Submitted by Carolyn Konheim, Mar 21, 2007 13:02

We're lucky to have a choice for Commissioner of NYCDOT two great candidates who appear to be willing to leave their lucrative consulting posts—at least for two years and, hopefully, longer. The favorite of transportation advocates, Janette Sadik-Khan, is smart, collegial, funny, hard-headed and has her eyes in the right direction. She's a big picture person who can mobilize bureaucrats and knows how to work the backroom. Investing her impressive energy in shaping intelligent transportation policy, she may be forgiven for not being more concerned about the work of the consulting giant of which she is a V.P. that so dominates the region. The question is whether Janette's right thinking will be enough to redirect NYCDOT's paltry responses to massive growth and to extend her reach to those making land use and transit decisions.

The less public Michael Horodnicenau is more progressive than generally appreciated. He really knows city streets and how they could function better for everyone. His firm's Technical Memo #1 to NYCDOT on Downtown Brooklyn so honestly reported traffic and transit conditions (including the penalty of "free" bridges) that developers' EISs and compliant agencies have been covering up, that the rest of the high level study--a Mayoral commitment--has been buried for two years.

Mike was a pioneer traffic calmer. In 1986, as NYCDOT Deputy Commissioner, he offered $600,000 to carry out a community traffic calming plan that would have done 20 years ago what the City's costly sidewalk cosmetics still ignore—protecting neighborhood streets from through traffic. He was so far ahead of his time that he took brickbats in a personal appeal to a skeptical community board that now rues the day they voted it down. Today, he uses graphic traffic network models (tools NYCDOT has refused for Brooklyn) to show how innovative pedestrian measures can benefit everyone. If chosen, he'll know where in the agency to find good people ready to do the right thing.

Carolyn S. Konheim, March 21, 2007, 323 words

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