we do have timeframes for all of the different types of service requests. And we're happy to follow up with you and get you more information on that. And the request that our office has made in the past has been throughout the year. It's not even the times, whether it's a holiday or not. I mean, this was just relevant throughout the year, and, and I've spoken to the commissioner about that. So I'm happy to proceed now to just talking about the streets plan 2026. Looking ahead, what does DOT have in store in terms of streets plan projects? Do you have 30 miles of protected bike lane bus lane miles plotted out, 50 miles of protected bike lanes, intersections selected for redesign, transit signal priority, or accessible pedestrian signals? Thank you, Chair. Um, so we're definitely, uh, in, in the, in the midst of developing all those details, um, but we do have, you know, some really exciting and, and large-scale projects projects planned, things like Flatbush bus lanes, northern section, Fordham Road bus lanes, Linden Boulevard in Brooklyn, Lexington Ave in Manhattan. These are all bus projects. Madison Ave, 116th Street, Bay Parkway, and Victory Boulevard. Those are a few. Bike projects include, of course, McGuinness Boulevard and 31st Street, Ashland Place, which we announced. The Midwood neighborhood expansion, Flatbush and East Flatbush, 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, 31st Ave, 51st Street in Astoria, bike boulevards in Jamaica, and a network in North Brooklyn. I was in Buenos Aires very recently, and I saw the BRT system there with buses running in the center lane and cars on the outside. It was a beautiful system. Is that something the admin is taking a look at, a true BRT bus lane in our city? Well, I can say the mayor has definitely challenged us to aim higher and be bolder, and clearly fast buses is our top priority, or one of our top priorities. We're going to have a lot more to share. We definitely are developing some big ideas, and yeah, we're really excited to share Well, we certainly love the center lane BRT system that I saw in Buenos Aires, and I would like to— my hope is that the administration is thinking as big as that. Buses there run very, very quickly in the center lanes. Transit is very, very fast. And on the outsides, cars and commercial vehicles are able to do drop-offs. It's a beautiful system to see, and I would like to see the administration come up with a plan on that. The next 5-year plan is due at the end of this year, and it has to include a completed bicycle network, protected bus lanes on all bus routes where they can be installed, bus stop upgrades at all bus stops where the upgrades are feasible, continued installation of accessible pedestrian signals, and the installation of pedestrian ramps. Has the department internally developed a roadmap to achieve these goals? I think you said you're working on that. We're working on it. More to come. And by when should we get this new streets plan? We're, we're still figuring out the exact timing. As soon as you get that information, please get that to us. And I would imagine the answer is yes to this. Do you require additional funding, personnel, or something else to fulfill that plan?. And I think you said earlier that you do not have the dollar amount yet, the specific headcount. And I would like to reiterate that by preliminary hearing, budget hearing, it is super important that we get that information because we want to know exactly what you need to fulfill the streets plan. I'm now going to turn it over to my colleagues for some questions, and I have a second round of questions afterwards. And I first have Councilmember Pierina Sanchez for questions. Uh, thank you, Majority Leader. Actually, I, I'll take another few minutes. Um, I had a very bad fire in the district, so I'm a little distracted. I'm so sorry about that, Councilmember. Councilmember Malte. Councilmember Epstein. Morning, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for being here. So we've got, you know, we've been trying to get bike corrals in our neighborhood. We have a lot of bike messengers who are coming to the neighborhood doing a lot of deliveries, and the timeline that it takes to get those corrals up and running— I know Council Member Brewer talks about like creating a real infrastructure for bikes. I'm wondering why it takes so long to get those corrals designed and put on the street for all the bike messengers. Thank you, Councilmember. There's two types of— I think the secure bike parking is what Councilmember Brewer was talking about, and we actually put out an RFP about two years ago that we were evaluating. The mayor in his preliminary budget finally funded us to carry out that program. But if you're talking about individual bike racks— No, I'm talking about corrals on the street where you take a quarter of a block. We did a walkthrough a year ago trying to get those put up. We got one put up on 11th Street and 1st Avenue. There's probably 500 bikes in the one corral. We got to spread that out. And we just really need these to get in the neighborhood because we have a lot of people who are delivery workers who just need a place to put their bikes. Yeah, I think that's a fair comment and something we could look to do better at. We have increased pretty dramatically the amount of bike racks and bike corrals we put out on the street. There's a lot of demand and we want to make sure we're doing it all over the city. But, but we hear you too, and we'll see. Yeah, if there's a way to kind of— if we're asking for the community, who's asking for the community board's asking for it, and then a year and a half goes by and we just hear neighbor complaints, it doesn't help you or us to sit on this and make us all look like we have egg on our face. So I'd appreciate if there's a way to kind of speed that up or what we need. As the chair said, if there are additional resources to move this up quicker, That would be really great to know. And I would just add, you know, we're, we're all for supporting that. It's, it's, you know, if we can allow 40 people to park their bike or however, 10, right, versus 1 car, that's actually a more efficient use of public space. I agree with you. I want to turn our attention to the sidewalk sheds. So a lot of these restaurants have liquor license permits with the state liquor authority, which has hours of operation. And sometimes the DOT rules directly contradict whatever they've signed in a stipulation to their liquor license. How do we have licenses in the city that are direct contradiction to the state liquor license? Yeah, if you know of any actual examples, I would love to get those because the hours of operation that we have for dining out should not contradict what the state liquor authority has issued. I have hundreds of those in my neighborhood. So I have where the SLA attached to the permit says, let's say, outdoor dining has to close at 10 o'clock. Because the stipulations that they have attached to their liquor license, but then on the city side, we let them stay open to midnight even though they might have a stipulation that says 10 o'clock. So what we're doing is in direct contradiction to their state liquor authority license. Okay, I see what you're saying. So if there are locations that continue to serve, say, past the 10 PM, obviously they're not supposed to. If there's more coordination we need to do with state liquor, we can talk to them about that. They can still serve food, of course. So I have hundreds of those locations that serve past the hours. And I've done walkthroughs with the State Liquor Authority at midnight to show kind of that activity. State Liquor Authority only has, you know, 20 inspectors from the entire state and really could rely on DOT to be a partner in that. So I'd appreciate that, some better coordination between the SLA and the DOT. And if there's ways we can reinforce that with the participants in our dining out program, we're happy to do that. Yeah, that would be great. And we've heard some people about Building entrances, there's some rules around 5 feet from building entrances, but not every building counts as an egress where you can have 5 feet away from the entrance to do a sidewalk shed. I'm wondering, it seems a little random, some buildings get the 5-foot protection and some buildings don't. I'm wondering if we can have a uniform policy on that. Okay, so what you're saying is that for the sidewalk setups, in some cases we're enforcing 5 feet, in other cases we're not? Some cases you say 5 feet, the 5-foot rule applies. In some buildings you say the 5-foot rule doesn't apply. It depends on maybe the size of the building, sometimes the egress, the neighborhood, and we're trying to make sure that there's a uniform process. Okay, uh, so maybe there's a discrepancy between, um, a residential versus a non-residential, but we're happy to talk with you. These are all residential buildings. Okay, so all throughout my district, and we've heard from different residential people I'm making sure of that. Um, and so I just want to make sure, um, so when roadway bed applications come before you, different than sidewalk restaurant applications, you know, we're talking about expanding this to year-round. I'm wondering what, uh, the roadway bed applications to year-round would have impact on street milling, um, how they would have impact on other cleaning activities, and what you're seeing around, around those potential conflicts, right? So there, those are some considerations for us to take into account with year-round, and we're looking into things such including heating, cleaning, whether or not the setups might become more apt for storage and things of that nature. So our intention would be if this advances into year-round, we would need rules to govern a lot of those things. Also keep in mind that the setups are now designed to be very movable, and so for, you know, street work. We don't do as much milling and resurfacing during the winter time period, but if Con Ed needs to get there or what have you, they need to be movable. So we would still want the structures to be movable in a year-round scenario. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Brewer. I love DOT. I just want to be clear. Benches— I want to thank you for benches that you have— are installing on Columbus Avenue. So thank you very much. Regarding Intro 93, I guess I want to know What is the current status of the parking station program? You're right, we were talking mostly here about parking stations and racks. And then secondly, are you— you did talk about expanding it, but could you be more specific? And then when you talk about the bike lane map, can I assume you'll also do racks at the same time? And then I do want to talk about the corrals, but if you could just be a little bit more specific about what you're doing. Sure, I could start about the secure bike parking, the new program. We're really excited that we received funding in the January budget. And so this would be new secure parking that's on top of the 2,000+ standard bike racks we do each year. And we're currently in the contracting process for that, basically, and looking to roll it out later this year, the secure bike parking. Okay, so I guess we'll talk about some of the numbers in our bill and see how we can work together. That's sort of what you said. Absolutely. Okay. Secondly, of the corrals, which I know Councilmember Epstein mentioned, Um, Community Board 4 has done a great job with them. How— this is the issue in my district, is that many, many grocery stores, not all, have Instacart. I help them with their Instacart work. And then outside, I don't know, 50, 60 delivery stores. Are you looking to see how these grocery stores could work with you on corrals? Because what's happening now is they just have a grocery store and random Deliveristas, and they're asking for help. I didn't know how you're— it's a new startup and obviously doing very well, but it exists all over the place. I just didn't know how you're addressing the corral issue in front of some of these stores, grocery stores. Yeah, we've definitely observed the same thing, and we have started a program to create spaces where we're seeing a lot of these deliveries picking up. So sometimes that's in front of a grocery store, sometimes it's in front of a very busy restaurant. In some cases, we make sure that they're intentionally very large to be able to take the larger cargo bikes too when deliveries are made that way. So we do try to scale it to the appropriate space, but we do agree that that's a good use of street space in those locations is so they can congregate and not block the sidewalk. Okay, so you're saying that where you see it is happening, do you have like 311 calls that you're paying attention to? Because in front of Fairway, it's a Wild West. Yeah. And the street too. Fairway loads on the street and the trucks are double and triple parked. Right. That's a particularly challenging location. But, but yes, sometimes we hear from the public. Sometimes we hear from the grocery store. However we get it in, we take a look and see if it's appropriate to do something. I hope you would look at that site in particular. The other thing is the part of the bike plan and extending, as the chair indicated, the transverse of Central Park. Are they part of any bike plan for the future? I'm very supportive of having a transverse bike opportunity. Is that part of your bike plan? Everybody is concerned and asking about that. Yeah, and we, and we know it's, it's a idea that's been raised, uh, by Central Park, and it's something that we're looking at. Okay, so you— how are you determining what will be part of this bike plan? How is it input from the community? Is it— how is that being taken into consideration? How do we get it on your list in the streets plan? Yes. Um, it— yeah, I mean, it's, it's sort of a holistic approach. So I think, you know, those kinds of ideas, once they're on our radar, um, you know, we look at it in the context of of, uh, all the other considerations, right, in terms of fleshing out the network, trying to improve the network on routes that have really high ridership or where there's a safety concern, also trying to extend the network into neighborhoods that really don't have much coverage. Okay. But certainly if there's ideas that we know are a priority, then we're going to give it a very close look. So we'll, we'll add it to your list by making it a priority. Okay. The other thing is, I know this is heresy in this world, But where you list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 about how to focus on buses and whether they are moving faster, I know there's a topic that others won't like, but when you have a bus lane and you get a ticket because you're unloading or loading for 5 minutes, what is the rule on that? Because people are getting tickets. I know people here hate cars and, you know, I got it. But I do think if you're unloading and loading, you shouldn't get a ticket. So what is the law on that in a bus lane? 5 minutes, not even, to unload your stuff and you get a ticket. And then a Gail Brewer has to fight the ticket. Sure. So I mean, obviously the intent of the bus lane is to keep the lane clear. I know, but we, we generally let them suffer. Go ahead. In most cases, a bus lane is a no-standing restriction. Okay, so they can't load or unload, which allows people to quickly get in or out of cars. And quickly means, you know, if a person uses an accessibility device, you know, the camera can see that happening and not get the ticket. It's not meant for people to load and unload vehicles, which takes a longer amount of time and can delay the bus. We do try to create dedicated loading zones on those streets so that there are legal places. And if there's a place where you're hearing about a lot of tickets, we'd love to do that so that they can do it appropriately without blocking the bus. Thank you, Councilmember. If you have— we can also do a second round of questions later. Councilmember Ressler. Wonderful. Um, well, firstly, congratulations, Commissioner Flynn. It's nice to see you and looking forward to connecting. Uh, I am like truly thrilled that making our streets safer is one of Mayor Mumdani's central priorities, and I really hope that we can make District 33 a model for the city, uh, where we have a true network of protected bike lanes, fast-moving buses, more pedestrian space and safer streets on every single corner. A few questions from me. First, just quick yes/no, just because I want to make sure everyone hears it. The administration supports year-round outdoor dining? Yes. For 2026? I think, yeah. Yes. I like that. That's a good answer. So let's get that done. We're thrilled thrilled to have your support and partnership and eager to bring this back as quickly as possible and looking forward to more testimony here today. I'll shift gears to the streets plan. Start with pedestrian space. So over the past, I guess, 4 years, we've averaged about 400,000 to 500,000 square feet of new pedestrian space per year. Do you have a breakdown of that space between open streets, daylighting, new public plazas for how you're looking at— you can provide that to us? So, yes, we can. And just an overall note is that we only— this number counts space that's permanently pedestrianized. So, like, if it's an open street that's 2 days a week, we don't try to count it as 2/7 of open space. I don't want you to undercount my pedestrian space. So how does DOT evaluate when more pedestrian space is needed? Do you look at the data on the highest traffic subway stations, highest traffic bus stops? There's lots of great analysis of where we have the most pedestrian congestion in New York City. What is DOT doing to be responsive? Sure, and there's lots of different types of pedestrian space. Certainly when we talk about pedestrian mobility, that's where we're talking about crowding, making sure that there's enough clear space on the sidewalk. And there we do look at subway stations and busy sidewalks all over the city. We also compare it against the data on how wide the sidewalk is now, right? If it's busy but it has a 20-foot sidewalk, that may be less important than a place that has an 8-foot sidewalk. But public space is more than just people walking. So we want to look at the public realm as well. And that's where things like plazas and open streets come into effect. Some of that is driven by us seeing that there's a need in a community. A lot of it is also driven by community members who've identified a space and come to us, and we work with them to help develop it into a more permanent space. So there's a lot of different types of public space, and they each have their own way that they come into our program. So there is a regular analysis done of the most congested areas, subway bus stops, and analysis of whether there's adequate pedestrian space in those areas, and DOT is regularly responding to try to make sure that there is more space for us all to get around? Yes. For example, the commissioner earlier mentioned the World Cup and trying to make sure that we have improvements in place by then. So for example, this year there's a big focus on 9th Avenue in Manhattan, in that Midtown area where the sidewalk is pretty narrow, right? There's a lot of street furniture and other things.. We want to make sure that the increased crowds have places to be able to walk and enjoy Manhattan. You have to just forgive me, because, you know, when I look at the report that you came out with this morning on updates to the streets plan, there's nothing that quantifies progress on pedestrian space, unless I'm missing it. Well, the report covers the legal milestones. In the first 5 years, what was written into the law was 1 million square feet in the first 2 years. Which I'm glad to say we met, and we didn't stop then, right? But it would have been no progress or updates that have been provided as a part of this. There's no longer metrics included since 2023 on pedestrian space in the streets plan. So we're happy to provide those updates. This is a— this is reporting on the law, and the law is what it is. All right, so let's shift to what we're reporting on in the streets plan. So going back over the last 4 years, we were required— we, City of New York, the Department of Transportation, were required to build 180 miles of protected bike lanes. We built 100, 100.5, 55% of our goal. Commissioner, how disappointed are you in our failure to achieve— I mean, to significantly come short of achieving our goals? And how— why should we be confident moving forward that the Department of Transportation is going to start to get it done? Well, Councilmember, I can't speak to the prior administration. Although I mentioned a few of the reasons why our output didn't meet the goals in the past, what I can say is we have the mayor's commitment and my commitment to dramatically increase our work and to, you know, increase our output, both in terms of things like mileage or square footage, but also, like I said, in terms of the quality and the distribution of it and the impact it has on New Yorkers. And, you know, to look at it really with that holistic perspective. And when we look at protected bus lanes, I think over the last— Wrap up, Councilmember. Thank you. Okay. I would just say the record is uninspiring. And to me, it makes clear that we need significant new leadership, vision, resources from the Department of Transportation to get on track. The way things have been working is not good enough, and I hope that you are hearing that clearly from this City Council, that we want to see significant improvement. I've heard it from the mayor. We want to start seeing that demonstrated because we don't want to be coming back to you in 6 or 9 or 12 months with failures again on not building enough bike lanes, not building enough bus lanes, not building the pedestrian space we all need to make our community safer and to make it faster for all of us to get around. So I will try to come do a round 2, but Chair Majority Leader, thank you for your leadership. Of course, and we will have a round 2. Council Member Justin Sanchez. Good morning. Howdy. So really quickly, one of the— just based on your previous testimony, one of the concerns that I have is the focus on transportation issues in Manhattan, especially around the World Cup. A lot of— especially in my district, I have a huge football fanatics in my district, and their family members are going to be coming out. There's going to be massive traffic. I represent the hub, which is the most visited place in New York City, in New York State, after Times Square on a daily basis. I would like it on the record that I want to completely transform that into pedestrian plaza. It is the most— exactly what you're talking about in terms of transportation hubs. So please look at my district as we are expanding these programs. One of the other questions that I have on Intro 310, I want to specifically talk about the finance part of that bill. Because— and I know there are two different— there's the state DOT and the city DOT. However, there are neighborhoods in the Bronx that have been renamed over 1G. Justice for Throggs Neck, it is with 2 Gs. I want that officially on the record. And all of our signage now only has one G because of the cost of an extra G. So I'm not even joking. And I would like to understand now, based on Intro 310, now that we're going to do signage in different languages, what that cost would be to the department, to the city, because I would love my street signage in Spanish and in French. So I would like to see what this looks like. And, you know— Well, what I can— the Frog's Neck is news to me, so I'm going to look into that. But what I can say is that, you know, for the bilingual signage, we have an incredible amount of street signs clearly around the city. I think I mentioned earlier that we think that the current practice of working the council working with us through the street co-naming process would be a great way to achieve this goal. It's more of a community-driven approach, and, and, and, you know, then we're not kind of the arbiters of, of which, you know, how to define different kind of boundaries and things like that. Um, I don't know that we could give exact, you know, financial or, uh, things like that, but we would be happy to, uh, circle back. Do we know what the cost of one sign is? Um, and then maybe we can extrapolate from there. We, we do know the cost of one sign, um, and it's less the manufacturing of one sign, rather it's the staffing. And as the commissioner started to talk about, um, arbitrating, um, is this truly a Greek area? What is the history of this French-speaking area? Like, those are sort of the tricky things. And we know in New York we're obviously multilingual, we're totally diverse, Some of that stuff will be kind of hard to get at. So really, I think it's more about staffing to try to work through those issues. And as a result, we do prefer the local law renaming process over this. Is there a concern that a bill like this, not just in Chinatown, but if this was any kind of— would set a bad precedent around the city for, you know, all council members and all elected now trying to— this is more of a far-reaching Application. Yes. Um, thank you. Um, and then, you know, just want to underscore, um, please look at District 17 when you're expanding your, uh, streets. Um, you know, a lot of the times, uh, no offense to my colleagues in Brooklyn, um, but Brooklyn and Manhattan get a lot of the, uh, open streets, pedestrian plazas, and, uh, the Bronx gets left behind. Um, and I would really like to see a true investment in pedestrian plazas and other walking places. Sorry to my friends in Riverdale who love their cars, but, you know, we like our trains and our buses. So we would like to see— and an expansion of 14th Street into just a busway would be— the 3rd Ave into a busway would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Definitely noted. We have also— I would also like to recognize we've been joined by Councilmember Hanif. And I'm now going to turn it over to Councilmember Pierina Sanchez. Thank you, Majority Leader, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for your testimony so far. I feel like this question has been asked, but I haven't heard any numbers attached to it, so I'm going to go ahead and ask it again. With respect to the, you know, breath of fresh air, you know, recommitment from Mayor Mamdani and this DOT, this iteration of DOT, with your under your leadership, Commissioner Flynn— sorry, I bit my tongue, my kid smacked into me. You know, that's like— under your leadership, I'm hearing a fresh commitment, a recommitment to the streets master plan. But just talking in terms of numbers, the original estimate when Local Law 195 passed in 2019, the council then estimated that we would require $1.7 billion in funding over 10 years. And additional funds have, have been added. I'm curious if we have today what has been the capital commitment rate of that, if, if that funding was reflected in previous budgets, what has been the capital commitment rate, and what is the shortfall if there is a shortfall in the new plan? And then I have some local, locally related questions on the plan. Councilmember, thank you for the question. So as you mentioned, some aspects of the streets plan are met with capital funding. Our capital commitment rate as an agency hovers around 90 to 95% on any given year. I can provide a breakdown on what capital projects counted for streets plan. I can think of some plazas that counted towards streets plan. Also protected bike lanes and capital dollars like Queens Boulevard should have counted towards towards the Street Plan. So I'm happy to provide a breakdown, but I would say in terms of capital commitment as an agency, we're around 90 to 95% on a given year. So it sounds like you're spending what you're allocated. What, uh, but we're— we know that we're way behind on, um, you know, bus lanes and, and, uh, the other items that have been raised today. Do we have a number on what, what that shortfall is in the budget? So I guess I would— I just want to clarify one thing. Uh, you're asking, Councilmember, about capital funding Specifically capital funding for— okay, so I would just mention that, um, I think the majority, probably the vast majority of our mileage, and, you know, in terms of meeting the target or working towards the targets, is actually our in-house projects. So they're not, uh, through the capital funding, uh, it's the things that we do with our expense funding. So I mean, that's just to provide some context, uh, on that, but, um He mentioned, you know, the capital funding side of it. And yeah, I guess you're asking— are you also asking about the operations, the expense side? Yeah, just trying to, I guess, understand how much money we need. You know, we could continue this in prelim, but how much money we need to meet the ambitious goals of the plan. So, understood. So I think like I mentioned earlier, We know we're kind of in the thick of, or we're getting into the budget process. We don't have, uh, specific numbers yet. Okay, thank you. And then my, my second, uh, the second part of my questions is, you know, looking at Fordham Road, uh, and the Fordham Road busway as an example of this, this administration recommitting, um, I, I have said in public and in private that I, I don't think that the community and stakeholder engagement for the Fordham Road busway or bus lane improvement was done the right way last time. For instance, by the time that folks were speaking to me about the project, there had been major institutions and stakeholders who had come out in opposition of any bus lane changes. And then, you know, when the mayor announced the recommitment of the Fordham bus lane project a couple weeks ago, My conversations were disconnected from what you testified today and what I saw in the press, where my conversations, I understood you all to be restarting community engagement to make sure that we're speaking to all stakeholders, not just the powerful institutions in that part of the Bronx. But today I hear you testifying that you're just finalizing designs, but there have been, there has been no conversations. So the question is, How are you going to do community and stakeholder engagement differently to lead to success in these projects? Because I certainly want to be a partner on the success of that. Part 1 and Part 2 is, on December 19th, 2025, unrelated, the DOT released the Harlem River Greenway Implementation Plan, and what is the commitment of this new administration to see that implementation plan plan— sorry, plan forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Um, so on community engagement, I, I want to mention that this is a really important topic to me. I think the work we does is so tangible, right? It's, it's our front yard, it's our public space, and, and therefore people have very strong feelings about it, rightly. Um, and so it's, it's so essential to do it as best as we can and, and really, uh, be effective. And, uh, I'm all ears, we're all ears, always looking to do better. This is something that'll be a priority for me. So, and then on Harlem River Greenway, that's certainly still a very high priority project for us. We're excited that we'll be continuing the first phases of it as we go south down Bailey Avenue this year, and we're looking at the future phases as well. Thank you. I'm sorry, Majority Leader, if I can— when can we expect a reconvening of stakeholders on Fordham? So yeah, we're, we're kind of getting, getting our ducks in a row, and we'll be doing that basically starting later this month for the next few months. Okay, thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Council Member Wong. Thank you, Chair. Um, I just have a few questions, uh, to the Commissioner or to the panel, whoever could answer me. Uh, first, uh, solar panel traffic control devices at crosswalks in Joe 13. Now I was involved before I got elected, the solar power parking meters where you put money in and then you have a ticket, you know, and those solar panels supposed to be like be all, end all, you know, and it turned out they don't work like in cloudy days like today, right? So I just want to hear from you that these solar power devices really should have a reliable power source and don't just rely on solar panels. Because like those parking machines and where I have to call 311 all the time, quite often the solar panels were not maintained or they weren't working and then leading to a lot of inconveniences. So this is my comment to you that the traffic control devices, the solar power, they really have to have like AC power backing them. Otherwise, you know, they need to be working. 