AMERICA
Janette Sadik-Khan has come tantalizingly close to building the
city’s first new transportation network since . . . well, since Robert
Moses built his highways in the early to mid-20th century.
WRIT TEN BY
Karrie Jacobs
New York City
Department of
Transportation
nyc.gov/html/dot/
Anatomy of a Takedown
A recent series of negative articles about New York’s
transportation commissioner has our columnist crying foul.
The signs of spring are easy to read,
even in New York City: the crocuses
push up through the newly thawed
earth, and daylight lasts a little longer
every evening. Equally apparent are the
signs of a political takedown. It starts
small: in his February 28 column for
Crain’s New York Business, Michael
Gross, who wrote a cultural exposé on
fashion models, took Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and his administration to
task for imposing a “nanny state” on
New York. He singled out Janette Sadik-
Khan, the city’s bike-lane-building
transportation commissioner, labeling
her “Roberta Moses.”
A week later, a full-page story in the
main news section of the New York
Times was devoted to Sadik-Khan and
her “brusque I-know-best style.” The
premise of the piece was that Sadik-
Khan, once viewed as a rising star, was
now a liability. Complaints, sourced and
anonymous, had her “yelling” at people
on the telephone, as if she were the first
city official to have raised her voice.
She had also alienated people. Again,
this was reported as if it were a first.
About 15 paragraphs in, the reporter,
Michael M. Grynbaum, offered a synop-
sis of her accomplishments, or at least
the reasons she is “lionized” by her
“devotees”: “Two-wheeled ridership has
doubled during her tenure; European-
style rapid-transit buses now ply exclu-
sive, camera-enforced lanes; and fewer
people have been killed in traffic acci-
dents on New York’s street than at any
time in the past century.” The implica-
tion was that only those “devotees,”
wackos of some sort who were not
quoted in the piece, might regard these
as worthy accomplishments.
In recent years, New
York’s Department of
Transportation, under
the leadership of
Janette Sadik-Khan,
has carved out about
250 miles of bike
lanes in the city.
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