CM Krishnan on open streets funding and moped safety

Thank you so much, Chairs.

Good to see you all.

Commissioner, First Deputy Commissioner, DOT team.

I said a few questions.

So one, and I apologize if this came up before, too, but as you all know, we've been very close partners working together along our Open Street program across the city, especially in Jackson Heights, where we got the most successful one, in my non-biased opinion.

But I just want to get a sense of what funding have you allocated for the program and how are you envisioning for the program overall across the city and how are you envisioning prioritizing open streets with the new budget?

Thank you, Council Member.

Yeah, so we're really glad that thanks to the $6.4 million that was added to the budget, we're able to keep the baseline for the open streets.

Also excited that we have, I guess, last week we announced the launch of the open street season, and we already have over 150 initial locations, which is about 20% more than where we were at this point last year, and still more to come.

So that's great.

Yeah, so our intention is really to keep the program growing and actually to keep kind of innovating and thinking across the board with all of our open space and public realm initiatives, how we can

support communities, how we can build in even better structures from an operations and maintenance standpoint.

Great.

I'm glad to hear it.

I'm glad to hear that's a priority, too.

And I wanted to mention one thing with that as well, and I appreciate you and your team, Commissioner, and the Deputy Mayor coming out to visit our open street.

As you know, and Council Member Wong mentioned this too, it was very, very tragic to read the story about what happened on the Queensborough Bridge with the e-bike and our scooter and cyclist.

My real, real concern, and you all know it well too, is that we can have similar.

We've had narrow misses or children hit by mopeds on our open street on 34th Avenue, which is very successful.

And I'm very concerned about this conflict between mopeds that are taking over and creating a highway there in a pedestrian space.

And so what I'd love to keep working on together is we really need to look at Northern Boulevard as a solution for mopeds, which are class three motor vehicles.

They belong with cars, not with people.

And I think to get the open street to be successful, we need to really solve this moped situation in an effective way.

And that involves looking at other places for micromobility uses and lanes.

And I'd hope to be able to work with you all on doing so.

Thank you, Council Member.

I agree that, you know, as we've seen more proliferation of these two-wheeled devices, and again, some are classified as e-bikes, some, like you mentioned, are actually should be in the road with, you know, motor vehicles.

This is really an area of focus for us, and we know it's very urgent for a lot of New Yorkers as well.

So we're always happy to look at big ideas.

and figure out how to solve these things.

Well, I look forward to that work together, too, on Northern itself.

And my last question is on Northern Boulevard, we have a bus lane now, which has been very effective, and we appreciate all your work on that, too.

The biggest problem we're seeing, and I see it myself, is on the weekends, at nighttime,

So many cars are double parked and use it as a parking lot, basically.

And it's down miles in front of all the bars there, too.

And the biggest issue there is enforcement.

So can we work together to actually create an effective enforcement system to make sure that the bus-only lanes are for buses?

Absolutely.

You know, I think managing our curbs and having, you know, streets that are efficient and work for everyone, that's really the next frontier.

And there's so much more we can be doing, which is why we created this Office of Curb Management in the agency.

But certainly the bus lane specifically, the automated camera enforcement, and, you know, what other tools do we have?

We also work closely with NYPD.

So the short answer is yes.

Sure.

We would love to partner with you.

And we'll follow up on that, too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Great.

Councilmember Banks, followed by Deputy Speaker Williams.