24/7. They are traffic devices. We cannot afford any downtime. So that, that's one thing. Thank you for that feedback, Councilmember. Okay, yes, next. I've seen bike racks in my district, or as well as parts of the city, quite often. Yes, private bikes occupy them, that's fine, but they also occupy by delivery, food delivery trucks. Like, you know, those with big thermal packs, you know, tied to the backs. And, and quite often they are left there like days at a time. Um, I don't see a system where DOT, uh, handle abandoned bikes. The bikes there were clearly left there months at a time, uh, with missing parts, you know, uh, just the frame, you know, or just the wheel, you know. So DOT needs to have a system to clear out those bikes that were clearly abandoned. Can you, can you talk— is there such a program? Please talk about it. Yes, thank you, Councilmember. I agree, um, it's valuable space and we don't want people occupying bike racks, um, with derelict bikes for weeks or months on end. We do have a program. We work very carefully with the Department of Sanitation, and it's defined by law as to what constitutes a derelict bike. It's a certain number of pieces basically that are broken, missing, that sort of thing. So if you have any locations for us, we're happy to follow up and report back to you exactly on what we found and what we can do there. The conditions vary, like sometimes just a frame there or sometimes just a wheel. But you have to, you have to get rid of it. You have to keep— can't just leave it there. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Also, are these racks reserved for real pedestrian bikes, or what if people start using them from Uber Eats or Grubhub and they start chaining them? What's DOT's policy on that? Yep, so they're public bike racks. So basically anybody is free to lock their bikes there. With no time limit, right? As long as it— yeah, if it doesn't become derelict the way it's defined in the law. Yeah, but they can leave them there days, right? Uh, as long as the bike's in good condition, they can. Yeah, so, so what we do when we've seen abandoned bikes that are in good condition is we go and tag the bike and put a tag on it that says if this bike has been here more than 7 days, we will remove it. And then we go back a week later, and if the tag is still there and it hasn't moved, we can remove the bike, and we work with the police department to, uh, to store it for the person to pick up. Okay, yeah. And so if you give us locations, we're happy to go. And I just— my observation, because, uh, like there are places where rent bikes, like right at the entrances of Central Park, if you put the bike racks there, you know, they take up all the spaces. And then that is an issue that you need to address. Okay, my next question is the Intro 202, uh, the requires DOT to complete installation of any necessary traffic calming device or traffic control device on any street adjacent to a school. I used to serve on a school board, and we asked for devices, and it takes months just to get a reply from DOT. Okay, we will do a survey at the intersection, and the survey can last anytime in 6 months to a year before DOT gives us the determination, okay, we have concluded we need a stop sign there or we need a traffic light there. So, okay, I see that you need 60 days, but it takes a long time for DOT to do its traffic studies. And I don't see a deadline on that because I know that traffic studies can take a very long time. Um, can, can you talk about like how long do these traffic studies, uh, last, and do you have a time limit on that? Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you. Um, so we're always looking for ways to be more communicative and more responsive, so we're certainly open to that kind of feedback. Um, I think First Deputy Commissioner Forgione earlier mentioned some of the, uh, the different kinds of, um, the different ways that we may, you know, whether it could be a factor or time of year or, or that kind of thing, whether school's in session. I think for context, I'll just say last year we got over 3,000 requests for speed humps, speed reducers, or speed cushions, and we got also over 3,000 requests for other kinds of traffic control devices like traffic signals and stop signs. We certainly do our best to, uh, you know work through them as quickly as we can and be communicative in the process as well, just to help set expectations about the timeline. Okay, thank you. Um, do I get one more question or no? There will be a second round. Okay, if you would like to stick around. Thank you, that would be great. Councilmember Dinowitz followed by Hanif. Thank you, Chair. I feel it was the most un-Bronx-like thing to to insult someone and then leave, you know. But I do, I do, we love, we love our cars, not because we have an emotional attachment to them, and whether it's Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Woodlawn, Wakefield, Inwood, Norwood, sorry, Bedford Park, or Van Cortlandt Village, but because that's the way so many of us in the other boroughs travel. That's how we get to and from work. And from my house to one of the schools in my district is an hour and a half by public transit and 20 minutes by car. That's the story for so many people in my district. So the, the, the cars and the parking is really of importance to so many people that live in the outer boroughs. And, uh, it feels oftentimes the people making the decisions make them from like this place where you have the 4 train, the, the 1, the 2, the 3, the A, the C, the R, the W, And where I live, we don't have that same access. So what efforts, if any, is the DOT making to increase the number of parking spots available in parts of the city that aren't near public transit? Hi, Councilmember. Happy to take a shot at that. So pretty much over the years, I have to tell you, I feel like there's no stone that has not been unturned. So we don't have shy communities in New York. Sometimes people see an area of no standing any time, or they see a street that is wide. They ask, why can't there be angled parking? Why can't we restore parking to those curbsides? We have looked at so many of them. We're happy to look at more if there are other neighborhoods where we currently prohibit parking., and we can consider that for more parking. But realistically, it's going to be hard to find large quantities of more parking in New York City. I do want to thank you because you were installing CitiBikes, uh, in part of my district, which I support. We worked with the DOT and were able to move some of them on the sidewalk, demonstrating that we can have our CitiBikes and, uh, and our parking at the same time, which is what we want. But is your— is the answer then that you are relying on the local community to identify the spots where, uh, where we can add parking? No, I wouldn't say that. Sometimes when we are doing street redesigns and there could be a loss of some parking, we often look at the whole neighborhood. We scour the whole neighborhood to see if there are any older parking regulations that are no longer needed. We will proactively look at neighborhoods to see if we can find more parking. And do you look at properties to determine whether any of those properties could be purchased or utilized for public parking, when that parking is removed for— for whether it's Citi Bike, whether it's a new building going up that doesn't require parking, whether it's a new busway, whether it's a pedestrian plaza, all of these things that we love individually, but coming together takes away so much of what we need to get to school, get to work, get to our friend's house. Does DOT look at properties like that? We have not looked at private properties, no. Okay, I want to move on to my Second question, which is about stop signs. We love stop signs too. They slow down traffic. And I've looked at some traffic studies. It seems so hard to get stop signs so much of the time. And we know that we don't even know how long these traffic studies take, that we don't have that data available to us today. But I'm looking at a traffic study and it says from this time to this time, How many vehicles there were, the vehicle— the vehicles per hour, major, minor, total pedestrians observed, schoolchildren observed. Does the DOT measure velocity when determining whether or not to install an all-way stop sign? So we— for stop signs, we rely on guidance from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which is a federal set of guidelines. I have it in front of me, so that's great. We generally do. We look at crashes. We don't necessarily look at speed. If we see a speeding problem, we do use other tools like speed reducers and cameras and other tools. But if you're not measuring it, how do you see it? Like, it's not reported in your traffic studies. And I would add that unless I'm reading the wrong document, it says if the 85th percentile approach speed of the, of the traffic exceeds 40 miles an hour, like there's language in there about velocity. So am I reading something different? Am I— please tell me if I'm reading it wrong. No. So that's right. But it's focused on whether the pedestrian has time to cross or not. So we do measure speed. Sorry, I said that wrong. But if the problem is a speeding problem, the stop sign isn't our solution. But why not? Because stop signs, where they don't meet those requirements, are not always helpful. You know, people don't always stop at stop signs if they're not, if they're not put in the right places. So we are very careful about trying to create situations where people stop the right places. And then we have other tools that control speed, and we want to do those where speeding is the problem. Okay. My time is about to expire, and I want to come back to this because it seems that you're not reporting on the velocity, but you're measuring it, but it's not used. The car speed isn't measured. But you're measuring pedestrian speed. There's a lot of things that don't add up. I don't want to take more time, but I do want to say for the record, Commissioner, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. And you have two of the smartest people to your left and to your right supporting you in your work. And I look forward to a collaborative— Hey, man, I say, well, two and two is four. What did I say wrong? I'm a constituent, man. 2 and 2. You have 4 of the people for, for adding 4 people on either side of you, uh, who are supporting you in your— Councilmember, I couldn't agree more. There's a lot of, uh, smart individuals in this room. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn over to Councilmember Hani for questions. Thank you so much, Chair, and good afternoon, Commissioner Flynn and the DOT team, everybody who's here. So I want to get to my piece of legislation, preconsidered Bill 1335. In 2024, you all surpassed the benchmark in Local Law 195 of redesigning 400 intersections and gave us 2,688 redesigned intersections. However, during the first half of 2024, of the incidents in which pedestrians were killed at an intersection, 92% of those intersections had no daylighting measures at all, and 100% of those intersections lacked physical daylighting to stop drivers from parking all the way to the crosswalk. Can you share how you measure or count a redesigned intersection, and what has to occur at an intersection or for an intersection to be considered redesigned? Sure. So, so when we count those, we, we count a number of different things, some of which can be hardened daylighting, some of which can be things like leading pedestrian intervals. That's a signal timing change where pedestrians are able to establish themselves in the crosswalk before traffic is allowed to move. It can be— we It can be any number of different treatments, and we put them all together to get that intersection number. Got it. So daylighting is considered redesign? Yes. If we daylight an intersection, it would go into that number. And then you, you mentioned some— can you name some of the other measures? Sure. So it can be a leading pedestrian interval. It can be a raised crosswalk. It could be a, uh, a neck down like, like you talk about in your bill. It, it, so it's really anything that makes this crossing shorter for pedestrians or more protected in some way. And is there a list of all of these, uh, measures that count as a redesign that we can get? Yeah, we can, we can send you that. And then could you describe how you currently prioritize which intersections DOT redesigns every year? Sure. So as the commissioner said earlier, we look at a tremendous amount of data, you know, in particular crash data, but other types as well. And we always want to address the most dangerous locations first. But it isn't like we just number them from 1 to 44,000 and work our way through. If we're doing, for example, a bus corridor project, we don't want to say this is a bus project and so we're not going to improve safety as well. So while we're doing that project, we'll make sure that we're upgrading safety along the whole route. So the projects can come in from a number of different directions. You know, sometimes someone points out a dangerous condition where the crash number might be low because people are afraid to cross the street in the first place. So essentially, these are coming from New Yorkers, elected officials. How are you all then deciding what the priorities are for that year? It could be from, from data analysis, from crash data. I would also want to make a plug for our Vision Zero zero-borough pedestrian safety action plan. So that's been really one of the key inputs in terms of how we prioritize our work and home in on, you know, either the intersections, corridors, or neighborhoods where we really see the biggest challenge. And then could you describe the different daylighting measures available to make an intersection safer? Could you describe how curb extensions work as a tool to protect pedestrians at dangerous intersections? I could start. Um, so definitely, uh, daylighting is, is sort of a term, right? It can encompass anything that tries to keep that corner area clear so pedestrians can see drivers and vice versa. What we found is that the effective way to do it is by hardening it, right? By having physical objects or, or raising it up like a built-out sidewalk, or, um, you know, it could be different things— planters, even city bike docks or other— anything really that makes it physically impossible for a driver to make that turn faster, which is what would— could otherwise happen if you pull it back. So it's— it could be a wide range of things. Got it. And then after redesigning close to 3,000 intersections, the deadliest intersections for pedestrians still did not receive daylighting. Could you describe how you integrate crash data into your process for prioritizing certain intersections? And then could you describe how you treat intersections that are dangerous for pedestrians at the moment? Sure. And I sort of want to look at the intersections that, that you— that are not being treated. But at the most dangerous places, I think our take is daylighting is helpful but not enough, right? Where things are really dangerous, daylighting can help,, but we need to do more than that to make sure pedestrians are being protected. So we need to make sure cars are going appropriate speeds and how much of that is DOT working on, or is that available? All the time. Like, every year we look at the most dangerous intersections, as the commissioner said, looking at the Vision Zero borough action plans, and we make sure that we really are addressing them, and in very substantial ways. Thank you, council member. There will be a second round of questions. I'm going to start— kick off that second round. So Sammy's Law allows New York City to lower its speed limit to 20 miles per hour with posted signage, except on roads with 3 or more motor vehicle travel lanes in the same direction outside of Manhattan. With traffic calming, speed limits can be reduced to 10 miles per hour on select roads. For all speed limit reductions, New York City must provide notice 60 days in advance and comment opportunity to the local community board. How has DOT implemented Sammy's Law within the city? I'll say, you know, we're fully committed to implementing Sammy's Law, and we've begun implementing it in target areas. We're currently actively evaluating how to most effectively scale it up. But, you know, we certainly value having that as another really important tool because we know speed is such a critical factor in a lot of crashes and fatalities we see. I would like to, you know, state for the record that under the past administration, my office has sent in requests for certain areas that constituents have raised as places that would be— my constituents believe would be appropriate for Sammy's Law to be implemented. Would appreciate a follow-up on that. Are there any current plans for the expansion of this policy within the city? If so, where? Um, so I think what's, what's important is we, in general, almost always it's most effective to pair a reduced speed limit with physical changes to the street. And this kind of gets to the earlier discussion around stop signs too. We want to design a street that what we would call legible, right, where it's like if you're a driver, it's almost compelling you to go slower. And so there's all different tools you can do for that. So we try to pair a lower speed limit with physical changes. I think schools to us are the most obvious and probably the low-hanging fruit in terms of where we can begin and focus on having this more neighborhood-wide or area-wide approach to lower speed limits. You know, I guess the advocates, but also, you know, folks in my my office and folks in our community, they would like to have a, you know, like, how many schools are we talking about? Like something more specific on how Sammy's Law will be implemented versus just saying this is something we have to do better on. You know, I think that we have to do a lot more when it comes to this. So I would love, I would really appreciate, you know, specifics if you have that right now. We definitely understand that this is really important and Like I mentioned, we're committed to it. So I don't have specific numbers or locations, but we're very much, you know, we would love to get those recommendations and help us kind of think through that. Do you have a timeline by which you would like to tell us the plan on where Sammy's Law will be implemented by? Not that I can share today. Okay. We would continue to apply pressure to have that. Recently, the city lowered the bike speed limit in Central Park to 15 miles per hour. In light of this, a lawsuit began fighting this order. In February, a state Supreme Court judge temporarily blocked the city from implementing this reduction. What is the current status of this policy, and what was the reason for reducing the bike speed limit to 15 miles per hour? And also, the use of Sammy's Law within Central Park, but not using Sammy's Law in other places. Uh, I can't comment on pending litigation. Daylighting is becoming increasingly popular throughout the nation as a tool for increasing visibility and safety at intersections. In particular, New York City has been a leader according to the Department of Transportation on hardened daylighting, which involves the installation of a physical barrier such as post or granite blocks to prevent vehicles from parking next to intersections. Uh, I am a supporter of daylighting. Uh, I believe a vast majority of council members in the fall were, were supportive of daylighting. Um, in light— and in light of a recent DOT report analyzing daylighting, I am skeptical about the previous administration's report analyzing the impacts of unhardened daylighting. Um, I believe the past administration said that unhardened daylighting is more dangerous at intersections compared to hardened daylighting. I would appreciate the administration's position, the new administration's position on daylighting, both hardened and unhardened. Do you find it to be safer or less safer? Well, I'll start by saying that one death is, is one too many, and there's certainly more work to do. And we work tirelessly, our planners and engineers, every day to, to bring traffic crashes down. And we're proud that last year was is tied for the lowest traffic fatalities on record. We really try to work proactively, as I think Mayor Maldonado himself has said. We want to try to prevent these crashes even before they happen rather than just responding to them. And that's really the approach we take. And we use every tool available to make our streets and intersections safer. Daylighting is definitely one important tool. But as a few of us have mentioned earlier, We always take a holistic approach, and we really look at the unique conditions and context of each location. And, and, you know, we do believe that when daylighting is done right, it can keep corners clear, it helps with visibility, it can also slow turning vehicles, and, and that's really important. Last year, we installed hardened daylighting at 444 locations, which improved visibility where crashes are most likely to occur, and we definitely intend to build on that progress as part of this holistic street safety strategy. We look forward, and I look forward, to working with the council and other partners on how we can continue to expand these efforts quickly and effectively. Does the administration support the research that the previous administration did on daylighting? Are there any concerns with the data and the methods used? Well, my under— I wasn't involved in the research. My understanding is, is that the council had looked at our study and hadn't found issues with it. I, based on what I've seen, I believe strongly that hardened— Sorry, did you say hadn't found issues with it? Had not. We raised skepticism. The council had raised skepticism and did analysis that my understanding is also found that unhardened daylighting did not improve safety. So my understanding is that the previous administration suggests that unhardened daylighting is more dangerous than no daylighting at all. Is that correct? Yeah. And is that— is— if you said yes, so is that your position? Yes. And that is still your position? Yes. So for the record, the administration believes that unhardened daylighting is more dangerous than no daylighting at all. I think a lot— I think there's a lot of skepticism in this room about that. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I guess, um, just taking a step back, if you, if you create a wider corner radius, it basically lets drivers turn faster. And that's, I think, where, you know, where the concern comes from. And I think that's what we saw in the data. I'll let the advocates come after you guys on that one. Um, So I will ask questions on behalf of Christopher Marte, who had to step out and step out to chair his own hearing. His question is, as part of the streets plan, will DOT be announcing the start of the FIDAI pedestrianization study? This was promised nearly a decade ago and hasn't started yet. What updates on this plan can share? I'm aware of the study. You know, I think there's a lot of opportunity in the Financial District. It's such a unique neighborhood of the city, and, and on many levels could make a lot of sense to continue to prioritize pedestrians there. I don't think we have an update today, but it's certainly something we're looking at. Would be great to have an update for the councilmember as soon as you can. State law bans the granting of liquor license to a business within 500 feet of 3 existing liquor licenses. This issue also exists in outdoor dining, where neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and East Village can have over 20 sidewalk and roadway cafes on a single block. Can we implement similar density metrics to outdoor dining to prevent the health and safety risks associated with this type of density? Okay, so if that's something the council looks at, we're happy to consider that, but we have no plans to limit at this time. Intro 310 states that the Department of Transportation wouldn't install more than 260 bilingual signs over the next 4 years. In your testimony, you say DOT administers over 1 million signs. Can you elaborate on how 260 signs over 4 years places an administrative burden on the agency? I think that's a great question. Yeah, so it— I don't think it's actually the 260 signs that we feel like is a burden, and particularly in Chinatown, most of those signs already exist and we maintain them. I think as First Deputy Ford Jones said, what we want to make sure is that we're not in the business of having to try to figure out boundaries and how to classify different neighborhoods. The sign itself, that's our bread and butter. You know, we can work with people to do that. Did you say in the opening that this was an administrative burden? So the The taking of requests, the building of the website, the having to determine where signs go is a potential administrative burden. Is it potential or is it? If people do a lot of requesting, it would be a burden. Okay. It doesn't seem like an administrative burden, just in my view. I would like to see— I don't think the argument is compelling. Maybe that's just my, I think, my opinion on that. But I'm happy to move on to the second round. Councilmember Ressler. Great. Thank you, Chair Abreu. I'd just like to continue to focus some of my questions on our legislation to expand pedestrian space. So our bill specifically calls out adding space around subway and bus stops, busy, highly trafficked, highly utilized subway and bus stops. More than half of New Yorkers don't own a car, but 75% of our streets are devoted to storing and moving vehicles. Has DOT looked specifically at converting parking and other spaces around subway stations into pedestrian space? Do you support doing more of that? I will say I've raised at least 5 or 6 specific examples with DOT over my 4 years in the council around busy congested areas where I'd like to expand pedestrian space. None of them have moved forward. So is this something that the agency is supportive of and that you're intent on doing more of during your tenure as commissioner? Thank you for the question, Councilmember. Curb space is one of the most, you know, contested pieces of real estate in the city, right? And what we know is that in the last few decades, the number of potential uses of that space has completely proliferated. We absolutely support trying to use curb space for its highest and best use. And that obviously depends on the neighborhood and the situation, but certainly areas with sidewalk crowding, as Deputy Commissioner Beaton mentioned earlier, is something that we look at in a systemic way. We're looking for pedestrian crowding and how we can alleviate it. I know there's examples around the city of where sidewalks have been widened either temporary— using temporary materials or even a capital construction project to create that breathing room around the subway stairs or elevator. So I mean, I think, I think just as a general concept, it makes sense. I don't know about the specific locations, but we're definitely open to ideas. Great. Glad to hear that it's something that you're broadly interested in exploring with us. We set an ambitious target in the bill, 1 million square feet of additional pedestrian space per year. Do you support that target? Is there an alternative number in mind? Well, I mentioned the— we've been creating, I think, roughly half a million square feet year on year. And in line with the other things we talked about, bike lanes, bus lanes, other, you know, pieces of the plan, we're going to— we're doing everything we can to ramp up capacity and increase output. It's hard sometimes to comment on a specific number. You know, I think something we've tried to underscore today is that it can be really helpful to us to have the flexibility to redirect resources and to be able to focus them based on the needs we're hearing or, you know, to work with communities. So that's, that's something that we would, you know, encourage is to— we're always happy to work with you, with the council, with other stakeholders to determine what the priorities are and how we can focus our resources. Fair, but I do think that having targets requires— sets— creates real accountability. And so when we set ambitious goals around protected bike lanes, around busways, around pedestrian space, we hold ourselves accountable to try and achieve them and lay out an array of projects that will meet those ambitious standards. If we're operating between 50 and 60% of our goals on bike and buses, maybe we're at 50% of our goals on pedestrian space, too, and should be hitting that million target. There was a transportation alternatives analysis recently that showed significant inequities in public plazas, that communities with large non-white or POC populations had significantly less access to pedestrian plazas. How does DOT ensure that pedestrian space is distributed equitably across all communities? Well, yeah, I can start, you know, by saying that this is a high priority for me. And I've said in the past, you know, what do we mean when we say reimagine our public realm? A big piece of that is really some of these systemic challenges that we've seen over time where it was historically it was a heavier lift in a way to, uh, to have these public spaces in other neighborhoods. And it's something we've been very intentional about fixing and addressing. And I would ask my colleagues to talk about the Public Space Equity Program. And just briefly, so I can work in one more question. Sure. So we have a Public Space Equity Program that's designed to both be able to give money as well as technical support, and in some cases even full maintenance capacity to locations that wouldn't otherwise have it. So it's something we've leaned into pretty hard. Okay. It's fair to say we could do more, and I think it's something we're excited about. Thanks so much, Deputy Commissioner. Lastly, I just wanted to ask a question around open dining. I fully support standards for cleanliness and ensuring that these structures do not increase rats in our community, but I do think it's important to clarify that You know, we have 3 million on-street parking spots in New York City, and at least in my community, far too many of those vehicles never ever move for alternate side parking. And there is very little accountability from the NYPD and other agencies. Roadway dining structures make up less than 1% of the total on-street parking spots. We have— what I'm really asking is, do you think that there's a risk around rats and cleanliness concerns that are greater with roadway dining than with sidewalk dining based on the designs of the new structures? I guess structurally the difference is that with the roadway structures you do kind of have that gap underneath, and that's where we heard a lot of the concerns and saw a lot of the concerns, especially during the original COVID era. But we saw significant improvements with cleanliness and reductions in rat-related issues in the updated designs that DOT approved? Yes. So it's a— with that new design, do you think there's a consequential difference in rat-related and cleanliness issues with roadway dining versus sidewalk dining? I think there's— there's a COVID era— there's a significant improvement with the new designs for sure. So, you know, we always want to think about all the operational concerns, but it's true for sure that it's improved. Great. And we look forward to working together on cleanliness, snow removal, noise-related issues to make sure that the year-round program is a great success. Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. And, you know, I just want to add on, uh, for the record, I support our year-round dining, uh, but to the extent that we can make sure that the structures are rodent-proof, uh, as the former chair of sanitation and a big rat hater, we, we want to make sure that we are doing this in a way that would be conducive to less rats on our streets. Now turning it over to Councilmember Wong. Hello, Commissioner Flynn. Two issues. One, Councilman Ressler mentioned that he would like this bill, 1338, wants 1 million square feet per year of pedestrian space. For the next 5 years. Do you feel that's a realistic figure or that's too ambitious of a goal? Like I mentioned a moment ago, I think any time specific numbers are given to us, it can be tricky. And we, you know, we're always willing to work with our partners to figure out how we can have the greatest impact. It's hard to comment on that specific number. Yeah, well, once it becomes law, it's going to be hard to comply if you think it's too ambitious of a figure. That's— we're always in this— you set a box size and you're trapped into this box, and that may not be too good if it's too ambitious. Do you agree? It's something that we need to— right, once that number is set and it's set into law, it's something that we then need to react to and, and work with. Okay, thank you. Next question is, um, my office gets calls whenever you have a street closed under the name Open Streets. We have kids with special needs on a wheelchair that, that like to have to go to District 75 schools. There's a bus that you— that they expect to come to the door where they can just board and go to school. Likewise, for seniors with mobility issues, walkers, they need wheelchairs, walkers, and canes, who have access to ride requests, that they expect these rides to come to their door. But with the street closed, they have to walk a considerable distance to wait for the bus or ride to come. And many said they violate the ADA. What would you tell them? I mean, is this okay or no, they violate the ADA? I would say that accessibility is a top priority for us and that we're always working to comply with ADA. Sometimes when we are, you know, we're working to innovate, right? And we may launch new programs or try new approaches. There may be things that come to light that we become aware of. And then we work diligently to address it. So Open Streets is something that's really pretty recent, and I can tell you that we're actively working to continue to improve the way that it's designed and operated. Okay, thank you. Um, just a quick reminder, um, I was at the Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade, and I, I was at Park Row. There was a redesign of the bus stop. The bus stop is actually a very narrow island, is about 3 feet wide. 10 feet long, and you wait for a bus there. The bike lane's behind the people and the bus is in the front. It's a very narrow strip, it's a very narrow bus stop with no guardrails. When it's really crowded, people have to stand on the bike lane or stand in the streets to wait for the bus, creating a very unsafe condition. So I'm going to ask this panel to please look at it. It's just not the way to design a bus stop where there's a lot of people waiting for a bus and you're forcing them to stand on the bike lane. You know, then that, that's just unsafe for everybody. Just please look at it. We certainly will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now pass it along to Councilmember Dinowitz. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. You know, Commissioner, with the 3 people to your right and the 1 person on your left, you're going to do Great things. I want to follow up on this discussion because even following up listening to some of the testimony and what you would say, I don't want to get the quote wrong, so I'll just paraphrase like, well, we may not put in always stop signs because people may not stop for the stop signs was sort of the testimony. It was that— that's what it was, right? What research has found is that if you put in stop signs in places where they're inappropriate, they don't serve their purpose well and they don't create safer spaces. Safer for who? Safer for reducing crashes. Any kind of crashes, including with pedestrians. Yes. And so by that logic, because I'm trying to understand— you're all the experts— by that logic, what's the point of Sammy's Law? Like, the speed limit is also just a sign, just indicating, giving direction to people. That's the same thing with stoplights. They're just directions. So people engage in certain behaviors, and that's what we would want with Always stop signs. So please. Yes. Yeah, it's, it's something really interesting about traffic engineering versus, say, bridge engineering is that it's, it's almost like just as much social science, right? Because it's all about human behavior. And that's why a lot of what you'll hear us saying is that we really need to take this holistic approach to planning and engineering and coming up with the right design solutions because it really is so dependent on the expectations of the road users and what they see physically. Is it a wide road, a narrow road? Are there trees? All these things have been shown to affect human behavior, right? So, so that's the human behavior. I would think for the most part, right, if a person's gonna drag race on a long road, they're gonna drag race no matter what sign you put up, no matter what stop sign, stoplight, stop sign. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about the everyday people who want to follow the rules and want to be safe, that a always stop sign is kind of the way to go. And between not reporting on— if you're measuring it, it's a secret— between not reporting on the velocity of cars in these traffic studies and not knowing even how long these traffic studies take, and you've heard it year after year from this council that it is— it seems almost impossible to get up a stop— we're talking about a stop sign. I'm just trying to understand what the resistance is, and you're citing different things. About human behavior. Humans will stop if they know they're supposed to stop at a stop sign. The same way the DOT says, well, if we paint— if we do nothing with physical barriers but paint the streets a certain way to include bike lanes, people, people will see that and think that they have to go a little slower. So I'm trying to understand, as a council member just trying to get a couple stop signs in my district, why we are so adamant and supportive of paint and why we do traffic studies without velocity, but we can't just put in a stop sign. Can you please talk about that? Well, Councilmember, I would say it's definitely not resistance. I would say that we're eager to do the best possible safety improvements in any given location. And I think, you know, the fact that aside from COVID which was a unique situation, traffic fatalities in the city have been steadily declining for years, and last year was tied for the lowest ever. So we're absolutely— we enjoy and we want to partner to make our streets as safe as we can. I would like to— there are certain stop signs that I don't want to do it at the hearing, but I want to revisit them because if you're committed to partnering, our community is pretty smart when it comes to traffic control devices. We're not resistant to them. In fact, we've been asking for them. There's one location it took that the community was asking for. It may not have been exactly fitting with the, the measures of your traffic studies, but the community was asking for a stop sign and some better light— sorry, a stoplight, some better lighting, um, in, in an area in Spindival. And it took a woman getting run over by a bus and her brains being splattered all over the sidewalk for the DOT to come in and put in that stoplight and come in and put in better lighting and make it just safer. And it— and I think we all agree it shouldn't take that. We may disagree where we put them. But if a community is asking for it, if a community is asking for traffic control devices, I would think that that in some cases may supersede the federal traffic control guidelines that it seems that you hide behind in some instances to not put in always stop signs. Can we get a commitment to revisit some of the areas? And I know the deputies know exactly where I'm talking about offline to install and take into consideration more community input for these Always Stop signs? Please do. And will you start measuring velocity and including that in your traffic studies so we as a community can better understand what you are and are not including in, um, in your determination to reject things like Always Stop signs? So can you repeat that? Can you include velocity the speed at which cars go, maximum and minimum speeds you're observing in your traffic studies, so we as communities can better understand why always stop signs, which are designed to save people's lives, are being rejected. Yeah, it— what we're measuring really will depend on the type of study that we're doing and the issues that have been brought to our attention. I'll let you follow up on that. Thank you. So if we are bringing attention to your attention, the fact that cars may be going very quickly down a narrow street, if velocity is what we're bringing to your attention, will velocity be included in the traffic studies? Or can they be included in the traffic studies? Yeah, we can certainly share the data. That we're, we're looking at. Okay, I look forward to that. Thank you, Chair. Councilmember Brewer, one small question. So, uh, in the past we never used to get complaints about street lights being out, and we're getting tons of them. So I don't know if that's part of a different philosophy, if it's part of not having the funding to do the maintenance, etc., but obviously it's a safety concern. I assume when you redo intersections, maybe put in different kinds of lights that are not as susceptible to whatever is causing this problem. But it's constant, and never before have I had so many, uh, outages of lights. I'm just wondering, just regular street lights, what's going on? Okay, so we're talking about street lights, not traffic signals. Okay, so if you get those to us, we will get them back ASAP. No, I know you do. I'm just like— no, I do, I do get that, and you do get them back, but there's something wrong because it's so pervasive. It's never been as pervasive. It's whole entire stretches out, and obviously it takes a little while to get them back, and during that time period people are scared because of the dark. Okay, so, so good. As you give us more, I'll take a look at those and find out what's happening, if there's a certain happening in a certain neighborhood. Okay, can I, can I add on to that? And you can make— stop the time. Um, I've asked for, you know, street lights that we were promised years ago. We've gotten nothing along 116th 65th Street and Riverside Drive. I understand that DOT had conversations with the Parks Department recently because they told me that y'all are looking into that, but the, the notion that this is a new thing, it's— for me is just unfathomable. Uh, this is— we've, we've been requesting streetlights for a very, very long time with no follow-up. And Commissioner, I will get— if you get me those locations, I'll get you an answer right away. Lyle should have that. Okay. And then just quickly, street signs that have faded. This is again not a safety— nobody's going to die because of it, but it creates, uh, concern. People don't know where they're going, etc. How are they able to be replaced? Is there funding for that? Obviously, in neighborhoods that are older where signs have been there for a long time, they are fading. Is that something that you get complaints about? Is that something that's able to be, uh, basically needing a new sign? Or do you repaint it? I don't know. Yes, we, we have the largest municipal sign shop actually in the country. We produce our own signs. We can do them very quickly. If you get them to us, we will get them right back out if they're faded or missing. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Hanif followed by Epstein. Thank you. While we're on the conversation of traffic lights, street lights, I do want to thank DOT for installing traffic lights in my district at Bond and Baltic. It only took 2 years, but we got it done, and we also celebrated. We had a traffic light party just a couple days ago. I want to come to— I want to wrap up the questions about my bill. Could you just share why— I know that you've mentioned you don't support it. Could you just elaborate on why you don't and what instead is the plan? I think it's— we find we can be most effective when we have the flexibility to, you know, to match the right treatments to the right locations. That would be You know, if, if there's specific types of treatments and specific number of locations and mandates like that, you know, that's, that's just something that can make it a little more challenging for us to take this. What happens immediately after a crash? You learn about a pedestrian fatality or an injury. How does DOT respond? Yes, so DOT attends every single site of every single crash immediately after it occurring. We have 24/7 staff that go out to a location and examine— fatals, I'm talking about fatalities— and examine the conditions at that site. We work closely with NYPD. If there's anything immediately that needs to be addressed, we address it. But then we also have a team of people and— Could you share addressed as in what? Just say there's some faded marking at that location that potentially could have contributed. Got it. Do you also assess if that intersection could have used hardened daylighting? We look at the safety of that intersection. Deputy Commissioner Beaton has staff that then looks— we have the shorter-term staff that go out there immediately, and then we have staff that look at every location and high-crash locations for other treatments as well. And do you have a report or data on the fatalities that took place, say, last year, year before, and what was done in the intersections following the incidents? Right. It's a quarterly report. Yes, we do. Great. Okay. I'll look at that. I wanted to come to pedestrian plazas. My district, Kensington Plaza, has greatly benefited from the Public Space Equity Program, and I really thank DOT. Kensington is where I was born and raised, huge Bangladeshi immigrant community, and that plaza has just made our lives so much better and so much more welcoming. However, I'm concerned about the plazas that don't— are not getting the care and attention they deserve. What is DOT's plan? Are there specific plazas? Well, one that I'll raise is 4th Street Plaza, but it's not considered a plaza according to DOT's definition, but it is a plaza. And what we have going on there is that the 5th Avenue bid, you know, attempts to keep programming running. In partnership with my office. We've got some neighbors, and we all come together. But I, you know, it's a, it's a sort of— we're improvising constantly, and the money that needs to be spent is coming from the bid, which they don't have a lot of. Yeah, I think, uh, now that we're aware, we're happy to look at it. We have a great, uh, what we call our public realm team, and they take a, you know, a multifaceted approach to how we can maintain and enliven our public spaces? Yeah, I would really push for just more investment in the plaza program. I think plazas are incredibly important in our city, not just allowing New Yorkers to be able to roam and have lunch by themselves, but also to meet their neighbors. And in this time, we really need that. But without the proper investments, they, they fail. And I don't want to see Fort Street Plaza become the parking lot it once was to MS-51. I, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think, you know, the, the— that's why our goal is not only to create the pedestrian space but to really make sure it's high quality. And that's not only when it's first built but how it's maintained, programmed over time. Is there a public realm czar or Is somebody— somebody's full portfolio about plazas? We have an assistant commissioner for public realm who, uh, oversees the plaza program. Oversees the plaza program. Yes. Thank you, Councilmember. We'll now move on to Councilmember Epstein, followed by Marte. Thank you, Chair. I just want to say, we've raised the issue of streetlights on a couple locations, and we haven't gotten follow-up either, so like the lighting issue that we heard earlier about. So it'd be great to get follow-up on that. You mentioned daylighting, that you feel like the data doesn't support the daylighting bill. Can you share whatever report or data you have with us so we can evaluate that independently? Yes, we'll send you the report, and we actually shared the full data set with the council last year for them to look at as well. I appreciate that. Um, and I just want to thank, uh, Councilman Hanif on the plazas issue. I think we all want to slow down traffic. We want more pedestrian plazas, but we want to make sure those are activated. So it's great to— I didn't know that there was an assistant commissioner there, so I think I'd love to be able to connect up with them as well, and given the opportunity, can I just turn back to sidewalk, uh, sheds and stuff like that? Um, I— so sometimes community boards sign stipulations with an applicant, uh, when they're doing the sidewalk shed. What do you do with those stipulations? Okay, those stipulations are not part of our record. They're not part of the license that we, we give to the restaurant. So sometimes some types of informal separate understandings are created. We are not a party to that and we don't enforce it. Why would you not have those stipulations be part of the record? The SLA has those stipulations as part of the record with their license. Why not include those stipulations as part of your record and with the applicant? It's an agreement the applicant made with the community. Why wouldn't you include those? So what I can say is that what we hear a lot of, and with the bills that are being offered up, is to really increase dining out and to facilitate it. So we're not looking to add those additional restrictions, which really, again, we're not a party of, to put those onto the record and to enforce something. Councilmember, we may not be able to even have the ability to enforce some of these agreements within the rules that we have. So I push back to say, I think if there's an agreement that parties have made, that think this is the best way to move forward and the parties have agreed to it, I don't— it makes no sense to me why you wouldn't enforce those stipulations. So, but I think we'll just continue that conversation at a later date. So you mentioned that the sidewalk shed or the roadway bed sheds will be removed for snow, for street milling. How are those— how's that happening if there's a platform and it just snows the day before? How would How practically is that going to happen? Right, so the kinds of things— first of all, the floors are now in segments, movable segments. They're not one large continuous built-in space floor that we saw during COVID And the kinds of things we're considering and will continue to consider over the next months are if we know there's a large storm coming like the two that we had, that may be the circumstances that we tell people to remove the setups in the roadway. If it's a smaller storm, probably not. But these are the kinds of things we're going to have to give more thought to. And then what happens if an applicant doesn't remove it? What is— what is— we would have the ability to issue a violation. But you would have to— it would still be left there. You'd have to somehow plow around that structure. Correct. So you would just have to leave it and then figure it out later. You wouldn't remove it yourself. And as we're, you know, building up to a storm and we have our own storm response, it'd be unlikely we'd be able to remove locations like that. So we talk a lot about the sidewalk sheds and, sorry, the sidewalk sheds and the sidewalk dining being ADA accessible. Have you done anything about ensuring ADA accessibility for bathrooms for people who are maybe with a disability who needs to use a bathroom while they're dining out? Okay, they should be able to get right back into the main part of the restaurant. So are you doing anything to require the main part of the restaurant make an accessible bathroom? Well, there's accessibility requirements for the restaurant already in existence, and it's level to get off the roadway setup onto the sidewalk. So there should be no impediment to getting out of the dining-out structure and into the restaurant. So if there isn't an accessible bathroom, what, if anything, do you do in the application process to ensure someone will have access to an accessible bathroom? Okay, that's probably something we'd have to talk to like DOB about because that comes back to the building. All right. And okay, so I just want to— one last, one last question. I think that we've heard a lot from FDNY around kind of the question Councilmember Marte asked earlier around multiple sheds on a small street on both sides and really concerns around safety, having access if there's a fire. What are you looking at if there's, you know, you could have a small road where there's sidewalk, the roadway beds on both sides and there's kind of just a middle lane of traffic. How are you going to help us all figure out how to manage that, especially if the FDNY has an issue there? Good. No, it's a, it's a fair point. So we consult with FDNY based on the widths of roadways, and we do provide them with applications, and we take in their feedback. A lot of times we're looking at roadways— we all know we have narrow roadways. Sometimes parking is allowed on both sides of street, and in those cases we would allow dining out on both sides of the street, but we also solicit FDNY feedback if there are some circumstances we're not aware of. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Marte. Thank you, Chair. I want to build on what Councilmember Epstein said when it comes to bathroom requirements. Administrative Code Section 403.3 requires a restroom for food and drink establishments with more than 20 seats with outdoor dining, and especially if the program is made year-round, many establishments would, would newly exceed the threshold when including outdoor dining seats. How can we assure that this rule appropriately includes outdoor seating and that in such scenarios, the city agencies will take appropriate actions to enforce bathroom requirements where establishments now require them? That's something we can definitely take a closer look at. Thank you. And I want to just plus one what Councilmember Epstein said about stipulations, right? There— this, this is an agreement between two parties, and for us to take out the bad actors, right? There's, there's a— I feel like there's a few bad actors that are ruining it for everyone else, and if there's no sense of like commitment, follow-through, or enforcement on some of the agreements they made with community board, then why are they even going in front of the community board, right? If there's no reason to have any oversight or enforcement on it. And, and that brings me to my next question about when DOB has an application in front of the community board, they need a professional to legally sign off that what they're proposing to community boards are exactly what they're going to be built and that it's safe. Right now, for outdoor dining sheds, there's no architect or engineer that has to sign off on these layouts or designs, um, and I think that kind of hinders the trust of these establishments because even in my district, we have seen applications go in front of the community board and with a design, and then a few weeks later when they're actually building it out, It's completely different, and there's nothing we can do to, to have oversight because it's up now, and there's, there's no, like, follow-up on enforcement. Okay, we ensure that every structure that is built does comply with what it was that we approved. So if you have any of those, we can confirm for you. We have inspectors. They inspect all of these setups, that it was built according to our standards and what was approved. Approved. Okay, thank you. And, you know, I think sidewalk cafes has worked for a really long time because the council have oversight. In my district, I have probably the most— or maybe former Councilmember Boccia's district has probably a little bit more than me, but we both have the most sidewalk cafes application than the city, and 99% of the applications are, are never called right, because they're, they're, they're good applicants, they're good with the community, they respect the times, they respect us LA enforcement. However, there are times where we need to call up really bad actors. Why isn't there a system for the council to call up bad actors when it comes to outdoor dining sheds? So what I would say is that as issues are happening, like if they're continuing to operate in the hours they should not, if they violate the noise code, things of that nature, that is when we would want to make sure that we're enforcing or our partner sister agencies are also enforcing. So those are the mechanisms. We're happy to talk to you more about longstanding bad actors. Okay. Thank you. And just switching subjects, I'm a huge supporter of Sammy's Law. DOT implemented it in the last administration in my district, and I think it's been going extremely well. There's a lot of safer intersections now because of it. However, I believe implementing Sammy's Law in Central Park, it's a way to target a lot of the delivery workers who are using that protected bikeway and also hinders cyclists from actually doing recreational cycling in the morning for a lot of the club competitions that they have. And so I highly urge and recommend DOT to remove that provision that was put in by the Adams administration when it comes to Central Park. Thank you, Councilmember. One more question. I just wanted to respond to— the councilmember does triathlons, so he cares a lot about biking. Yes, I use the Central Park Loop a lot. But not, not too much anymore because the speed limit. But my final suggestion is I want to plus one what Councilmember Hanise said about public plaza. We have a new plaza partner at Barnett Newman Triangle who is looking to, you know, take some up, take some of the parking spots to enhance and beautify that area. However, it just seems that the process of moving forward is just taking too long, and it seems like it takes multiple years even after you have a willing plaza partner, you have councilmember funding, uh, to actually move forward with it and painting some of the streets and adding some tree beds or greenery or planters to the area. So I, I would love to work with DOT to expedite the project and not wait until the full canal redesign to have an impact on that intersection. If it's the location that I'm thinking of, is this is the location where it exists in temporary materials and now we're waiting where we have the capital project moving forward to rebuild it permanently? So it's in front of the Roxy Hotel, so just right here a few blocks away. Friends of Barnum and Newman Triangle just became Plaza Partners. They're envisioning really nice capital projects, but we know that's years along the way. Where they're asking to take up some of the parking spaces there to expand the plaza and add some planters to help beautify it. Okay, I, I'm happy to— I'm not personally familiar with that location, but it sounds like we are actively talking to the community partner there about more we can do with that site. Um, but I'll make sure that, you know, we, uh, we're moving forward together. Cool, thank you. Thank you. And two more questions and then this panel will be excused. First, I want to appreciate members of the public who are patiently waiting to testify and also the administration for your patience as well. Just two questions. On intro 13, regarding the installation of solar-powered crosswalks, DOT stated in their testimony that they had concerns regarding the efficacy of the types of technologies envisioned in the bill, and in the fall, DOT testified that they were open to discussing other new technologies and smaller-scale pilots. What are other options to increase visibility of signage and increase compliance at crosswalks? Sure. So in terms of new technologies, we're actively investigating the feasibility of solar-powered accessible pedestrian signals. So like the button, and at a limited number of signalized intersections, where traditional conduit and electrical cable installations aren't feasible due to the subsurface conditions or conflicts with utilities. In terms of pilots, we recently installed a few solar pilot locations in New York City, and we're evaluating the effectiveness of those devices in terms of their durability, the battery longevity, the communication performance, and the long-term maintenance costs. Thank you. My last question is Speaker Menin's preconsidered bill has been amended since DOT last heard it to set a maximum clear path of 8 feet or 50% of the width of the sidewalk, bringing sidewalk dining back to its roots. Sidewalk dining worked well in the past using a standard like this. Why couldn't it be returned? Why couldn't it return to this standard? Um, so we're, you know, we're all for— we're trying to balance different needs, right? So we're all for trying to support more outdoor dining and more vital public realm. We have to balance that with some of these other considerations. Some of it we see kind of how it works out there in the world, right, as we introduce these programs, introduce new requirements or standards, and then see how it works, and we might have to adjust. I would come back to what I said earlier, which is that the areas where the requirement's greater than 8 feet either 10 or 12, is almost entirely in the Manhattan Central Business District. It's really just the most congested parts of the city, by and large. So, you know, we think it strikes a good balance, but we're always open to talking and hearing. That was my next question. Are you open to working with the speaker on figuring out how to arrive at a good place on this? Absolutely. Thank you very much. This panel is excused. Thank you very much. I mean, thank you, Chair. And we I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the sergeant-at-arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the sergeant-at-arms and wait to be recognized. When recognized, you will have 2 minutes to speak on today's hearing topics, which are: Introduction Number 13 in relation to the installation of solar-powered crosswalks. Intro Number 93 in relation to expanding the bicycle parking station program. Intro number 163, in relation to a study and report on the feasibility of providing ferry service to Inwood. Intro number 202, in relation to the time permitted for the installation of a traffic calming device or traffic control device on any street adjacent to a school. Intro number 310, in relation to requiring the Department of Transportation to install bilingual street name signs. Intro number 628, in relation to expanding access to sidewalk and roadway cafe applications. Introduction number 655, in relation to expanding access to roadway and sidewalk cafes. Preconsidered intro, in relation to requiring curb extensions at certain dangerous intersections. Preconsidered intro, in relation to maximum clear path requirements for sidewalk cafes. And preconsidered intro, in relation to the expansion of pedestrian space. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the sergeant-at-arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony@council.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings will not be accepted. I urge patience with everybody. We have about 70 people signed up to testify. And so I respectfully ask that you keep your remarks to within 2 minutes. And again, if you can— if you go to— we'll read your comments. So you want to submit the written testimony, even though I may cut you off at the 2-minute mark, remember, we're going to read all the testimony that comes in. So I'm going to now call the first panel. Darnell Sealy McCrory, my apologies for mispronouncing, Samuel Rivera, Maria Coffer, and Mary Beth Kelly. And Abby DiGiorgio, remotely. You may begin. And please state your name for the record. Bear with me, just under a lot of emotional mental distress, but, um, good afternoon. My name is Darnell Silly McCrory, and I am a member of Families for Safe Streets. Families for Safe Streets is an organization made up of people who have either lost a loved one or been injured in a traffic crash. Just recently, 2 years ago, my 13-year-old daughter, Nia McCrory, was hit by a speeding SUV driver at the intersection of West 110th Street and Manhattan Avenue. October 24th, 2024, 6th District, Manhattan. My beautiful, intelligent daughter Niel had a passion for dancing, learning, and inspired many, many other family members and teenagers via TikTok with her self-taught choreographed dance routines. She had aspiring dreams of becoming a doctor or attorney who fights for one's rights, freedom, and justice. Sentence. Never in a million years, after being released from a 4-year incarceration sentence, did I think her mother and I would bury our daughter so soon. Sadly, as she was pronounced deceased November 1st within the same year. Today we can protect our families from suffering like this. The Stop Super Speeders bill will require speed limiters in the cause of the most of the worst— sorry, in the cause of the worst of the worst repeat offenders. Some vehicles are racking up hundreds of speeding tickets a year, and we don't do something— if we don't do something, another one of these drivers is going to kill again soon. The mayor, Momdani, and city council must follow the streets plan. It is the law. We must do the following to make our streets safe. Fully fund the Department of Transportation so that it can implement the safe streets infrastructure mandated by the Streets Plan. Implement Samley's Law, 20 mph zones within a half mile of every school district in New York City. Prioritize the safe streets infrastructure mandated in Streets Plan to ensure the life-saving work is done quickly. Create more pedestrian plazas in the city where residents are completely safe from the dangers of cars. And lastly, focus on a connected network of protected bike lanes to avoid dangerous gaps. This is my third time appearing for, um, making this testimony, and I've lobbied to New York, Albany, New York, over 7 times. So my fellow members of Family for Safe Streets and I are going to keep on going to Albany and bringing more more and more people along with us until we get the message through. Thank you. Thank you, Darnell. And I'm very, I'm very heartened that you're here today. I know this is very difficult for you and your family. This happened in my district, um, and just want you to know that my— beyond my thoughts being with you, I have made requests, uh, to DLT soon after that for the Sammy's Law to be implemented on Manhattan Avenue. I didn't get a response from that. I asked for more street design and improvements along that corridor, and I have not gotten any follow-up on that. But I just want you to know that this is something that I take very seriously, and it's something I want to see action on. Thank you for your consideration. Good afternoon. My name is Maria Cowherd, and I am a survivor of traffic violence. I became a Families for Safe Streets member on December 13, 2023, when I was struck by a driver making a right turn in their sedan off Queens Boulevard onto Ascot Avenue in Forest Hills, where I have resided since 1992. I was walking across the street on the crosswalk with a full right of way and had almost reached the middle of the road when I was struck down by the car. I sustained multiple physical injuries throughout my body, the most serious of which were a left fibular head fracture and permanent damage to all of the ligaments supporting both of my knees. I've spent the last 2 years and 3 months, um, in great pain, and in addition to copious physician visits and body scans, I've been doing physical therapy 2 to 3 times a week. I continue to need physical therapy for different parts of my body. It seems like once we finish healing or improving the tissues, the issues in one body part, pain signals force me to attend the problems in a different body part. Along with physical problems, I have suffered financial, emotional, and psychological trauma. Instead of granting me an unpaid medical leave as a reasonable accommodation to heal from physical physical injuries, my employer committed disability discrimination and illegally fired me from my job. To add insult to injury, they denied me unemployment benefits, claiming I had violated company policy by going on an unauthorized leave of absence, which is the status they had designated, and forced me to use up all of my savings and tap into multiple lines of credit to pay for my living expenses for almost 2 years. While I was recovering from injuries. Not always, but randomly and unpredictably, I have nightmares and suffer post-traumatic stress disorder when crossing streets and have had to see a psychotherapist for trauma-informed therapy. I hope that no other New Yorker— excuse me— ever has to endure what I have these past 2 and a half years. It is a heavy cross to bear. I ask the city council and the mayor to immediately implement the streets plan to spare as many New York pedestrians as possible from suffering the immediate impact and ripple effects of traffic violence. Thank you. Maria, thank you very much for coming to testify today, and may you continue lending your, you know, your voice to this. And you've inspired action You've inspired me. Both of you have. Thank you very much for coming today. This panel is excused. I'm now going to have Abby on remotely. Hi. Yes. Can you guys hear me? We sure can. Thank you so much. My name is Abby Jura. I'm here with Riders Alliance, and I'm here to talk about Streets Plan today. I live in Harlem and work in the Bronx. And I take the bus on Fordham Road every single day, and I am frustrated by how often it is late or delayed by traffic. But not only is my life affected, but the lives of my students are as well. I work in an after-school program, and they are constantly late or absent specifically because of the buses. And in fact, I have a quote from one of my students here who wrote to me about their frustrations in an essay. He said, taking the bus in New York is something you can only grasp if you do it. The BX22 line is the bus I have been taking every day since elementary school. Taking public transportation makes you learn how to be aware of your surroundings. The 22 is the worst bus in the world, and I hate it because it's always late and takes at least 30 minutes in between each bus. Riders like myself— sorry, that was, that was the end of his quote. Riders like myself and my students deserve better. Buses stuck in traffic every day interfere with our daily lives, affecting our ability to go to work and school. The streets plan is an opportunity to create and deliver a bold plan to speed up buses in a significant and tangible way for riders, including with such improvements such as the Porter Road Busway. The streets plan is a law that the mayor must follow, and he can't fail riders like Mayor Adams did, who disrespected riders by ignoring the law. And riders are demanding a 20% citywide speed increase during Mayor Maldonado's administration. City streets are a public space where all people using them deserve space, and bus riders like my students and myself are constantly left behind. Thank you so much. Thank you for your testimony, Abby. I'm not going to call up the next panel. Lindsay Cormack, Valerie de la Rosa, Tammy Melter, Betsy Mack, and Max Bookman. And the folks who are remote, once all the in-person testimony is over, we'll pivot back to you. You may, you may proceed. Good afternoon. I'm Lindsay Cormack, and I'm speaking today in my role as the chair of the Street Life Committee for Community Board 8 in Manhattan. Let me begin by saying clearly, our board supports outdoor dining. We recognize it's important to restaurants, to our economic vitality, and to the city streetscape. It's a part of what we want to do. But Intro 655 as drafted raises concerns. The bill expanding eligibility that allows roadway cafes to operate year-round might not work in every neighborhood. In dense neighborhoods like ours, with narrow streets, high pedestrian volume, and already constrained curb street, dedicating roadway space to a single private commercial use year-round means that that might become the default in New York City rather than the exception. Like the Commissioner said, curb space is one of the city's most contested shared resources. Since the expansion of outdoor dining, our board has seen increased complaints to vermin, sanitation, sanitation and late-night noise. Many operators in the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island are responsible and attentive. But the structures of the roadway cafes create new conditions for food debris, storage issues, and little houses for rats to build their own lifestyle. That directly affects residents living not only adjacent to these establishments but above these establishments. Expanding year-round operation increases these pressures. The bill also importantly limits community boards' ability to request additional materials beyond the petition itself, and that compresses our meaningful review. Community boards are often the only venue where neighbors can raise site-specific concerns about obstruction, sanitation, emergency access, noise impacts, and more. Reducing that review weakens local accountability. The bill does also not sufficiently address snow removal, street milling, and maintenance. Roadway dining structures complicate plowing, curb clearing, and access to catch basins. Snow buildup around fixed structures can narrow travel lanes and pedestrian space, creating safety hazards. Finally, the fixed 8-foot restrictions near crosswalks removes flexibility that may be necessary for safety in certain intersections. Setting a maximum of 8 feet presumes that every city block is the same and that visibility and historical accident patterns can't be used to make reasons and informed decisions. Thank you for your efforts on this, and I urge the council to reconsider some of the provisions to reduce local review and design flexibility. Flexibility. Thank you. Next. My name is Betsy Mack, and I'm the vice chair of Community Board 7, Queens. We are strongly opposed to your proposal, and we were unanimous to disapprove the 2022 open restaurant tax. Downtown Flushing is one of the most congested neighborhoods in the city. We have the second most pedestrian intersections in the entire city, second behind Times Square. Our sidewalk on Main Street already expanded, but the conditions are severely strained due to illegal vendors and stoop line violators occupying much of the space. These vendors and violators create crowded and unsafe conditions. Pedestrians are often forced off the sidewalk and dangerously into the roadway where we have busy SBS bus service. There's absolutely no room to accommodate any additional sidewalk or roadway cafes. Two fires occurred at night in downtown Flushing at 135-05 40th Road and 133-42-48 37th Avenue. The fires start from the roadway cafe, then spread to 6 buildings. These are not AI-generated photos that I'm sharing, and it is shocking that all the roadways, cafes aren't reviewed by FDNY. CP7 Queens urges you to exclude downtown Flushing— to exclude downtown Flushing into this proposal. We ask that you prioritize pedestrians and building tenant safety. And the quality of life in our community. Thank you for your testimony. Good afternoon. My name is Tammy Meltzer, and I am chair of Manhattan Community Board 1. Community Board 1 strongly opposes Intro 655 and T1336. We voted in opposition in 2025 with a margin of 34 to 1. The board would have voted again on the rename bill, but there was not sufficient time between introduction in this hearing to do so. 665 extends outdoor dining to year-round, reduces required distance for roadway cafes to crosswalks to just 8 feet. Yet the bill provides no clear standards for how pedestrian clear paths, accessibility, or service aisles must be measured. Inconsistent interpretations, lack of clarity for public and businesses have eroded space meant for safe pedestrian calculation. The most serious injuries and fatal fatalities occur at intersections with turning cars. The 20-foot clearance is designed to protect visibility of pedestrians and cyclists. While the city is increasing corner clearances for safety and DOT reviews updated plans for areas like Canal Street and Fidei, this bill moves in opposite direction to restrict further sight lines. Furthermore, there have been no environmental or traffic studies provided to show that 8 feet would be safe for everyone. We also oppose expanding roadway cafes beyond the lot— business lot line. Many businesses that are smaller than 20 seats are not required to provide public restrooms. Allowing them and others to expand permanent seating without meeting health code bathroom requirements is neither practical nor in the public interest. Similarly, giving property owners discretion to approve expansions risks harming neighbor storefront operators who may be renters and have no opportunity for input or notification in this decision. The bill would also allow retail food stores and warehouses, businesses that do not provide public access nor public restrooms, to operate roadway cafes. This definitely does not serve the public realm and should be removed completely. For T1336, Lower Manhattan experiences some of the highest pedestrian volumes in the city, and full sidewalks are often absolutely necessary necessary to handle daily congestion. We already have people who step into bike lanes and the street to pass others, creating dangerous conflicts with cyclists and vehicles. Please wrap up. Thank you. Diminishing any clear path to just 8 feet or 50% of the sidewalk would worsen these conditions and increase unsafe interactions. We have a lot of experience. National Restaurant Association statistics say— Thank you so much for your testimony. Money. Next. I'll provide it in full. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair Abrue and members of the committee. I'm Valerie De La Rosa, chair of Manhattan Community Board 2, testifying on behalf of the board. CB2 supports outdoor dining as a vibrant part of our streetscape, but it must protect pedestrian safety, accessibility, and the public realm that belongs to all New Yorkers. Dining Out NYC is wildly successful in CB2. CB2 has the highest number of roadway and sidewalk cafes, more than any other community district in all 5 boroughs, 30% of all cafes in Manhattan, and nearly 20% across all 5 boroughs. Regarding Intro 655, which seeks to remove the seasonal ban on outdoor dining, we understand the council's goal of supporting small businesses hurt by costly teardown and storage requirements and the economic value. I do teach economics and I am an economist, um, that outdoor dining brings. And there's undoubtedly merit in reducing bureaucratic burden. However, sustaining roadway cafe structures through winter in Lower Manhattan brings real infrastructure, sanitation, and emergency access issues in narrow street segments like those in CB2. Regarding T2026-1336, we are concerned about capping the clear path at a maximum of 8 feet. Narrowing the clear path on the city's busiest sidewalks could impair safety and comfort for people walking, especially seniors, people with mobility challenges, and families with children. Best practices for clear pedestrian space are outlined in NYC DOT's Pedestrian Mobility Plan and should not be compromised at the expense of accessibility for all in the name of simplification. So you have about 20 seconds. Our community's experience shows that seasonally managed roadway allows for essential street maintenance, snow removal, deep cleaning, and avoid structures becoming de facto storage. We urge the council to adopt reforms that expand outdoor dining opportunities in the areas where participation by operators is low. As I mentioned, we have the highest number of cafes in all of New York City. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next. Of course. Okay. Um, good afternoon. My name is Max Bookman. I am legislative counsel to the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which is the largest industry trade association in the five boroughs for our all-important bar and restaurant industry. On behalf of our board of directors, our executive director Andrew Ridgy, I want to thank Speaker Menin, Council Member Ressler, Chair Abreu for today's outdoor dining bills, which our industry strongly supports. Outdoor dining is extremely popular with New Yorkers and those who visit our city. When Speaker Menin chaired an oversight of DOT's current outdoor dining program last year, however, it made public that something we in the industry have already known, which is that the current program is failing the 5 boroughs and must be fixed. Before COVID outdoor dining participation was at about 1,400 businesses, almost entirely concentrated in Manhattan. During the COVID era, that exploded to 13,000 bars and restaurants. It was a vibrant program across the 5 boroughs, which showed that when you lower cost, process, and paperwork barriers, participation skyrockets. The current post-COVID program, based on our estimates, is back down to roughly 3,000 participating businesses, and we expect it to drop even further as more businesses drop out of the program because they're dismayed with it. This is a failure by any metric. Not only is the program failing bars and restaurants, it's failing restaurant workers and failing the public. The key to improving the program is the Speaker and Councilmembers Ressler bill to return clear path to 8 feet or 50%, whichever is wider. This is returning to a standard that had been in place for almost 40 years. This is a tried and true metric that is easy to administer, and we're really disappointed to hear that the Mamdani administration today has basically joined the Adams administration in objecting to it. We do not support, and we were really surprised by, the current set of clear path requirements, which was not in the legislation. This is something that DOT surprised us with in rulemaking. We had been assured that there would not be a reduction in sidewalk cafe footprint, but returning to this old rule— returning to this tried and true rule would allow us to have the proper sidewalk café footprint that some businesses have had for 40 years. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Did my last two panelists handwrite their speeches? That's very impressive. I don't think folks do that anymore. Thank you very much for testifying. Thanks for noticing. On legal pads. On the legal pads. I love that. I used to have one of those legal pads too. All right. Well, I'm going to recognize Councilmember Farah Lewis, who's joined us, and this panel is excused. Thank you very much. The next panel is Eric McClure, Lisa Daglian, Ahmed, Pauline Barkin, and Elizabeth Adams. You may begin when you're ready. And remember to press the button. Good afternoon, Chair Abreu and members of the City Council. My name is Ahmed Razin. I'm a Brooklyn resident and a student at Pacific College. My bicycle is my primary mode of transport for school, work, and my social life. I'm here because while New York has expanded its bike network, we cannot confuse coverage with quality. A bike lane that's consistently blocked is not a lane, it's a trap. Crucial pathways like DeKalb and Lafayette Avenues are the lifeblood of Brooklyn's cycling network. Yet on these corridors, the safety promised to us on paper vanishes in person. In downtown Brooklyn alone, data shows an average of over 450 illegally parked cars daily on streets like Adams Street and DeKalb Avenue. When a vehicle double parks, it forces me into a leapfrog maneuver, swerving into high-speed traffic and risking my life on roads never designed for shared use. We have the laws, but they lack teeth to protect us. To solve this, I'm calling on the committee to enforce the New York City Streets Plan and pass Intro 0607 to move parking enforcement out of NYPD and into a dedicated DOT enforcement unit. We need agents whose primary mission is transit flow, not professional courtesy for placard holders. And prioritize daylighting. To mandate the removal of parking within 20 feet of intersections on corridors like DeKalb. We don't just need more lanes, we need lanes that work. So our lives depend on the quality and foundation of these designs, and help move these bills out of the committee and into the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi, good afternoon. I'm Lisa Dagley, and I'm the Executive Director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. PCAC. We're the official voice of riders created by the New York State Legislature, and we include the New York City Transit Riders Council. We have a non-voting seat on the MTA board, and we're working very hard to make sure that that strong voice gets a vote one of these days as well. Thank you very much for holding this hearing today. I thought that this morning's conversation with DOT was particularly interesting. I was thrilled to hear you talk about BRT. We just released a report on BRT that we'd love to share with you. We were so excited to see that you were on site at some of the places that we called out. We have some specific recommendations for implementation in the city. In fact, my staff was meeting with the MTA today to talk about how we could potentially make that happen on a couple of specific corridors. We firmly believe that buses are the engine of opportunity for the 2 million people who ride them every day, um, and they deserve the smoothest, fastest trips possible. And the premise and promise of the Streets Plan was very exciting, but obviously it didn't live up to its expectations. I was kind of— well, I was totally surprised this morning to hear that automatic camera enforcement counts toward bus improvement lanes, if that's what I actually heard. Now, we know that ACE does help to increase bus speeds by 5%, or in some cases even more than that, but I'm not sure that that counts as a bus lane. I think that it is absolutely an improvement, and we oppose some efforts that have been made to try and quash it in specific communities around the city. Once you open that door, it's very hard to close. We do urge the mayor and the council to work with you to staff up. We think that that's particularly important as well. We'll make sure to ask at the preliminary budget hearing what the, you know, what resources they plan on dedicating to realize all of the amazing things the council put out in 2019. And also fare fares, that's critically important too. Eric. Thank you, Majority Leader Breu, council members. My name is Eric McClure. I'm the executive director of StreetsPAC. When the council passed the streets plan into law in 2019, many of us celebrated what promised to be a sea change for New York City streets and transportation systems. With its benchmarks for the creation of physically separated bike and bus lanes, upgraded intersections and bus stops, transit signal priority, and new public plazas, The Streets Plan appeared truly transformative. The potential for that transformation, however, was largely squandered by the previous mayoral administration, which failed by wide margins to meet many of the Streets Plan's mandates. Installation of new protected bike lanes has lagged well behind the annual requirement of 50 miles, and implementation of new bus lanes has fared just as badly. Whether the cause was mayoral indifference, inadequate DOT staffing, or outright hostility to the Streets Plan's goals, the lack of progress has been deeply disappointing. Disappointing. That's not to say that progress hasn't been made in a number of places and in a number of important ways, but it's hard not to look at the streets' glass as half empty rather than half full. But elections bring change, and change brings opportunity. Improved bus service was a key plank in Mayor Maldonado's electoral platform, and he frequently arrived at campaign events via bike, bus, or subway. Since his inauguration, the mayor has been quick to revive a number of stalled street safety projects, and his administration appears poised to meaningfully increase capital and operational funding DOT. Breathing new life into the streets plan and launching a truly ambitious next phase can firmly cement New York City as a leader among its peers in transforming the ways in which people get around, and to quote the mayor, make New York City streets the envy of the world. With that in mind, we have a handful of recommendations, and I'll just tick these off very quickly. First, it's essential to fully staff and fund DOT to allow this work to move forward. Secondly, while the administration bears no fault for the failings of its predecessors, we need to play catch-up wherever we can. For the missed targets of the past. Thirdly, not all bus lanes are created equal, and the administration should prioritize true bus rapid transit wherever possible. Fourth, we need to make sure that our network of protected bike lanes is fully connected. No system is any better than its weakest link. And finally, we should set ambitious targets for results, including implementation of secure bike parking facilities, per hour, 20 mph speed limits, daylighting, and low traffic. And, uh, I, I will just say in closing, um, it's also essential that the council be a committed partner to the streets plan success. It's not enough to support meeting the benchmarks in other people's districts, but we need a little bit in every neighborhood. I will submit, uh, more detailed written testimony. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Kevin. Next. Hello, Eric. Hello, I am Pauline Barkin. I live in Brooklyn, uh, in Flatbush, and I'm a volunteer and activist with Transportation Alternatives. I very much support making our streets safer and improving our streets through the streets plan. It will not only make a meaningful impact on the quality of our life, but it has the potential to save lives. You know, and it's a win-win. It keeps bikes out of the way of cars and it keeps cars out of the way of bikes, right? You know, about a decade ago, I was bike riding before there were, you know, complete or even real bike lanes, sandwiched between a taxi and a semi with just inches on either side, and it was just pure luck that I ended up safe, right? And this type of situation happens to thousands, countless millions of New Yorkers, you know, who are at the mercy of our roads. And providing a connected network will have a real impact and improve New York and make our city the envy of the world. Next. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair, and the committee for holding today's hearing. My name is Elizabeth Adams with Transportation Alternatives. Like millions of New Yorkers, I am a bus rider, a bike rider, a transit user, and a pedestrian. At TA, we believe the greatest city in the world deserves the greatest streets in the world, and the streets plan is a key component of how we do that. It was passed by the council to transform New York City streets, to make them safer, more equitable, and more accessible for everyone. It set clear, measurable goals and created real accountability where far too long there had only been promises. And yet it was stalled under the last administration, who took it as a mere suggestion rather than a legal mandate. And that is why we are behind where we need to be right now on protected bike lanes and greenways, on dedicated busways, and on intersection redesigns like daylighting and critical safety improvements that New Yorkers were promised. We need urgent change, and we need to bring the Streets Plan back to life. Today, we are calling for two main things. One, for the city to catch up and make sure that the DOT has the funding and the resources they need to get the projects in the street on the ground now. And two, to go further. If we want to make New York City streets the envy of the world, we need the next phase of the Streets Plan, which is due this year, to be bigger and bolder and go further. That means an overhaul for faster buses like BRT, no more gaps in our bike network, Sammy's Law, 20-mile-per-hour zones across the city, more plazas and open streets in every neighborhood, and a fundamental shift away from car dependence as the default way to get around our streets. We're heartened to hear the commissioner's commitment to ambitious streets plan metrics, and while we support the call for focus on outcomes, It is important to be clear that these outcomes come from meeting mileage mandates when it comes to bus and bike lanes and pedestrian space. We can and must do both. And I want to thank the chair for acknowledging the accountability role required for this by the council. This committee is also hearing a number of bills that we proudly support that I want to name quickly, including, just if I may, 1338 by Councilmember Ressler, which will bring back the needed 1 million square foot requirement for pedestrian space in the streets plan. 3, um, by Councilmember Brewer, uh, and the open streets, the outdoor dining restaurants. Uh, and just to say on the record, daylighting saves lives. Thank you. Thank you very much. This panel is excused. I now have for the next panel Sarah Lynn, Cecil Brooks Jr., Zach Miller, Kevin Jones, and Alia Sumro. Sarah, you may begin. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Abreu, for holding this hearing. My name is Sarah Lind, and I'm the co-executive director for Open Plans, an organization fighting for a more livable city. The streets plan is an ambitious reimagining of our streetscape, and while we are discouraged by the stalling of the plan in recent years, hopeful and excited for its completion. And looking ahead to the release of the updated streets plan later this year, there's opportunity for an even more ambitious expanded plan. First, low traffic neighborhoods—areas with intentional street design to limit cut-through traffic while keeping local access—have shown to be effective around the world. A goal of 5 LTNs in each borough by 2030 should be included in the streets plan. LTNs would help reach a number of stated goals in the streets plan, including increasing safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists. Second, expanding hardened daylighting with the goal of universality should be a stated goal in the streets plan. Daylighting is a proven safety measure that increases visibility at intersections, making them safer for pedestrians and drivers alike. And to this point, we urge the council to consider and pass Intro 511, which would mandate universal daylighting. Third, DOT should create a vehicle miles traveled reduction goal of 40% in the Streets Plan. Many of the critical goals in the plan, for example, speeding up buses, are impossible to achieve without reducing VMT. Other states like Minnesota have already passed similar legislation, and New York City should be a leader in this space as well. Finally, DOT should expand the Open Streets for Schools Full Closure School Streets program. Due to a host of issues, including administrative of capacity, a lack of involvement from DOE, and a lack of funding, the School Streets program isn't reaching its full potential. With the council's assistance in the budget process and with focused effort from DOT in coordination with DOE, the School Streets program could serve more kids citywide. These aren't pie-in-the-sky ideas. They're continuations of the streets plan's goals, and we look forward to working alongside the council and DOT to realize this potential. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, okay, thank you. Sorry. Happy National Cold Cuts Day, National Moscow Mule Day, and National Nutrition Month for my fellow foodies in the nightlife world. My name is Cecil Brooks, a proud Uptown resident and professional foodie who wants to see our city thrive. As part of the Open Plans As a member of the Finance Team, we have long advocated for an outdoor dining program which makes our streets as vibrant and delicious as possible. Intro 655 makes great progress toward that goal. The last time you saw us, we were fresh off of our Curbside Restaurant Week initiative, where thousands of New Yorkers voted with their pocketbooks and their butts to sit in at world-class dining establishments such as La Goulue in the Upper East Side, Grand Army in downtown Brooklyn, and the Queensborough in East Elmhurst. Unfortunately, this celebration could not offset tens of thousands in unnecessary costs that led to the very preventable closures of Choco Bar Cortez in Mott Haven, Manang Anna in Jackson Heights, and High Note in the East Village. Intro 655 can make the program better by protecting the right of the restaurant industry industry and many of our immigrant business owners to operate year-round while making the application process more accessible. We at Open Plans and the 10,000 dining establishments who have remained shut out of the process since the pandemic look forward to working with the council to make our outdoor dining— our Dining Out New York City program as successful as possible. Thank you very much. I forgot to— I forgot for my government team to post on National Moscow Mule Day. I'll make sure to change that as a holiday on our calendar. Next. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Abreu, members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. My name is Zach Miller, and I serve as the Vice President of Government Affairs for the Trucking Association of New York. Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trucking industry has supported the expansion of outdoor dining, whether on sidewalks or in roadway setups. We support our fellow small businesses, many of whom are customers, in efforts that help them grow and enhance the neighborhoods that we serve. At the same time, we must be realistic about the day-to-day logistics required to service these businesses in an increasingly constrained curb environment. A typical restaurant may receive multiple deliveries in a single day, such as produce, beverage, meats, linens, and other supplies. Each vendor serves numerous establishments along commercial corridors every day, and restaurants are not the only ones. Retailers, pharmacies, medical offices, and other small businesses on the same block also depend on regular freight access. None of them can operate without reliable deliveries. As the city builds out the permitting framework for outdoor dining, it is essential that curb space for commercial deliveries is part of the conversation. Truck access at the curb should be preserved, replaced, or newly created. If space is removed, equivalent access should be given thoughtfully integrated into the corridor planning. And I do also want to just quickly touch on daylighting. The Trucking Association has been supportive of daylighting for, for some time, you know, publicly, vocally. You know, it does improve sightline, enhance safety for all road users, particularly the operators of larger and specialized vehicles. And safety improvement should not be, you know, unintentionally You should not— let me try again. We do have some concerns about loss of curb space with daylighting, but typically we believe that it provides enough flexibility in the way it's designed that it's something that overall our membership is really supportive of. Thank you. Thank you. Alia? Good afternoon. Is this— okay, it's on. My name is Alia Sumro, and I'm the Deputy Director for New York City Policy at the New York League of Conservation voters. Thank you, Chair Abreu, as well as members of the Committee on Transportation, for the opportunity to testify today. I have submitted longer written comments. NYLCV believes that all New Yorkers should have access to affordable, clean, sustainable modes of transportation to improve our city's air quality, combat climate change, and reduce congestion. NYLCV fully supported the passage of Local Law 195 in 2019, creating a streets master plan every 5 years. Although progress was slow when it came to implementing this plan during the last admin, Going forward, we hope the Mamdani administration fully funds and staffs DOT to achieve the milestones mandated in the existing streets master plan, continues to restart long-delayed bus and bike lane projects with an emphasis on increasing bus speeds, and works toward publishing a comprehensive and bold vision of transit and streets in the upcoming 2026 New York City Streets Plan. As we look to the next iteration of the plan, We hope the city works with the MTA to consider bus rapid transit for corridors with the highest aggregate bus ridership, potential time savings, and areas where current and future affordable housing developments will be built. When it comes to cycling, we urge the city to continue working towards a comprehensive citywide bus network. And additionally, the streets plan should increase access to and improve safety for micromobility users. That includes more public charging stations and battery swaps for e-bike and e-scooters. The city must continue to prioritize Vision Zero. Relatedly, NYLCV strongly supports Intro 511, sponsored by Council Member Juan. That's the daylighting bill. And then when it comes to the bills being considered today, NYLCV supports the passage of Intro 93, sponsored by Council Member Brewer, in relation to bicycle parking stations. Wrapping up, timely implementing the New York City Streets Plan is more crucial than ever. We're, you know, seeing the federal government gut climate and environmental regulations, so local leadership is more important than ever, and we look forward to working with the council and the admin going forward. Thank you. Saved by the bell right there. That was great. Next. Great. Thank you. Good afternoon to the chair and the members of the committee. My name is Kevin Jones. I'm the associate state director for advocacy at AARP New York. Representing 750,000 members across New York City and the more than 3.5 million adults age 50 and up across the 5 boroughs. So walkability is essential to life in New York City. Safe sidewalks, visible crosswalks, well-designed streets are all critical to a livable city that supports aging in place. But too often, that's not the reality. Pedestrians account for a majority of the traffic fatalities citywide, and one-third of those killed are over the age of 60. Older adults are disproportionately victims of fatal crashes, many often facing mobility challenges, making cracked sidewalks and short cross times unsafe and really calling extra attention to the unsafe intersections that are daily hazards for our members. Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among older adults, and unsafe walking conditions increase that risk. The 2019 Master Plan set clear targets to expand protected bike lanes, bus lanes, pedestrian space, and safer intersections. And while progress has been made, the DOT has fallen short of required benchmarks. In 2026, the city must recommit to meeting and exceeding those goals. ARP's transportation priorities are simple: safer streets, better pedestrian infrastructure, and reliable, accessible transit options for people of all ages, especially older adults who rely heavily on walking and buses. The streets plan must prioritize intersection redesign, longer crossing times, daylighting, traffic calming, and full implementation of 20-mile-per-hour zones under Sammy's Law. Sidewalks must be maintained. Pedestrians should be expanded and made permanent where possible. Oh, excuse me, pedestrian space. We also support a connected network of protected bike lanes that do not end abruptly and reduce conflict between roads, between the road users. Bus priority is critical as many older adults depend on buses as a daily lifeline. And I also want to just emphasize that buses are our only fully accessible mode of transportation. I will submit a longer written testimony, but thank you for your time. Thank you so much for your testimony today. This panel is excused. I'm now calling on the next panel, a constituent of mine, Mary Beth Kelly. Chauncey Young. My apologies if I didn't get your name right. Liah Gualpa, Joshua Wood, and Jerry Thompson. Is it Chauncey? Okay, okay, I got it. All right, all right, ready to go. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Okay. My thanks to you, Chair Abreu, and to the council. I wish they were still here. However, I will proceed. My name is Mary Beth Kelly, and I am a co-founder of Families for Safe Streets, an organization where you don't belong unless you have lost a loved one to traffic violence or have been severely injured. Um, my loss was This is my husband. This is the last family photograph that was taken of us as an intact family. This was a few months before he died. My son played soccer with our mayor at the Bronx High School of Science. And so I've known our mayor since the time he was 14, not well, but on the field. And I'm thrilled that he is our new mayor. And I'm also thrilled that he understands what a challenge it is that we have on our city streets because of the neglect for so many years of what would make 8 million pedestrians safe when they are navigating our city. So I have a few things to say. One is, I'm sorry, our, our I'm sure the ultra-marathoner isn't here right now. My husband was as well. He had run 29 consecutive New York City marathons, most of them under 3 hours. I, too, was a marathoner, but those were a long time ago. As you can say, this work ages. Out here for 20 years now, it was 2006 when he and I took a bike ride together. And we had biked really all over the world with our kids, before our kids, after our kids. But a tow truck took a fast illegal turn into an intersection and missed me but killed my husband. Not immediately. He died from his injuries 3 days later. Is my time up already? Oh my God. I'll let you wrap up. Thank you. Okay. One thing I just want to say is for those who think that parking is in the Bill of Rights, ask yourself at the end of the day, would you rather say that you saved parking spots or saved lives? And I hope that will be communicated to my fellow council members. There's an organization nationwide called the Hyacinth Fellowship. It is made up of drivers who have killed unintentionally. Their, their own grief, their guilt, their shame is profound. Of course, these are the people who join this organization, but it has thousands of members, and some of them live here in New York City. So don't let that be you, and don't let it happen because you thought a parking space was more important than saving a life. Well, thank you so much. And as your elected representative, I'm very, very proud of you. For lending your voice to this very important issue, and I hope to make you proud as well. Good afternoon, Chair Abreu, and honored members of City Council. My name is Chance Young, a Bronx resident and coordinator of the Harlem River Coalition, as well as co-chair for the New York City Greenway Coalition. We stand in support of the streets master plan and the greater greenways master plan. The New York City Greenways Coalition is a collective of greenway-aligned groups focused on the completion and continual enhancement of an equitable greenway network in New York City. We collectively advocated for the comprehensive Greenway Master Plan and a complete multi-user bicycle and pedestrian network. Locally, along the Harlem River for decades, our neighborhoods in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan have been severed from our waterfront by Robert Moses and his car-centric planning. Including the Major Deegan and Cross Bronx Expressways, the Harlem River Drive, which isolated our neighborhoods and caused industrial neglect. We are fighting to rectify this by completing a 7-mile Harlem River Greenway in the Bronx, a vital link connecting Van Cortlandt Park to Randalls Island. This is a matter of public health and equity. The Bronx remains 62 out of 62 counties in New York State for health outcomes. Our residents face staggering rates of asthma and diabetes. Active transit, walking and cycling, as well as for recreation, is a proven prescription for these disparities. However, our current streets prioritize cars over people, creating a barrier to health. Although it has been mentioned many times, if a parent is terrified to let their child walk, their bike, walk or bike to school, or a senior feels unsafe crossing to a park, they will stay indoors. This lack of safe infrastructure is a public health crisis. It is a moral decision for New York City. A connected bicycle and greenway network is not a luxury, it is a moral obligation. Every community, regardless of income, deserves clear and safe access to their parks and waterfront, infrastructure that protects life rather than endangering it, a transportation network that serves everyone, not just the privileged few. We applaud the progress that has happened throughout New York City, but we cannot stop here. DOT remains far behind its goal of 50 miles of protected bike lanes each year. Thank you. Hello. Good afternoon. I'm Jerry. A little closer to the mic. There we go. All right. Hi, I'm Jerry. This is my first time doing something like this, but I'm always telling people your voice matters, so it makes sense that I ended up here. So I— my name is Jerri Denise Thompson, a volunteer with One Fair Wage. I'm a chef and a pastry chef by trade, but I've left the industry to pursue my art and music endeavors because the industry was so unfair. I have a degree in baking and pastry arts from CIA, and I worked in the food and beverage industry for 15-plus years in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and even Virginia. And I'm here today to testify on behalf of the restaurant workers and subminimum wage workers in New York. I have a simple question: Do you actually care about the tipped workers as much as Donald Trump says he does? Employees can't live on a subminimum wage. Workers can't keep depending on tips alone. Trump won millions of tipped workers' votes with the slogan "No tax on tips." Whatever you think of him, he looked at the subminimum wage workers and said, "I see you." New York City can do better than just a slogan. Give us one fair wage, a full minimum wage with tips on top. If you're about to let restaurant owners take over public sidewalks and make more money off our very, very, very valuable labor, our underappreciated labor, the least you can do is make them pay a real wage. Show us, show me, show the world that you actually care. Another thing that people should know about is being a tip worker is that when you pay When your pay depends on tips, you are— sorry, when your pay depends on tips, you put up with things that no one should have to put up with. I've been grabbed, I've been hit on, I've been talked about in ways I can't repeat here, and I smiled through because I didn't— because if I didn't, it would mean I would struggle to pay my bills. This is what this pay system does. It makes us choose between our dignity and our rent. Now you want to give restaurant workers— restaurant owners more sidewalk, more table, more business. Thank you very much. And I remind folks to stay on topic of the hearing topics for the day. Thank you. Next. My name is Josh Wood. I am a working delivery cyclist speaking on behalf of Los Deliveristas United States and the New York City Bike Messenger Association. Micromobility is the most efficient form of last-mile delivery. 80,000 workers understand that and live it every single day, delivering food, groceries, packages, and more by e-bikes, mopeds, bikes, and e-cargo bikes. We are constantly risking our lives being shoehorned into infrastructure that was not designed around us. For too long, our needs have been ignored as workers continue to get hurt and killed on the job. In the past year, the city has chosen to criminalize us with criminal summons for minor traffic violations. Rather than reimagining the future of how streets— how street infrastructure can work for everyone. What we need are initiatives like Intro 0093, sponsored by CM Gale Brewer, establishing bike parking spaces and corrals with a focus on commercial zones, which is what we're going to be using the most. We understand that riding on sidewalks is a safety hazard. We also understand the difficulties of safely accessing storefronts and homes for our pickups and drop-offs, which are on the sidewalk, leaving the street through a small gap in between parked cars with fast-moving cars honking behind us, under time pressures from our apps and customers dozens of times per day. The infrastructure we need must be comprehensive and widespread. While protected bike lanes are a great start, and we encourage the city to build as many of them as we can, delivery workers do not always have the luxury of only sticking to bike networks. The needs of a parent biking their kids to school and an e-cargo bike, each one of which is reliv— relieving the city of horrendous truck traffic are not necessarily going to be the same. They do not always need to share the same infrastructure. We call for an implementation of Sammy's Law, lowering the speed limit in key roads to 20 miles per hour. This will pave the way for future dedicated micromobility lanes and align the philosophy of our streets more closely with the most advanced cities of the world. Cars and trucks can share the road with all the other people who need to use them. We call for daylighting intersections, hardening infrastructure, and other traffic calming measures. While we understand the complexities behind road safety conversations, it hurts to see my comrades get demonized in the public discourse as reckless on the roads and occupying too much space for a loader on the sidewalk. We are essential workers simply trying to make it through our shift. Thank you very much for your testimony. Ligia? Yeah. Uh, thank you so much, Chair, for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Ligia Hualpa. I'm the executive director of the workers' Workers' Justice Project, which is representing 80,000 app delivery workers. I'm here in strong support of Intro 093, sponsored by Councilmember Gale Brewer, to expand the bicycle station program, particularly along the commercial corridors. Delivery workers are the backbone of New York City, as you heard from my comrade here who does delivery work, completing nearly 2.7 million deliveries per week, bringing food, groceries, medicine to New Yorkers even during snowstorms like we just had recently. Over the past 5 years, delivery workers have won significant labor rights protections, but they're not enough yet. The lack of critical bike infrastructure such as secure parking, protected bike lanes, e-bike charging stations continues to fuel the street safety crisis affecting all of us. Street safety is the top priority of delivery workers, who are the ones being injured and killed at the highest rate in our city. We look forward to working with the council and DOT to redesign and reimagine what our streets could look like for bike users and also for 80,000 app delivery workers who ride across the city delivering essential goods to New Yorkers. Our city's streets crisis persists because of the lack of infrastructure and really hasn't really followed the pace of the rise of e-bikes and also app delivery business models that prioritizes speed over profit over safety. Companies like Uber, DoorDash, they relied on opaque algorithms that pressured delivery workers to move faster, disregarding their own safety and public safety. E-bikes are not just tools for work. They are essentials. They are essential, affordable, and environmentally sustainable transportation option for working-class New Yorkers. If the city is serious about— about reducing congestion, pollution, traffic deaths, e-bikes must be part of that solution. We look forward to working and reimagining what true e-bike infrastructure could look like for all New Yorkers. Thank you so much, Lee. Yeah, this panel is excused. Next we have Eric Huntley, Shaniqua Lewis, Giovanni Uribe, Ryan Palumbo and Russell Jackson. Okay. And Steve Flack. You may begin. Hi, my name is Shaniqua Lewis. I'm a New York City resident. I'm a community activist and leader. I'm here today with One Fair Wage. I have a lot of loved ones in the restaurant industry, and I've seen firsthand the effects working for tips instead of a fair wage and what these tipped income have done to a lot of people. We have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of things to upkeep in our daily lives, such as rent is the same every month, right? And it's hard to pay your rent when your income is not stable. When you work for tips, you never know what you're going to make. A slow night, a bad table, a rainstorm, anything can really wreck your day, wreck your week, cause depression, cause any setbacks, especially when you're trying to care for yourself, care for your loved ones. And then, um, that means you can't plan, you can't save, it's hard to budget because you never know what you're gonna make. There's no promise, there's no guarantee. Outdoor dining adds another inconsistency because when it rains, when the patio clears out, everything that's unpredictable just adds on some more uncertainty. And it affects the people that work for tips because if it's cold and people don't sit outside, you don't get any customers. The tips drops, and there's nothing you can really do about it. So if you're about to make outdoor dining a permanent part of the city, that means more tip workers' income is going to depend on the weather. If the sun comes out, if it's adjustable, if the temperature is comfortable. So if outdoor dining is here to stay, one fair way wage needs to be here to stay with it so that a real wage— it could be a real wage that workers can count on no matter the uncertainty. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next. Good afternoon, Council. My name is— my name is Eric from Bushwick, New York. I've been a server for over 30 years in Bushwick. And let me tell you what outdoor dining expansion means for me. More tables, more customers, longer shifts, same subminimum wage. We can't keep living like this. You can't ask us to rely on tips as a whole paycheck. What you're voting on today is giving restaurant owners public sidewalks, space that belongs to all of us, so they can make more money. That's a huge benefit for them. If you're going to give them public space to grow their business, make them pay their workers one fair wage That's all we're asking. More business for them should not mean the same poverty wages for us. One fair wage. Thank you very much, Council. Appreciate the testimony. Next. Thank you for your time and for considering. Thank you for your time and for considering. My name is Rayon Samari Palumbo. I'm an economist., and I support one fair wage. Using public space to expand your business is a privilege. It's not a right. No other industry in the city gets to use public space, and we, we should reserve that privilege for the businesses that best care for our community, starting with the workers that serve in them. We know what happened the last time the city expanded outdoor dining without that condition. Restaurants set up sheds on our sidewalks and grew their businesses, but the workers inside couldn't even access unemployment insurance. Two-thirds were told that their subminimum wages were too low and their tips didn't count towards the calculation of unemployment benefits. So they were forced back to work before it was safe while the CDC named restaurants the most dangerous place for adults to be in. Women were told to remove their masks masks so customers can judge their looks and tip accordingly. And during COVID as many as 12,000 restaurant workers died, 1.2 million left the industry, and New York lost more restaurant workers than any state in the country. 1 in 5 workers left the industry in New York State. This is what happened. This is what outdoor dining looked like under subminimum wage, and we should not repeat that. Today, tipped restaurant workers are the only workers left in this entire state still paid a subminimum wage, and the median tipped worker in New York City earns less than $24,000 a year, which is less than half of what it costs to live here. If the city is going to grant restaurants a privilege that no other businesses receive, those restaurants should meet the standard every other business already meets: a full minimum wage. Thank you for your testimony. Next. Hi, I guess to make this short and clear, I'm Gio. I'm a restaurant worker, 20-plus years in the industry. I don't know where all the councilmen went, so I guess just you, Councilman Abreu. I would fully support the expansion of outside seating, sidewalk seating, however you call it. But I do believe we should be— a fair minimum wage should be attached to this permit licensing. And I just agree with all my folks that are here that, you know, we can't ever plan rent stays the same. We can never budget. So I'd like to encourage that the council really takes into consideration that the worker is affected as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Hello, Steve Flack, Friendly Neighborhood Loudmouth. Growing up in Brooklyn, the street in front of my home was a collective third space for our community, a place where we learned to ride bikes, had block parties and where spontaneous games of wiffle ball could break out. The call of car alerting our friends to the occasional driver coming through was a hallmark of our afternoons. But that joy has been stolen from us by the rampant growth of car culture in the biggest city with America's greatest public transportation system. The streets are the implied property of the private car, causing environmental, financial, mental, and physical harm to our neighbors. That is why I am calling on the City Council and the mayor to implement a streets plan that works for all New Yorkers, not just the entitled motorists who believe the streets belong to them free of charge. We deserve protected bike lanes that connect citywide to bolster green transportation. We deserve loading zones and delivery micro hubs to aid our changing economy. We deserve green pedestrian plazas, bustling open streets, and a year-long outdoor dining program where communities can gather and local businesses can thrive. We deserve a citywide implementation of Sammy's Law and universal daylighting at every corner so the most vulnerable New Yorkers don't have to worry about being another statistic in the growing number of traffic fatalities. And we need to implement it all before another life is lost, not after. And most importantly, we need to follow through on Mayor Maldonado's goal of faster buses throughout New York City. No longer should the bus rider be considered a second-class citizen. We deserve a connected system of dedicated and protected bus lanes throughout all 5 boroughs so everyone can see what the children of what our children see, the joy of riding a New York City bus. I look forward to a New York City streetscape that works for all and finally banishes the ghost of Robert Moses out of the greatest city in the world. Over my last 20 seconds, I'm a restaurant eater. I do not like the tipping system either, and I just want to make sure you guys are paid a fair minimum wage because I don't want to run their books. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. This panel is excused. Next up we have Charles Diamond, Mylinda Lee, Sandra Rayburn, Matthew Robinson, and Ned Shalansky. Is Carol here? I'll just have you go because I think we have an empty seat now. Carol, that's you? Yes, come on down. No, you're okay. You may, you may proceed. Thank you so much, Majority Leader and Chair Breyo. My name is Charles Diamond. I'm speaking in my personal capacity, but I worked as an attorney for the city for 10 years in various capacities, including particularly regarding revocable consents, of which outdoor dining is One, there's a couple of thoughts I wanted to pick up on that your colleagues had raised, I think very, very significantly, about how do we deal with bad actors. If we're opening up the outdoor dining legislation that was created, we need to look at 19-160.5. That is enforcement, right? So we're talking about how do I deal with all of these different things. That section of the admin code, which is in the power of the council to alter, right? A lot of problem with the DOT rules, but what can the council do? We can look at that section to make enforcement more real. Right now, a condition, a negative condition of any kind, any kind has to be formally noticed by the DOT. So what, that's going to be several months after you call it in. They're going to take formal notice of it. They've investigated it. They sent an inspector out. We saw it. Then there is a required 30-day period to do a corrective action plan. All this sounds great. All this sounds fantastic. But in the case of a genuinely bad actor, they're going to be able to go months and months months and months, and on their maximum violation they can receive is $500. I think the last panel spoke about the fact of we are giving public land to a private business to make more money. That might be a good idea, but we're giving them less enforcement and less outcomes and less consequences than for their use of their own land. So we need to look at the enforcement. That section, I would advise, if we're looking at this again for 655, for all of the the different bills that are looking at outdoor dining. Let's take this time, work with DOT to look at enforcement, how we can make it more realistic, because that's the problem. We got the burdens wrong last time, partly because of DOT rulemaking that made getting the license almost impossible, very administratively burdensome. But then once you get it, it's very hard to do anything about it. So I would urge us to flip that. We'll look at that as part of this process, really look at that Section 0.5. The area where it deals with enforcement. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next. Good afternoon. It started out to be good morning on my notes, um, and I guess I'm here as a representative, as a non-paid, non-lobbyist for old people. I'm 81, and I'm annoyed by the pretext that this committee and the absence of these council members and the disappearance of DOT for the opportunity to listen to real people and to listen to a non-paid lobbyist advocate. It's insulting. So as far as the, uh, 655 and 628, uh, this is not about charming café tables. It's about taking public streets and public sidewalks and residential peace year-round and handing them to one industry that has already been massively subsidized and deregulated. And as you noted, where has enforcement been? For years now, residents like me have endured blasting music, all-hours noise, crowd spillover, blocked sidewalks, crummy council members, and I filed 3-1-1 complaints? Nothing. NYPD? Nothing. DOT? Nothing. Where's our help? Where's our enforcement? You can't enforce it permanently. If you can enforce it, you have no business expanding it. Finally, how about introducing non-paid lobbying organizations like the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, who will tell you about the terror and the harm? And I can tell you about the deaths of e-vehicle, uh, uh, uh, deliveryistas and others who have killed people, old people, young people. This is an inequitable, uh, uh, uh, uh, hearing because if you talk about safety, you have to talk about e-vehicles and Priscilla's Law. This is nonsense. And if you want to talk about restaurant sheds, you should be talking to QUP and the group that have been besieged by this nonsense. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Next. Um, hello, my name is Carol Putrechez. Turn the mic on, please. Thank you. Okay, you may restart your time. You didn't start it. Okay, my name is Carol Putrechez, and I'm here for the East Fifth Street Block Association. I'd like to know if any of the city council members who are in favor of year-round year-round dining sheds actually live upstairs from a restaurant with these sheds? I'm sure not, because, because if they did, they would never want to subject themselves 12 months a year to the noise, trash, and rat infestation these sheds bring. The noise from a full house of shed diners rises up and is formidable. It gets louder as the dinner time progresses into the late night hours and as more alcohol consumed. Add to that the outdoor music, which I know is prohibited, but it happens anyway. Calling 311 is useless for 10 minutes after the police leave. The music is back. Who will monitor this noise? The local police have enough on their hands already. And in the apartments upstairs from these dining sheds, the noise is unbearable. It is impossible to watch and hear TV and forget about sleeping until the restaurant closes. In addition, during the 3 to 4 months of freezing weather, the sheds will be unused. Really, who would want to sit outside in 20-degree weather, even with a space heater, when you have indoor dining? And what staff— wait staff would want to serve outside during these cold months? These shelters will become homeless encampments, trash dumping grounds, and rat infestations. Added to that, where will the snowplows put the plowed plow the snow after storms. With lanes filled with bus lanes, bike lanes, and dining sheds, there's maybe one left, one left over for the plowed snow. Great. One lane of traffic going south on Second Avenue leading to the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Manhattan bridges during rush hour. Please do not listen to the well-paid restaurant lobbyists. This is not Paris. COVID is over. Do the right thing for the restaurants, for the residents, for the restaurant Residents of our city, vote no on year-round dining sheds. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. And I'd just like to say, um, it's pretty disheartening to only have 3 members of the city council here. We waited 4 hours to speak. That's it. Next. Hello? Yes. Okay. My name is Matthew Robinson. I live in Chelsea, and I've been going to Community Board 4 meetings a lot. One thing that I want to say is, as far as the dining sheds or the dining corrals and it being 12 months of the year, we have said no, emphatically said no to that, that 9 months is enough. Like everyone else has preceded me to say, is that it is snowing, it is cold, it is not being used. It's used as a dumping area. It's an area for rats to be underneath. That's so during that time, if that corral were not there, that could be an area where you could shovel the snow away from the curb, away from the corner. And as far as the laws in terms of snow removal, snow redistributing, It's horrible. You can maybe— the roadbeds are nice and clean, the sidewalks are not. There's no enforcement of snow in terms of the sidewalk. Once you get to the corner, you then have the avalanche of dealing with these piles of snow, and you can't even cross the crosswalk. As far as streetlight design, as someone had mentioned earlier, you have to think of when there's foliage and when there's not. When there's foliage, the light has to be lower. When it doesn't matter when there is no foliage. So I'm against 24/7. I agree with everyone else that it is a land grab, that it's an industry that doesn't need it, that Grubhub is enough to support them and give them additional things. Also, in terms of the bike lane, the bike lane is not being enforced in terms of drivers going in the right direction. They're going every direction but the right direction, and they're doing it on the box, and that should be enforced. Thank you so much for your testimony. Next. My name is Ned Shalansky, and I'm a licensed landscape architect with over 17 years experience designing New York City public spaces. Currently, I design public parks for the City Parks Department. Council members, it's a pleasure to design green spaces in your districts. I'm also a resident of Lower East Side. The vibrance wording I hear so often connected with roadway dining means for residents constant noise, crowds, and less livable streets. It is vexing to me that I should have to defend my neighbors and I from City Council greenlighting beer gardens outside our windows that operate loudly late into the evening. That Councilmember Ressler should propose this environmental transformation be made year-round is not only out of touch with everyday New Yorkers' quality of life, it demands a thorough public EIS. I love this city, and just like you, I want to see it flourish. Years of evidence shows that restaurants have not, cannot mitigate the downsides of year-round street trees. DOT cannot safely maintain its current portfolio of operations, let alone an expanded portfolio of thousands of independent restaurants operating individual roadway setups. Dodging waiters and diners as they cross bike lanes to street trees is not safer for me as a bicyclist. City Council should not be governing according to hypotheticals or private profit-led promises. The current seasonal program is already more than generous to restaurants. Year-round roadway dining is a square peg in a round hole. And deep down, I think we all know this. Intro 655 represents the privatization and entertainmentization of a significant swath of public space within our city. If DOT and City Council want a successful outdoor dining program, it should follow careful city-led planning initiatives, not the enshrining of ad hoc pandemic-era rules by industry insiders. Contrary to the hospitality alliance, TransAlt Open Plans NYC and others, streeteries are not unanimously popular. New York City residents, especially families, deserve a better, fair, restful post-pandemic reality. Reasonableness and not the prevailing wishlists of special interest groups ought to prevail. Thank you so much for your testimony, and thank you for this panel. It is excused. Next, we have Joseph Meltzer. Viana, Van Oles, Liam Jeffries, Andrew Paulson, and Joe Sheehancey. Am I mispronouncing that? Thank you so much. All right, just— I want to make sure I have a full panel, so Let's see how many other folks come up. Excuse me, are you on this panel? Folks standing up? No. Yosef Meltzer. Awesome. Can you hear me? No, Viana. Viana had to leave. Okay. Liam Jeffries. Okay. Andrew Paulson. And you're Joe. Okay, you may begin. Hey, um, I'm Yosef. I'm here in my capacity as a lover of nice things. Um, specifically very excited about the new streets plan. However, I think it's important to look back, see what happened with the last streets plan, and then kind of iterate going forward. Specifically when we talk about how many miles of bike lanes we want to put in, looking at the biggest impediment to what happened before, which is for each mile of bike lane that we need to put in, DOT needs to do like multimillion-dollar traffic studies. Sometimes it'll take like years to get back, and then it has to go through a community board process, which are I think instruments for outrage, to say the least. And people like me will go, but that's because there's something severely wrong with me. You know, there's like each argument is like there's going to be traffic everywhere. Everybody's going to go out of business. Everybody's going to die. And so we kind of have this structure to like to impede the speed of how quickly we get these bike lanes in. I think you mentioned before you had just recently been to Buenos Aires. I spent multiple months there recently and It's actually incredible. Don't get me started. It is. They live in the good place. Anyway, they did most of their bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure in an incredibly short amount of time. They actually used to be really car-oriented, and I think even today they have the widest urban boulevard in the world. So just kind of looking at what they do differently than what we do, I think one of the biggest differences is the traffic studies. How long and expensive they are, like that we kind of almost uniquely do that. And just as someone who wants this to get done in my lifetime, I would hope that maybe we would take a look at those processes. Thank you for your time. Next. Hello. Good afternoon. I thank Council Speaker Menon, Transportation Chair Breyeu, and the other members of the Transportation Committee committee for this hearing. My name is Liam Jeffries. I am a lifelong New Yorker and Upper East Sider, and I'm here to express my strong support for the streets plan. I am in many— I am in many parts of the city regularly, both in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, and a major through line throughout my travels is my feeling the safest as a pedestrian, cyclist, and transit user in places that are designed to, that are designed to, from the outset, to fully account for my needs as a street user, as opposed to making them an afterthought. I say this as someone on the receiving end of several hairy incidents with, uh, with bad drivers as a pedestrian and cyclist. For a city as reliant on non-car infrastructure as we are, it is remarkable just how little our streets are designed reflect this fact. And while efforts to address this disparity do exist and have produced several really great projects— I'm a very enthusiastic user of the Third Avenue bus and bike lanes in New York on the East Side— these still aren't nearly enough to fully meet the scale of the safety crisis facing New York pedestrians and cyclists daily. It's a welcome relief to see the Mamdani administration take seriously again a plan that, for for civic and moral reasons too innumerable to count, should have never been stuck in limbo in the first place. I heavily encourage this administration to do everything they can to meet their legal and moral obligations under this plan. This includes fully funding DOT so that there's no ambiguity as to if the plan will fully happen. And this includes actually implementing Sammy's Law around school zones like we were promised years ago it was written to do, and not only using it for as justification for rules that fly in the face of what Sammy's Law was meant to do and accomplish in the first place. It's heartening to see the city treat this crisis with renewed urgency, and I heavily encourage them to follow through on their promises. Thank you. Thank you. It's Chancey. Chancey. Chancey. My apologies. Yeah, my name is Joe. I am a a lifelong cyclist. I also deliver food, and I can tell you right now that the protected bike lanes, they're dangerous because it seems like they only protect the rights for delivery workers and C Bike riders to speed on. Because right now, e-bikes, they can go as fast as the cars. They can go 25, 30 miles an hour, and especially since they widened them from the First Street's master plan Apparently, it's basically a malfeasance. It's actually malfeasance. I guess it gives them more opportunity to go the wrong way, there's more room to go the wrong way and stuff. And also, the open streets, outdoor dining, that's not transportation. That has nothing to do with transportation at all, especially open streets, since they're basically closed streets. It's closed to traffic, so it's anti-transportation. And watching the DOT testimony earlier, it seems like they don't even have confidence in their master— in their master plan, in best plans in the future, because they don't— they don't— they don't have any money. They couldn't even give you a budget estimate even— even 5 years from now. And roll your eyes, because you need money to put— to like do all this. And, um, you know, um, and, uh, God, this is my legal pad, by the way. I like it. Yeah, the thing is, like, you know what, that in the new— and also there was a report recently that it's going to cost $158 million to, to, like, make 6 blocks, like, uh, it's sort of a public realm in the Flatiron District. I mean, how are you going to do that? How are you going to do that with no money at all? I mean, especially— and also the streets, the streets all over the city are in disrepair from this winter. There's potholes everywhere, there's cracks everywhere. It looks like, it looks like missiles hit it.. And the thing is like the money should go to that before open street, before any streets master plan. That should be the streets master plan. Take care of the streets now instead of reimagining the streets. And also, and also one more thing. This, no, this is New York City, not New York Realm. And they're the Department of Transportation, not the Department of Transportation Alternatives because they're way too regulatory captured. And this is what happens when, this is what happens when you're in a city This is what happens when agencies are run by ideologues. Thank you so much for your testimony, and we appreciate diversity of opinion in this committee. It's not opinion, it's fact, Mr. Abreu. In fact, you shouldn't be Transportation Commissioner. You should be changed as a committee because you engaged in a protest with them, a rally with them. I saw you outside earlier. I'll next call on Kathy Marano. Michelle Campo, Augustine Hope, Evan Sweet, and Spiolove. My apologies if I'm butchering the pronunciation of your name. Seeing that we have one empty chair, I'm gonna call— seeing we have one empty chair, I'm gonna call Daniel Bush. Is Daniel here? Or Bosch. Not seeing Danny. I want to call someone else to come up. Norma Coat, come on up, Norma. All right, you may begin. Thank you very much. My name is Augustine Hope. I'm president of the West Village Residents Association. I do want to follow— agree that it's pretty shabby that Council Members Ressler and Mannon are not here after sponsoring the bill. And we're here just to talk about what the problems are with the existing program. They should be here to listen to it, and I'm hoping they're going to listen to this after the fact. I, um, Corey Johnson's office back in during the pandemic did a study of how many restaurants were compliant with the rules at the time, and he found— his office found that 93% of the restaurants were non-compliant with the rules. Right now, I would say that exactly the same number are non-compliant with the rules, and nobody here— Mr. Ressler, did not address DOT on this. Nobody at DOT has addressed the enforcement problems. Restaurants are not maintaining their clear paths. Restaurants are not handling their garbage properly. And restaurants are not addressing neighbors' concerns about noise. Also, daylighting issues have not been addressed properly by DOT. All across the board, there is no enforcement of the existing rules. Now, we're just 1% of the city's population, but we have 20% of the city's outdoor dining. We think we know what's going on here and what the problems are, and we think people should be listening to us, but nobody's coming to us to talk to us. And whenever we reach out to DOT or anybody, there's absolutely no response at all. So I'm going to submit some of our comments in writing, and hopefully we can have a conversation. I'm not I'm not holding my breath, but there are some real problems with the existing program, serious problems that have not been addressed, and there seems to be no system in place at DOT to deal with enforcement. DCA, now DCWP, were much better at this. DOT is absolutely not able to handle this. We think some thought should be given to this. Thank you for your time. And I, I agree that enforcement of the outdoor dining sheds during the pandemic was awful, um, and so to the extent that that's the— what we're working with, I mean, that, that brings, that brings a lot of glaring issues, uh, and I agree that the enforcement piece is something that as a committee we have to focus on. Thank you so much for your testimony. Um, good afternoon, Chair Breyu. My name is Evan Sweet. I'm the director of neighborhood planning for the Meatpacking Business Improvement District. I'm here today to thank the City Council for taking up the challenge of streetscape improvements in the public realm. Our work in the Meatpacking District has demonstrated that the reprioritization of space for the public is vital to New York's economic and social vitality. Over the past decade, the Meatpacking District has led the transformation, and in just in the last year, Fast Company identified the Meatpacking District as New York's most walkable neighborhood. This designation was no accident. Accident and only occurred through proactive efforts to transform the neighborhood's roads built for an industrial economy of loading docks and trucks into a space that prioritizes people and the economic activity taking place. While the butchers gave way to boutiques, the streets remained unchanged. What our district's transformation has demonstrated is that right-sizing streets for how people actually use them is both good urban planning and good economic policy. We have seen our investments in the public realm drive commercial leasing, lift retail sales, and create space for arts and cultural events that make the district a place people want to be. Our business community and stakeholders have embraced this, and the results speak for themselves. In the past 3 years, the Meatpacking District has worked— working with our great partners at the DOT, has successfully reallocated 13,000 square feet of roadway space for pedestrian use through our Western Gateway public realm vision. These projects, funded in advance by the bid with DOT's review and approval serve as a model for further expansion of pedestrian space throughout the city. Through these efforts, we have transformed roadways into curbside logistics hubs, public seating, and spaces for arts and culture. The result is quarters that match the neighborhoods they serve and improve quality of life. We have demonstrated these efforts can be replicated across New York City thanks to the great work of DOT's Public Realm Unit and community partners like BIDS and others. We have specific comment on selected council member introductions, which we'll share in written testimony. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for your testimony. Next up— oh, it's trying to get it closer. Okay, what— it's, it's at the end of the line. Okay, um, greetings remaining council members, and my name is Michelle Campo. Sorry. I am a member of QUP. I have a member of— I'm a resident of Little Italy. I am a member of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors. I am a member of the Bowery Block Association. I'm here for everybody, as usual. And I just want to get— I wrote a piece, but I just want to say that I'm here against INTRO 0655-2026, first off. And as a resident, and my husband is a, is a cyclist, actually he's an award-winning professional cyclist, and he's in agreement with me on being in against this proposition, or what you call it. Um, and, uh, yeah, enforcement, enforcement, enforcement. Okay. Now, this is what I wrote: The pandemic emergency is long over, but the residents, especially those in Lower Manhattan, will again be the victims if this goes through. Our areas are extremely oversaturated, and retail businesses are suffering, being pushed out by bars and restaurants and greedy landlords looking for ever larger spaces and incomes. And how are persons with disabilities to move inside a smaller pathway? Residents need access to retail stores for daily necessities. Residents need some peace and quiet in their lives. Quality of life was lost when the sheds were up, and many of us work from home. There's also the question of garbage, lack of street cleaning, and difficulty for sanitation to clear residential trash and recycling. Imagine how difficult it would be during another snowstorm The rodent population did not cease because the new receptacles are being used. The rodent population ceased because the roadbed sheds were eliminated. No more easy food. There are already too many obstacles in the city we love. Let's not add more. Please let sanity return. Everybody in my neighborhood was ecstatic when they came down. And there was one shed when it was being cleaned, I could smell something from 3 blocks away. I said, what is that? It was what was underneath that they were cleaning. These things are disgusting. And they are also a trap for, you know, as far as construction goes. Yeah, bad. Thank you very much. In the previous iteration of outdoor dining, I understand that rats were a big problem. And so we need to look at the structures and if we're going to go year-round, we need to make sure we're looking at the structures that are not going to allow for rats to be nesting in these, in these sheds. So I, I appreciate you sharing your testimony. Next, next up, my name is Norma Cote. I am a member of the public. I patronize outdoor establishments, and I also live among them. I am not a representative of any group, but I have spoken to many of my neighbors and friends, and they agree with what I'm about to say to you. As to allowing roadway cafes to operate during the winter, the dining public does not need any more dining facilities outdoors during the winter. We already have outdoor dining at sidewalk cafes year-round. We've always allowed it, uh, before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and now under the permanent rule. But during cold weather, many or most sidewalk cafes don't even operate outdoors. And those that do set up their tables and chairs get virtually no business. Roadway cafes would suffer the same fate. The general public, including tourists and visitors, would be negatively affected by unused roadway cafes during the winter months. They are a blight on the public streetscape. Just as abandoned sheds are. And that blight would persist 24 hours a day. Roadway setups are unlike sidewalk cafes, which during the hours when they're not operating, they secure their chairs, they put them all together, and they secure them with a cable or something. And often they bring their perimeter demarcations in right next to this compact array of chairs. The roadway cafes will not do that. They are always going to be there. The structure is always going to be there, even if they pull their chairs all together in one small space when they're not operating. I have heard people claim— exclaim that my neighborhood, which is a tourist area, is much prettier and much more pleasant when roadway cafes are removed. And as they now must be during the cold season, and we think that should continue. The other point has to do with public safety and with the provisions in both of these bills that would set out precise measurements for distance for various parts of the, of the street and the sidewalk. Decisions about safe and effective distances should not be made by a legislative body. There are professionals professionals who have had the knowledge and the experience to do that job in an efficient and safe manner. And this body, the city council, should not be overriding the judgments of the professionals in that field. I have more to say about that, but I guess I'll have to say it in writing. Well, thank you so much for your testimony, Norma. Really appreciate it. Next. Thanks for sticking around. I'm proud to be sticking around. I appreciate the opportunity to speak and appreciate that you're having this hearing. My name is Sprawl Love. I live in Central Harlem. I'm here representing the West 124th Street Block Association, and I want to speak strongly in favor of the streets plan. We've heard that it was not— the goals were not met, but I want to speak in favor of meeting those goals, uh, for two reasons: safety and fairness. Um, Community Board 10, where I live, which overlaps with Council District 9 pretty, pretty much, uh, is the only community board district without a protected bike lane. And it's, um, something that I think is glossed over. I was very disappointed to see— you said where? Community Board 10. You don't have a single bike lane there? Not one protected bike lane. Not one protected bike lane. Thanks for letting me know. There's one on Fifth Ave at the edge, and then the one to the west is the Greenway. Um, and I was disappointed to see that that will continue according to the update that was posted today that the DOT commissioner let us know about. Not only are there no protected bike lanes planned there, but of the three tiers of priorities Central Harlem is listed in the lowest tier priority. So he talked about equity, and I think this is a glaring hole, um, in, um, the plan. And I hope in the updated plan they address that. But I, I just wanted to let you know that as a resident, um, I don't feel safe riding with my family, uh, down to Central Park. And a protected bike lane along Adam Clayton Powell runs right through Central Harlem and would be a great connector between the Harlem River Greenway and Central Park. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. We've heard you all loud and clear. This panel is excused. So for the last in-person panel, we have Lou Martini. I apologize, I pronounced that— he had to leave. Ali Ryan, Mark Wouter, Ladies de la Rosa, and Nailah Rosario. You may begin. Hi, thank you so much. Thank you for hanging in here. We've been here since 10:00 a.m., so glad that we have our chance. My name is Nailah Rosario. I'm the national director of High Road Restaurants. High Road Restaurants is a coalition of restaurant owners that support paying a living wage. We have over 500 members Workers in New York City. I'm here really to elevate the voices of those restaurant employers who are calling for New York City to ensure that the restaurants that get an outdoor license pay a full minimum wage with tips on top. Our coalition consists of restaurant workers who already pay a full minimum wage with tips on top, and they report lower turnover, stronger staff morale, and We really want to make sure that we can pay a full minimum wage because it's going to create stability, and stability strengthens businesses. Some industry representatives are saying that they cannot commit to paying a full minimum wage, yet those are the same people that are asking the public to give up space on the sidewalks and to expand the and the seating, and it's going to increase their revenue. If a business can afford to grow, it can afford to pay their workers a fair wage. If the council is granting more space for these property owners to profit, it is completely reasonable to require them to pay a full minimum wage with tips on top. One fair wage is good for workers, it's good for businesses, and it's good for our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, and can you say who you— on whose behalf you're making this testimony? Yeah, um, making this testimony on behalf of Ali Ryan. Ali had to leave to pick up her daughter from school. Uh, Ali is a member of QUP and the New York City E-Vehicle Safety Alliance. Today, um, I'll read it in her voice. I'm speaking as a Council District 2 resident who has lived across the street from Road Bed curbside restaurants since 2020. My family and I can attest to the outdoor dining program's negative environmental effects: increase of rats and mosquitoes, noise pollution, inability to walk down a sidewalk, blight caused by graffiti and not maintaining these structures, roads not being cleaned, and slowing fire engines doing, um, promote, you know, keeping citizens safe. Today I am testifying against Intro 655, 628, and 1336. I'm one of thousands of New Yorkers who have testified against roadbed curbside shacks since 2021. Residents sued to force the city to conduct an environmental review of outdoor dining to document residents' citywide daily experiences living with roadbed shacks. Shacks. In 2023, City Council passed the current outdoor dining plan. I remember Gail Brewer admitting that the details of running the program to New York City DOT were non-existent, whereas the City Council members who voted no, including Chris Marte, apologized to New York City residents, acknowledging the real-life degradation of quality of life due to roadbed restaurant shacks. There's no reason to redo this process after a year with a new program. The seasonal outdoor dining program is open 7 months a year. It is common sense for the outdoor dining program to be closed for winter. Due to its distance from the equator, New York City experiences a winter of cold temperatures below freezing. This year we've had 2 blizzards, and today it is sleeting. Winter alone makes it difficult, if not impossible, to eat a hot meal outside. On paper, and to the restaurant industry and lobbyists, This year-round outdoor dining sounds great, but to many residents and families like mine who live in— and thank you very much. You're welcome. The remaining statement, we'll just submit it, we'll include it in the record. Thank you. Next. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ladies de la Rosa, and I'm with La Colmena supporting a one living wage for all. I'm here because if we want the privilege of expanding businesses onto public sidewalks through outdoor dining, we should meet the highest standard, and that includes paying one fair wage. Have a full minimum wage with tips on top. Other industries are required to pay the full minimum wage. Restaurants shouldn't be an exception. Using public space is a public benefit, and public benefits should come with public responsibility. The COVID pandemic showed us how unstable the subminimum wage system is. When businesses dropped, workers were left without a safety net. No one, especially those who keep restaurants running, should ever be forced to choose between their health or their paycheck. If outdoor dining is going to expand, it should lift up everyone, not just restaurant owners, but the workers who make businesses possible. Thank you. Next. Thank you. It was very nice to meet you. I'm proud to be the last speaker of the afternoon. My name is Mark Wooters. I run an urban planning Studio in Brooklyn in April 2020, during the height of the COVID lockdown. I met with the Department of City Planning and presented some of the very first plans for the outdoor dining, roadbed dining program. I then— and I have a passion for small businesses, and it was hurtful to watch our businesses suffer during that period. I also testified in June of 2020 to start the outdoor dining program. Um, but since then, in 2022, we saw a number of problems with the outdoor dining program. Um, and I think a lot of them have been, uh, you know, outlined here. What I noticed very prominently is that a number of people, when they winterized their sheds, they privatized a public space. And that is something that New York City really has never allowed to do in 200 years, 300 years. We haven't taken our public space that all of us use and turn it into private space in enclosed buildings to generate revenue for a private business. It belongs to all of us. And so if you allow the program to become year-long, The tendency of all of these people is probably going to be to make permanent structures. The guidelines say they're modular, they're supposed to be demountable, but after a couple years they're going to be permanent structures. We know that DOT doesn't have the facilities to monitor. I, I've seen so many violations of these sheds already. And so what you will have are permanent structures on top of our water supply lines. That are under the street, the electrical lines, the gas lines, the data lines, the sewer will all be blocked by these permanent structures. Firefighters will have difficulty getting to the buildings behind them. So I urge you to keep it seasonal. Thank you. I would say to that, I mean, we have cars taking over our streets that are privately owned. It's one of the most pervasive uses of— Yeah, but you can move a car. No, I You could also move a car. You can't move a building. Let me— you could, you could also move outdoor dining. You can have movable structures as well. Also, Citi Bike is also privately owned, that is also used by the public in the same way that outdoor dining is privately owned and used by the public. I'm just saying there's analogies. Pick up one of those structures and move it. We need to look at the right structures and technologies. Uh, but I agree, look, during the pandemic, the, the And that's our baseline. The sheds were— a lot of them were not movable. They were conducive to rats. And I think we need to look at better infrastructure to address a lot of the complaints. But that's just— I've been on— evidence of that. You're going to make it a permanent program based on no trial program. That's ludicrous. I've been on 3 times. We've had seasonal outdoor dining, and that's our proof so far. But either way, this panel is excused, and I just want to thank you for testifying. Thank you so much. Of course. Well, we'll take, we'll take what you said into consideration for sure. So there have been individuals who are here in person. I just want to make sure that I don't miss them. Daniel Bush, are you here? Samuel Riviera— Rivera— Viana? Andrew Paulson. I will now turn over to Zoom shortly. Just give me one moment. I'm going to adjourn for 3 minutes and I'll be right back. My apologies to the folks on Zoom. I have one more person who is in here, it's a Safaya in person who already signed up and she'll be joining us shortly. All right, Jacqueline. Yes. Hi. You may testify. You have 2 minutes. Okay. So my name is Jacqueline, and I have been a restaurant worker since I was 14 years old. When I was 18, I got a job in a nightclub inside a Trump Hotel, and the day that I was hired, they weighed me and told me that if I'd gained more than 10 pounds, I would be put on probation. I was the only person of color on staff, and from day one it was clear I wasn't being judged on the work I could do. I was being judged on how I looked. Every single night I worked, I was harassed. People grabbed me, made comments about my body. They slipped me their hotel room numbers along with their tips, and when I asked management for advice, they told me to play along. My safety didn't matter, only the tips did. It took me years to undo a lot of the self-esteem damage that that work experience gave me, and it all came down to wages. The system was designed so that my paycheck depended on whether or not I entertained harassment. That's not what a job should be. 70% of tipped workers are women, and without a real base wage, we experience the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry in this country. Today, we're deciding whether to expand outdoor dining— more tables, more customers, more exposure for workers like me. More situations where we have to smile through things no one should have to smile through because our rent depends on it. If you're going to give restaurants more public space to grow their business, the least that you can do is make them pay us one fair wage. No worker should have to choose between their dignity and their survival, not on the sidewalk or anywhere. Thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you, Jacqueline. On Zoom. Diana Maurer. You may begin. Okay, thank you. I'm going to read my testimony. Bear with me, I'm recovering from oral surgery, so I'm speaking weird. My name is Diana Maurer. I'm Vice President of the Chelsea West 200 Block Association, which covers the areas of 7th to 8th Avenue between 19th Street and 22nd Street here in Chelsea. I'm here to testify in opposition to the bill proposing making roadway cafes year-round and other changes to the outdoor dining program, including allowing grocery stores, etc., to sidewalk cafes. Our main reason for opposing this is that enforcement, which is key to the success of the Dine Out New York program, has been woefully insufficient ever since the program's inauguration. We cannot support any changes to the program until the city council and administration commit to proper enforcement of current regulations. My apartment is located directly above a bar and, and operates for roadway structure in flagrant violation of numerous dining, outdoor dining rules. Since it is not locked or secured, this roadway structure is effectively open 24/7. And available for use by anyone to hang out well after the business is closed. I'm speaking today not only as a 50-year resident of West 19th Street, but as a disabled senior with mobility challenges. Another location on my— another also located on my block is a restaurant with both sidewalk and roadway cafe. I'm unable to patronize this establishment as it's not ADA accessible. There, the roadway cafe is located on a raised platform. I want to skip ahead so I don't run out of time. And the sidewalk is blocked. The sidewalk, it's not partitioned off for the patrons. Your time has expired. Okay. And thank you very much. You may submit the rest of your testimony online and we'll make sure to read it. Next up, we have Sean Sweeney. You may begin. Sean, you're unmuted. We can't hear you, Sean. Sean, we'll come back to you. We're going to move now to Katherine Artson. You may begin. Uh, Lee Artson is on. Katherine left. Lee Artson, you may begin. Yes, can, can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you. Okay, great, thanks so much. The sponsoring council members stress that the public is clamoring for expansion of the program to go year-round. I really don't understand this so-called clamoring. What I can tell you is that since the permanent program took effect a little more than a year ago, conditions improved as the sheds came down. But clamoring, let's get real here, please. I can tell you nobody in our neighborhood is clamoring for year-round outdoor dining, for more sheds on their block, for less room on the sidewalks. I don't know anybody who's clamoring for the smell of disinfectant for more drug dens or after-hours hookup spots, because that's what these things become. And nobody's clamoring for the rats. And I mean, do we have to go back to Rat Academy? And who's clamoring to block the street sweepers and the snowplows or the waste haulers? Talk about dangerous traffic. I can't forget to mention the guy who got killed walking down the block. From a garbage truck going backwards down the block. Why? Because sheds block the turn from the other end. And who's clamoring to block the FDNY or NYPD or ambulances? I mean, what sense does this make for somebody having a heart attack at the restaurant or the apartments above it? Seriously? Again, I know people in neighborhoods all over the city, and I can't think of one clamoring for more sheds. But let's not think I'm really mad about this. I'm just trying to manage my disappointment. I just don't understand why we'd be contemplating expanding and scaling up this program I mean, didn't we already figure this out and settle the rules? Who needs it? Who's clamoring? Restaurant owners? Is this what they want us to go through every few years? And I don't need to say how much I love the restaurants and hope for their success. I do. But, you know, the reimagining vibrancy stakeholders, all New Yorkers narratives are just so tired. They're ruining those words for me. I think the reality is the only clamoring going on here is us trying to be heard. And are you hearing us? I hope so, because our neighborhoods need more headaches like a hole in the head. Your time has expired. Thanks. Thank you. We will now move on to Britt Burt. Britt, you're unmuted. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm here representing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Presenting testimony on Intros 655 and 628 regarding, regarding outdoor dining in the upcoming streets plan update. As a member of City Council, Borough President Reynoso was the lead sponsor on two bills dealing with outdoor dining, one that created the emergency program and a precursor to the bill that the council ultimately passed in 2023 to make the program permanent. Program has been a lifeline for small restaurants during the pandemic. It saved approximately 100,000 jobs. Allowed for people to interact socially in a safe setting, and generated tax revenue for the city. It has also helped New Yorkers reimagine what our streets can be, which is why so many New Yorkers share a desire to see the program succeed. Yet due to seasonal rules that the council adopted, we've seen the number of open restaurants drop from about 8,000 at the peak of the program to about 2,500, and now zero in the winter months. The seasonal program simply creates creates too many burdens on small businesses. The cost of purchasing an outdoor dining setup and paying to construct it, only to have to pay again to take it down and then pay again to store it for the off-season, is too burdensome for many businesses and is the most cited reason for why they are choosing not to participate. Intro 655 addresses this by allowing open restaurants to operate all year, as was originally intended. Intro 655 also addresses other important issues with the program. Including expedited approvals by preventing community boards from requiring extra application materials, acknowledging that agency-level requirements are sufficient to ensure safety, appropriateness, cleanliness, and accessibility. It also expands the number of businesses that can participate by opening the option for sidewalk cafe to grocery and specialty food stores, and by creating an option for businesses that are too small to have their own setup to coordinate with adjacent businesses to expand their space. Removing these barriers is in line with the program's original intent to make it as easy as possible for small and immigrant-run businesses outside Manhattan to participate. Your time's expired. One sentence on the streets plan. Thank you. That the borough president urges expansion of capacity in-house at DOT, um, more than a true BRT expansion, and a pilot of low-trap neighborhoods. Thank you, Britt. Didn't we go to college together, Britt? Yes, we did. We did go to college together. I remember you. Nice to see you, man. Thank you for testifying. Uh, we now have Inge Ivanchko. You may begin. Hi, my name is Inge Ivanchko. I am, um, the president of the London Terrace Tenants Association. Which encompasses 1,000 apartments in Chelsea. I am a member of Community Board 4. I am also a member of the Chelsea Council of Block Associations. I am speaking today on behalf of myself and the London Terrace Tenants Association when I say we do not need year-round dining. This was brought on a few years ago after COVID, and it was There was a lot of public engagement. It was put up for 9 months. You now want to put it to 12 months where there is no enforcement. There already is no enforcement. There's no enforcement for sidewalk cafes. There's no enforcement for outdoor dining, things that are illegal. Residents have to take it upon themselves to file numerous 311s and nothing happens. We contact the Department of Transportation. Nothing happens. I learned this morning at this meeting, um, when Council Member Epstein asked about the stipulations, which I'm a fan of at BLP, the Business License and Permits Committee. However, there are no stipulations enforced. So when the community asks for stipulations, there are no stipulations. That's not helpful. The only two council members that had anything positive to say about their constituents and their respect for their constituents' quality of life were Councilmember Chris Marte and Councilmember Harvey Epstein. The outdoor dining has not even been in effect for a year. There are still problems with it. There's quality of life issues, location issues. They haven't— there's no enforcement now, so there needs to be better enforcement before we even discuss. Your time has expired. Pardon? Your time has expired. Okay, thank you so much. We are against it. There are 40 block associations in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen that have written letters. Everyone is against it. So please listen to the constituents. Thank you very much for your testimony. We now have Christine Berthe. You may begin. Yes, good afternoon, good night soon. My name is Christine Berthe. I'm the founder of a 20-year-old nonprofit group called Check Peds, and we are fighting for more walking space and pedestrian safety in New York. I want to point out that the pedestrians were not consulted in the writing of of these bills. We support the extension of the roadway cafe to 12 months, subject to a number of conditions. But if you are in favor of expanding pedestrian space, do not start by taking it away. We vehemently oppose Intro 1336, which would further limit the pedestrian clear path to 8 feet without any distinction for pedestrian crowding. There are 97% of the streets in New York City which are 8-foot, but the other 3% are regional and global corridor where there is a lot of pedestrian, and changing the measurement would be a huge step backward for pedestrian safety. So, and, you know, promises of 1 million square feet in 5 years do not replace the walking space we have now. We also oppose the sidewalk placement of cafes for retail food. Today, in front of those establishments, you have deliveries, sandwich boards, shopping carts, food display, etc., and all of those components would be forced in the clear path once you have a cafe. If an expansion is permitted in front of a residential property, especially those on lower floors, they will be subject to continuous noise. And we need to be very careful that the cafes are closing earlier and that a lot of space do not give away. We want to see— Your time has expired. Oh, I'll send the rest. Okay, thank you so much. Sean Sweeney, you may begin. Coming back to you, Sean. You're unmuted. Sean, you're unmuted. Yes, I am now. Yep, we can hear you. Thank you. I'm Sean Sweeney. I'm the director of SoHo Alliance. 1,100-strong member organization founded in 1992. I'm on Community Board 2, and I'm also the former president and current member of the executive board of the Downtown Independent Democrats. And I'm going to go off script because it's petitioning time. And you know how difficult it is to get people to sign petitions because they say, oh, the politicians, they're all crooked, they're all corrupt, they don't to us. You know what? They're right. Listen, who is— anyone here from the neighborhoods? The people who have spoken, do they want this? No. Who wants this? You want this, sir. You live on West 81st Street. Is there one of these on your block? On Broadway? Not for blocks around. Lincoln Ressler, he lives in a tree-lined brownstone building on Brooklyn Heights. There are none for blocks near his house. Julie Mannin, she lives on West End Avenue, none in front of her house. How would you like it to have one of these underneath your bedroom window like the people in Community Board 2 and Community Board 3 where Marte and Epstein have spoken? How would you feel to have them, these kind of places underneath your window? And don't give me this rats mitigation, they've been there for years. I have videos I could show you. Of people fornicating there on Second Avenue. I have videos of on Ludlow Street, people shooting up at 9:00 AM in the morning. Kids are going to school. I can have— I have photos in SoHo. There was defecation going on at night in these bins. So stop this. Why don't you listen to the people instead of the lobbyists? You give politicians a bad name, sir. That's all. I'm sorry I'm off script, but you You get me angry, and I think I speak for a lot of people here. You're a disgrace, and anyone else who supports this bill in the council is a disgrace. From Sean to Sean, thank you very much. We now have Mary Avancio. You may begin. Yes, hello, can you hear me? I sure can. My name is Mary Avancio. I am opposed to Intro 628 and 655 and will make 3 points. Number 1, why have there been so few applicants in the permanent program? The answer, the program is no longer free. The program was free for 4 and a half years. The program's no longer free. It costs money to participate. Reality set in. People don't want to spend the money. Number 2. Why should we not have year-round dining? Because no one in their right mind wants to eat outside in the cold, much less the roadway, when one can dine comfortably indoors. Number 3. Why do I think expanding roadside is not a good idea? Idea. Has anyone considered where garbage goes that would normally sit out front for pickups? Well, I'll tell you where the garbage goes. It goes to neighboring buildings who have been living with extraordinary amounts of garbage that is not theirs for years. Expand roadside You'll have more garbage and it will be distributed further and further down the block. So no, I don't think expanding roadside is a very good idea. In my opinion, the only thing that needs quote fixing in this program is compliance. Lastly, it should be mandatory that all committee members be present for public testimony. The fact that there are what, how many, how many committee members are left here? 2, 3? Can I have an answer, please? Just one. Yes. Now just one. Well, it's an insult, sir, to the people of New York City. And I think something needs to be done about that. And I'm going to ask that you do something about that. Will you? We need to do better. Sir, will you do something about that? Not better. Will you do— I, I can't, I can't compel anyone's attendance here, but I'll communicate your concerns to, to my colleagues. Thank you very much. Please continue with your testimony. I'm finished. Thank you so much for your testimony. We'll now move on to Chris Schuyler, or Skyler. You may begin. My apologies. Good afternoon, Chair Breyeu. My name is Christopher Schuyler. I'm a managing attorney in the Disability Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. I'm a person who stutters. Thank you for holding the hearing today. I want to cover 3 points. I'll submit my broader points in writing later. But I want to talk about how the streets plan impacts people with disabilities, focusing on buses and on intersection redesign and pedestrian spaces. So really, the streets plan promises to benefit all New Yorkers, but particularly people with disabilities as they are shut out of other modes of transportation, including the subway. So, and so when we're talking about buses, we're in favor of bus stop redesigns. And, you know, as DOT acknowledged today that they're falling behind in that category as well as bus speeds. And improving bus speeds can be accomplished by many different ways. One way is actually hitting the benchmarks for building protected bus lanes. I want to stress that it's important to not remove bus stops as a way of improving bus speeds. That negatively impacts New Yorkers with disabilities. As they have to travel further to get to the next bus stop. So I hope the Council will support other methods of improving bus speeds. And so in terms of intersection redesign, daylighting is a positive thing. We heard a lot of mixed testimony from DOT today about how softened daylighting efforts are actually very dangerous. You know, there are challenges with hardened daylighting structures as well, including those large concrete blocks which can impede visibility. And for people who use wheelchairs, who are at a lower level, it can actually make it harder to see them. People with disabilities are disproportionately injured in traffic-related accidents. And lastly, pedestrian space. So my colleague Christine Berthet referred to the Pedestrian Mobility Plan, which set out various levels of clear space requirements. Your time has expired. Thank you. Just the last— You can wrap up. I'll give you 15 seconds. Thank you. Yeah, so just on that. We, we promote the, the implementation of the DOT's pedestrian mobility plan as it demands clear space recommendations. And we have, we have, we have some wariness around Councilmember's bill, which, which would impede clear path. Thank you very much for your testimony. I'll now transition now to Jim Wright. You may begin. Jim, Jim, you're unmuted. Yeah, here I am. Uh, thank you, Chair, uh, member Wong and, and Council for staying with us. This has been a long day for you. My name is Jim Wright, an architect and urban designer speaking for the American Institute of Architects New York. AIA New York was a strong supporter of Local Law 195/2019 and the streets master plan of 2021. While significant progress has been made in the first 5-year cycle of the master plan, a number of benchmarks are lagging, as we've heard. As DOT updates the master plan for the next 5-year cycle, we recommend adopting the following goals that reaffirm the city's vision a safer and more balanced, sustainable, and equitable public realm mobility network for the city. First, develop a comprehensive Complete Streets master plan that balances pedestrians with bike, transit, emergency service, commercial, and private vehicle uses. Next, commit to make up for the benchmark deficits from the first 5-year cycle within the next 5-year cycle, along with ambitious new targets with measurable performance outcomes. Next, complete build-out of a connected bike network for the entire city that prioritizes protected bike lane infrastructure, accommodates the increasing use of bikes for commercial freight and goods delivery, expands the network to reach underserved neighborhoods of the city, and expands the City Bike bike share network to increase bike mobility options for everyone. The bike network should provide full connectivity with and fill gaps with the city's greenway network. Next, continue to expand the city's public plazas and open space network, including the Open Streets program, prioritizing neighborhoods that are underserved by public open space and parks. Next, coordinate with the MTA to expand the creation of priority and exclusive bus lanes to improve bus speed and reliability, encourage more transit ridership, and reduce traffic congestion. Next, accelerate the implementation of Vision Zero traffic safety strategies. Your time has expired. Thank you very much for your testimony. You want to wrap up? 5 seconds. Sure. A street that— assure that all street crossings, intersections are designed for ADA accessibility, including visual and hearing impaired accessibility, and ensure that DOT has the funding and resources to implement the goals of the Street Plan. Thank you so much. Of course. Natasha Elder, you may begin. Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Natasha Elder. I'm the Regional Director for the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Strap Hangers Campaign. The New York Street— the NYC Streets Plan established clear, legally mandated benchmarks for protected bus lanes. Safer intersections, pedestrian spaces, and connected infrastructure. These were not aspirational goals. They were commitments to New Yorkers. Yet the required targets yet have to be fully met, and these shortfalls have real consequences for riders. Riders can't afford another streets plan to be ignored like the last one. As an organizer of CUNY students across the city, the message I hear is consistent. Their buses are slow, their commutes are too long, and reliability remains a daily source source of stress. For many students balancing school, work, and family responsibilities, unpredictable bus service is not an inconvenience, it's a real barrier. Corridors such as Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and Main Street in Queens urgently need to be prioritized, including focusing on dedicating bus lanes, transit, transit signal priorities, and physical protections to keep lanes clear. These are proven tools that can meaningfully improve bus speeds and service reliability. As the council conducts oversight today, we urge a recommitment to meeting the streets plan legal targets and ensuring that the Department of Transportation has the funding, staffing, and authority necessary to close existing gaps. The success of this plan should ultimately be measured by outcomes, faster speeds, safer streets, and more predictable service for New Yorkers who depend on transit every day. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Now we have Clint Smeltzer. You may begin. You're unmuted. Hold on, apologies for that. I was just getting onto my camera. No worries. Didn't realize I was on deck. Sorry about that. And I'll give folks follow-up. Can you please restart his time? Okay. Perfect. Sorry about that. Before you start, Clint, you're now, and then Matthew Shapiro is next so that the next person can start getting ready. Thank you. You may start. I'm here. Sorry. I am here for speaking as CB3's SLA committee chair. Our community board has not had a chance to actually vote on the year-round roadbed cafes, so I'm just going to basically discuss the problems and issues we've had. This is not a formal statement by the community board. The biggest issue we've had is that one size does not fit all for the different communities. CB3 currently has 107 roadbed cafe applications, along with 147 sidewalk cafe that we have processed. We don't know how many conditional applications DOT has processed. It's perhaps more than double that number. We have the 2nd highest in the city by far after our neighbor CB2. Other districts may have a few roadbed cafes. We've experienced residential side streets as well as avenues lined one after another on both sides of the street. This changes the whole nature of our community as well as creating quality of life issues, especially on residential side streets under families' bedrooms. You know, just imagine if there were roadbed cafes lined during both of these last few snowstorms we've had. I know that's already been mentioned. Business owners have made clear that one of the problems they have is the expense and the logistics of taking down and setting up the cafes, as well as storage. And how will that happen for snow removal, for road removal? You know, that would be an additional expense, which we also don't want to put on our, on our businesses. This is one area we've discovered that the city may be able to help, possible with credits, using vacant city property for storage, other things. Also, additional seating is not necessarily a problem in the winter. You can see that by our many unused year-round sidewalk cafes that are mostly empty during this time. Sidewalk seating could be used as enclosed sidewalk cafes. That would be a much more reasonable solution for us, as opposed to having roadbed cafes year-round. Because we're mostly residential, it cannot be treated in the same manner as some of the more commercial areas, and also districts that have fewer roadbed cafes that don't impact the community as greatly. Your time has expired. Thank you so much for your testimony. Matthew Shapiro followed by Michelle Birnbaum. You may begin. Matthew, you're unmuted. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, thanks. Uh, my name is Matthew Shapiro. I'm the legal director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center. Um, we are a membership-based organization of over 3,000 mostly immigrant vendors who work in New York City's public spaces selling food and merchandise. And we recognize that outdoor dining has played a crucial role in allowing restaurants to use public space to ensure their survival and vibrancy, and we support its expansion. However, it's critical that existing street vendor locations not be lost due to restaurants and other stores expansion into public space. Our very limited concern with the outdoor dining laws is the potential displacement of longtime vendors due to restaurants and retail stores' outdoor setups. This law and any accompanying agency rules should contain some safeguards to ensure that the outdoor dining setups do not result in the displacement of street vendors. Also, it should be noted that there are inequities in the way public space laws are enforced for vendors compared with restaurants and other retail food stores. Vendors are subject to police enforcement, either through the NYPD or DSNY, while restaurants and retail stores are inspected by civilians from agencies. While we know that restaurants and street vendors have existed alongside each other for more than a century, and we know that public space can be shared, in the past vendors have not had the same opportunities and legitimacy as brick-and-mortar businesses, and this legislation should make clear that restaurants and food store expansion into the sidewalk and street space should not come at the expense of vendors' livelihoods. The presence of street activities such as outdoor dining and street vending make New York City a livable metropolis. We look forward to working with the council to ensure that restaurants, retail food stores, and street vendors can continue to thrive. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have now Michelle Birnbaum, followed by Emma Colbert. Yes, thank you, Chair Abreu and members of the committee. Thank you for hearing my testimony today. I'm a member of CB8 Manhattan and a founder and president of Historic Park Avenue. And although today I'm Speaking on my own behalf, it is with great disappointment that I'm witnessing the revised effort to pass bills asking for year-round dining for an increased number of restaurants, bodegas, and grocery stores. To my knowledge, as neighborhoods and communities have not asked for this, it's painfully obvious that this is a giveaway to the Hospitality Alliance and restaurant associations. This group has received ample compensation for COVID release and mitigation. No need for a bill to for that bailout to go on forever. These are sophisticated business owners who know full well how to turn a profit within their four walls of their rental establishments. It's obvious what they have to gain from this: additional square footage for expansion at a minimal cost, no requirement to increase their labor force, shared liability with the City of New York, increase of business hour and capacity, and the ability to dominate neighborhoods in the streetscape. But the resident who lives above a restaurant or in an area has nothing to gain. That resident will experience an increase of noise, rats, street congestion, food odors, garbage accumulation, and a dangerous crowding of the pedestrian way. With the understaffed, underbudgeted Department of Transportation being in charge of this program, we can be assured that the conditional permit and final permitting process will be unsupervised and enforced, leaving many establishments never to obtain a permanent license. The unlicensed as well as the licensed will be unsupervised with the laws being unenforced. There's no provision in either bill requiring increased budgeting for administrative and enforcing agencies— agents. Groceries, bodegas will have chairs, tables in the street with the requirement of only 8-foot clearance to accommodate pedestrians, carriages, children, the disabled, and, and with the street of only 25 feet wide, with only— time has expired. I just— let me finish up, please. I'll let you wrap up. I'll let you wrap up. 15 seconds. Thank you. You will have 17 feet of cafe space because on a 25-foot block with 8-foot clearance, you can have a cafe that takes up 17 feet of industrial space. Also, insurance costs will increase for the proprietor. Thank you so much. Will be shared by the city. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're not very much— you guys, appreciate it. We'll make sure to read it. We have next Emma Colbert, followed by Susan Stetzer. You may begin. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? We can hear you. I sure can. Thank you. My name is Emma Colbert. I live on Canal Street for the last 20 years. I'm a mother of 2 teenage sons, the president of the Space Block Association on the Lower East Side, a member of Neighbors on Canal, and a property owner of a location that is completely surrounded by outdoor dining in an open street. People think of Canal Street as 6 lanes of traffic, but our stretch east of the Manhattan Bridge was the quiet side. It was a balanced ecosystem of mom-and-pop shops and immigrant families. Since 2022, that equilibrium has shattered. While the residential population remains largely immigrant and working class, the commercial landscape has been surrendered to a 24/7 alcohol and drug-filled playground from April to November. Many of my neighbors live in tenements and warehouses. They rely on open windows for ventilation. Now they're forced to choose between stifling heat or a sea of noise and clouds of smoke from marijuana and cigarettes. On narrow streets like Division, which is one-third of the city's streets that comprise the Dime Square Triangle, the acoustics are such that the outdoor dining makes it impossible to sit in the living room without hearing a constant roar of noise. Our sidewalks are no longer navigable for two-thirds of the year between the putrid filth left behind from sheds that street sweepers can't reach and the throngs of people blocking the clear path required by the ADA. My sons are forced to navigate an unhealthy adult situation every single day. Can you imagine how the city would have navigated the streets with the winter snow if it were also clogged with sheds. Noncompliance is the norm. Establishments are ignoring their 10 PM closing stipulations with zero consequence. The DOT fails to enforce stipulations. They only investigate if a complaint is filed, yet the 311 system for open restaurants is so convoluted it's nearly impossible for the average resident to use. The Lower East Side's been treated as sacrificial lambs for the nightlife industry. The food and beverage lobby is fierce. However, we are asking asking for you, the city, to lobby on behalf of the people for whom you serve. Year-round roadway dining is an egregious and predatory ask which commandeers public space for private profit. Stop prioritizing sidewalk— Your time has expired. Over the actual residents who live— Please wrap up. Implement real proactive enforcement, the law already on the books, and maintain seasonal roadway dining timeline. Thank you. No, thank you very much. Susan Stetzer followed by John Grimes. You may begin. Susan, you're unmuted. Susan, we can come back to Susan if she's— if they're not available at at the moment. Are they, are they online? They're online, just not, uh, responding to unmute. All right, we'll come back. John Grimes. John Grimes, you're unmuted. Yes, I'm here. Thank you so much, uh, Chair Abreu. Our pleasure. John Grimes. I'm here in my personal capacity. I'm a 35-year resident of the West Village and have experienced the negative impact of the dining out program firsthand. I'm opposed to any change to the program that would loosen the rules or provide for year-round outdoor dining. The underlying premise of the program is critically flawed, and the impact on the environment, including noise pollution, has never been fully assessed as required by law. You've heard that from some other commenters today. And now we are proposing to double down on the flawed program by expanding it year-round. As others have mentioned, the recent blizzards showed the folly of the of this proposal. The legislation tries to address this issue by talking about snow removal and sanitation, but the language does not make sense. In the case of a blizzard such as the one last week, there will be no time to remove these structures, many of which have been granted waivers from complying with the department's movable recommendations. I heard a lot about that today. My quality of life has been severely harmed by this program and the associated noise and drunken behavior from patrons who congregate outside the establishment in my immediate neighborhood. Patrons are standing around sheds, drinking, spilling out into the sidewalks, blocking access. The sheds are not a solution from sidewalk crowding, but rather they contribute to it. Writing rules for expanding sidewalk access yet allowing these structures in the roadway is entirely counterproductive. I'm also opposed to the drop-in center. I haven't heard much about that today. The drop-in center for restaurant owners. Where is the drop-in center for property owners who have been subjected to abuses of the program for years. Instead, as I mentioned, we've had to file 311 complaints. I've filed hundreds of those, and yet the bad behavior continues with impunity. And under the proposal, it would continue year-round. In summary, I'm speaking for those of us who live in neighborhoods such as the West Village that have been disproportionately impacted by this ill-conceived program. I oppose any loosening of the rules and ask that you conduct a long-overdue environmental impact assessment before continuing program. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Susan Stetzer, we're coming back to you. You may begin, followed by Alexis Adler. Susan, are you, are you there? All right, we'll come back to you, Susan. Hopefully we can resolve the, the muting issues there. Alexis Adler, followed by Deborah Farley. You may begin. Hi, thank you very much. My name is Alexis Adler. I'm calling in from the East 12th Street Block Association. I'm a community garden member of El Sobriante and Down to Earth Community Garden. We just won an award at the Green Thumb Award Ceremony on Friday. The only ones who are clamoring for year-round sheds are the rats. The rats, when they, when we had year-round sheds, they were pervasive. They were living underneath those sheds. When they were removed, they were scurrying about, and I know that the new sheds are supposedly more cleanable under, underneath, but that is not the case. If you have year-round sheds, you cannot clean under them, and there is just no way that you are going to avoid the rats, and we don't want to live with them. And they were in our gardens, and it was just a battle. And we were battling the sheds. And so we are opposed to those year-round sheds. We're in the East Village. There's a million of them. We are just inundated. And so please vote against year-round sheds. It's just wrong. And like, like I think other callers have spoken up about snow removal, sanitation. It just can't be, you know. And so please vote against it. And I'm a biker as well, and I'm for more bike lanes. I've been biking for 45 years, and please, you know, support us. Your time has expired. Thank you very much for your testimony. We'll now hear Deborah Farley, followed by Charlton D'Souza. Can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you. Okay, I'm Debbie Farley. I'm a QUP member, and I oppose Intro 655 and 628. Expanding outdoor dining year-round creates public health, environmental, and safety concerns. Winterized structures reduce visibility. Limit curb access, impede snow removal, and restrict mobility for seniors and people with impairments. Enforcing fire codes, building standards, ADA requirements, and seasonal regulations requires resources the city clearly lacks. Previous year-round outdoor dining led to unmaintained structures, rodent infestation, health and safety hazards that were both difficult and timely to get successfully resolved. Keeping outdoor dining seasonal allows for effective snow removal and the maintenance and the cleaning of streets and sidewalks at least 4 months each year. Outdoor dining declines in colder months, leaving dining sheds underused or abandoned, but still requiring maintenance and inspections by the DOT. Enforcement is virtually nonexistent. Outdoor dining is an amenity, not a core essential service. Funding it citywide during a deficit prioritizes a limited sector over broader public needs. Outdoor dining mainly supports restaurants in wealthier, high-traffic neighborhoods, leading to unequal public spending and greater socioeconomic disparities. It does not generate reliable direct revenue for the city. Tax revenues from restaurants do not offset the program's operational and administrative costs. The restaurant industry has already received substantial public funding and favorable policy changes. The federal government provided $5.5 billion in pandemic grants and forgivable loans to New York City restaurants. Sidewalk cafe fees are now a quarter of the pre-pandemic level. In closing, the city budget should reflect the council's commitment to its constituents. Your time has expired. Funding for essential services that ensure quality of life conditions, safety, and well-being, rather than discretionary programs that bolster— Thank you very much. And serve proportionately fewer individuals. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're now going to Charlton D'Souza, followed by M. Petretti. You may begin. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Charlton D'Souza. I'm the president of Passengers United. We're a nonprofit organization. So basically, transportation engineering professionals should be planning bus lanes with community residents, not outside lobbyists. Okay. And outside dining on roadways, it blocks fire trucks, police during emergencies, and it causes traffic rats, water bugs, and drug use. And I'll give you a perfect example of open dining gone wrong. East 60th Street between Lexington and Fifth Avenue, over there, the Q32 bus got stuck in all the traffic for almost 30 minutes because of open dining on the roadway. So again, you'll need to consider that. This is why Department of Health NYPD, the fire department, they should all be involved in the planning of this, and they should be looking at these plans. And really, the city council should not even be endorsing this because it's dangerous. You know, one time a friend of mine was eating at a restaurant with his girlfriend, and the rat came out of the open dining area and was crawling on their leg while they were eating. Crazy story, but it's true. And yeah, you don't know what's in those planters. So I would just say they shouldn't be on the streets because that goes against transportation. Transportation is supposed to be like, you know, streets where everything can pass through. As far as the bikes and the e-bikes, they're out of control. And I agree that Priscilla's Law needs to be looked at. Safety needs to be looked at, and they should really have bike licenses, you know, and also they don't care about pedestrians. A lot of times if you're waiting at the light, they'll just run right through you and you have the right of way. And that's how people are getting hit. And many of these bikers don't have insurance. These e-bikes— his time's expired. Thank you. Well, Charlton D'Souza, I want to thank you for your testimony. And I promise you, I'm a rat-hating transportation chair. So It's something that we definitely need to make sure that we're looking at is the rat problem. So next up we have M. Petretti, followed by Michelle Coppersmith. You may begin. Hi, my name is Mary and I am a resident of Greenwich Village. I am a former restaurant worker. I'm now disabled, so I'm going to speak— be speaking to the restaurant dining from those perspectives and backing up everything that Emma Colbert, John Grimes, and Charlton D'Souza just reported. You know, I'm finding in assessing through CB2 the restaurants that want to have sidewalk and street dining. They've— they're not interested in being part of the community anymore, and I feel that this has separated us. It is impossible to police diners that are on the sidewalk and to make sure that there's a clear path. Density of the sidewalk and the space between the restaurant and the outdoor dining as set dressing. They have, uh, sandwich boards. And we're not here to police businesses. 311 is impossible to report all the transgressions. And it's not our job. We're okay to put in for 311 for potholes. All the restaurants in our neighborhood do not follow the rules. The density is tremendous. A business is conducted on the sidewalk. There's no oversight. There are too many bad actors. The safety is not there. And I think the speaker is disingenuous to say that they want to make things— the time has expired— easier. And please wrap up. Thank you. A burden to us to process this. Thank you for your time. I'm against for all outdoor dining. Thank you so much for your testimony. Dining pool. Thank you so much for your testimony. We now have Michelle Cuppersmith followed by the 9th Street A1 Block Association. Michelle, your time, you may begin. Start us now. Thanks. Hi, Chair Abreu. Thank you so much for having us here today and for taking the time to listen. I will just beg, I know you're a new chair, that maybe you can start numbering people so that we know when we might get called. Otherwise, we're sort of chained to our computers all day. My name is Michelle Cooper-Smith. I live on East Broadway, and during the current outdoor dining season, I live above at least 4 outdoor dining setups, and I absolutely love it. To respond to previous testimony, I just want to say that it's compassionate to expand the outdoor dining program year-round for several reasons. One thing I haven't heard today is about those who suffer from invisible disabilities and who suffer in a city that does not accommodate them. Does not provide enough outdoor opportunities, and so they are so often forgotten. I've heard several opponents claim that COVID is over. Maybe to them it is, but they're lacking compassion for those who are immunocompromised and for whom outdoor dining has been a lifeline. I also want us to have compassion for the small business owners who are able to grow their businesses and pursue the American dream because of outdoor dining. With the current permanent program, are unable to bear the unwieldy costs of storing and dismantling setups for non-year-round dining. So in fact, the current law benefits corporate restaurants, especially in Manhattan, which is how the program basically was before the expansion and the ZTA changes, and in fact disadvantages the small business owners. I'm sure a lot of people testifying against the outdoor dining for year-round purposes would claim support. I also want us to be compassionate for the employees who lost their jobs due to the curtailing of the outdoor dining program, something that is well documented. So I ask the committee and the council to support year-round outdoor dining to make our city more equitable. And I also support any work that can be done to making sure that the city's street plan is fully implemented. Unfortunately, the last administration really failed in its requirements there. And so I thank you for revisiting this. Thank you all and have a great day. No, thank you for testifying. Next up, the 9th 9th Street A1 Block Association, followed by Laura Sewell. You may begin. Hi, my name is Kate Pulse. I'm co-chair of the 9th Street A1 Block Association. We represent about 60 members on our block of East 9th Street in the East Village, which is already overcrowded and oversaturated with liquor licenses. We are vehemently opposed to Intro's You know what I'm talking about. There is absolutely no public benefit to this privatization of public streets and sidewalks, which will only benefit the restaurant and nightlife industries. For residents, your constituents, these bills only sell out our publicly owned, taxpayer-paid-for, and already overcrowded streets and sidewalks. They will only increase the difficulty we already have in navigating them, especially in our downtown neighborhoods where many sidewalks are already too narrow for the amount of people walking on them. These bills also hinder regular street cleaning and snow removal during the winter. New York City is not Paris, which has wide boulevards and avenues to absorb the noise diners and drinkers make. We live in a densely packed city, at least in Manhattan and especially downtown, with canyon-like avenues and streets where noise bounces off buildings and creates issues for residents and their living and especially sleeping quarters. Most of our residents on 9th Street, our bedrooms are on the street, so we hear pretty much everything out there. We as residents and taxpayers of New York City implore you not to pass these bills. Our quality of life and health is more important than the nightlife industry. Thank you. Well, thank you. Next up we have Laura Sewell, followed by Robert Dobruskin. You begin. Uh, hi, thank you. I'm Laura Sewell, and I'm the director of the East Village Community Coalition, which is known for our work in support of independent businesses. We celebrate vibrant streetscapes, are helping to steer the Avenue B pedestrian open street towards a long-anticipated street improvement plan, and support a robust streets plan. Unfortunately, winter roadway dining in our neighborhood has not been vibrant these past few years. I'd like to just elaborate on why the current roadway model does not work in oversaturated neighborhoods such as ours, especially when applications are considered individually and not in context of like what next door. So we have end-to-end outdoor dining structures, which leave no access for deliveries, as our Teamster friends mentioned earlier, or for DSNY to connect— collect the residential trash placed in the amenities lane behind them. There was provision for the restaurant trash in this plan, but not how you get past the end-to-end structures to get to it at all. Any form of shelter within 200 feet of a food source is an invitation to rodents. When it's unused, it becomes even more attractive. I urge the DNT personnel and sponsors of this legislation to take DSNY's RAD Academy training to inform their work. You don't have to believe me. They do an excellent job of explaining what the problem is. Our neighborhood businesses struggle through January and February. They can barely fill their indoor space, let alone sidewalk cafes. They are stymied by the ever-changing rules for outdoor dining and about what to do with roadway structures over the winter. That does not necessarily mean they want to service them all year round. So, allowing them to remain up and unused is not the answer. For operators that do want— Thank you for your testimony. Time has expired. Sort of exceptional path, and for those who don't, we need other solutions. Thank you so much. We now have Rob Dobruskin, followed by Christopher Leon Johnson. You may begin, Robert. Thank you. I'm Robert Dobruskin, Vice President of the Council of Chelsea Block Associations. While we recognize the value of outdoor dining to restaurants and neighborhood vibrancy, it is premature to expand the program as proposed. Proposed. The current program suffers from inconsistent administration and insufficient enforcement. Applications are often approved despite noncompliance, and repeated community complaints frequently result in little corrective action. Before expanding to year-round roadway cafes, reducing pedestrian clear space, or streamlining approvals, enforcement must be addressed. In residential areas like Chelsea, Extended outdoor alcohol services also cause noise and disorder, further underscoring the need for clear operating standards. Regarding 1336, CCBA strongly opposes reducing the required pedestrian clear path. Dense neighborhoods already face obstacles like tree pits, scaffolding, subway entrances, and bike docks. Pedestrian accessibility for seniors, families, and people with mobility challenges must remain paramount. CCBA supports a seasonal European-style dining model—tables, chairs, and umbrellas—which reduces construction, storage, and insurance burdens while minimizing sanitation and quality of life impacts. Outdoor dining must meet the same standards of accessibility, sanitation, enforceability, and equity. We expect of any long-term public space use. In summary, before broadening eligibility or reducing pedestrian protections, the city should demonstrate that the existing framework is enforceable, equitable, and operationally sound. We urge the new administration and City Council leadership to reassess implementation, strengthen enforcement, and ensure long-term public space use balances community needs with responsible governance. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Christopher Leon Johnson. You may begin. Yeah, hello, my name is Christopher Leon Johnson. I support the Street Master Plan, but Mr. Obreyu, you have to disclose to the people that the pre-panel that was before the DOT were all pro-car, anti-car lobby nonprofits like the riders' lines and open plans and transportation alternatives and family safe streets. What you did today was you promoted, you exploited your position as chair to promote an agenda knowing that the people, they get more time than everybody else. You promoted an agenda using as a government platform, sir. But I respect what you're doing. You're a great person at heart. I know you're a great person at heart. I support Intro 3 when it comes to extending the bike The bike network. I want to keep it clear that this is for the delivery service. They need us for delivery service. We need more bike parking for delivery workers. I support that 100%. The street master— I support the streets plan 100%, the street master plan for New York City 100%. I hope that Madani breaks it home. But I want to make this clear right now that going forward, Mr. Abreu, you need to start talking to your girl, Lydia Galoppa work on this project to put a leash on her boy Joshua Wood, because this morning he stick the middle finger to JQ's face when, um, he asked, you know, a question about DoorDash, about why he ain't locked out the apps. So going forward, um, we need to start having more respect for each other because that was uncalled for what Mr. Joshua Wood did today by sticking a middle finger to JQ's face on City Hall steps. I got to be— I got to— Can you stay on topic, Mr. Johnson? I'm on topic, I'm on topic. I make it clear that I support this 100%, but you need to start checking your boys and gals like Leticia Galapa and tell the people to chill out when it comes to dealing with people they don't approve of. Because what's going to happen going forward is that they're going to fall on that sword when it comes to many of these, when it comes to certain policies, especially when it comes to universal daylighting, because they work with transportation alternatives. Thank you for your testimony. Time has expired. Thank you. All right, thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. Uh, next up, um, Susan Stetzer's off. All right, so fine. So if we have inadvertently missed anyone that has registered to testify today and has yet to have been called, please use the Zoom hand function if you are testifying remotely, and you will be called in the order that your hand has been raised. If you are testifying in person, please come to the dais. Seeing no one approaching the dais and seeing no one else signed up, I may have acted prematurely. One second. Scott Lynn, are you ready to testify remotely? Oh, yep, sure, please proceed. Hi, my name is Scott Line. I'm a resident of Manhattan Community Board 4. I submitted some written testimony just a few minutes ago, but there are a couple of things that have come up during the course of this hearing that I thought I would, um, that were new to me and I thought raised different issues. First, someone just testified about disabled people needing to be able to use the outdoor dining facilities during the winter. My understanding is that the law permits but does not require restaurants to operate these facilities during winter months. It seems to me if we're going to permit them to have the facilities in operation during the winter months, they should be required to serve people who want to sit outside during those periods. It shouldn't be optional. The, the second thing is, sort of separately, I think it was news to me that the DOT is expecting that even if we allow these things to operate in the winter, that they would be required to remove the structures temporarily during heavy snowfalls or for milling and paving and things like that. So my understanding is that the only reason that restaurants want the ability to, to have the winter months is so that they don't have to ever take these structures down. And so I guess there's a real tension there between the, uh, the requirement they were— that they would remove them before a snowstorm and the desire not to ever have to take them down. And so I think that's something that the legislation needs to really struggle with before it gets passed, because what are they going to do with the structure during the snowstorm for the 3 days or the week? Thank you for your testimony. Time has expired. I'm going to give you another 15 seconds to wrap up your thought. That's it. I'm done. All right, well, thank you, Mr. Lynn, for your testimony. Seeing no one else signed up on Zoom and seeing no one approaching the dais, this hearing is hereby adjourned. Thank you all for