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- On May 17th, 2021,

I walked my son Kai to school
and Matt Jensen greeted us.

He cracked a joke, he smiled,

said Good morning, and Kai went to school.

- To our top story, this half hour

- A hit and run killed a man in Brooklyn.

It happened overnight & police
say the victim was crossing

the street when he was hit.

The driver just kept going.

- The next day, rumors were flying

that Mr. Jensen had been killed.

Kids were arguing, saying
- that's not possible.

He was teaching me in
my classroom yesterday.

And I had the wretched job

of telling my two children that a man

who taught them yesterday had been killed

by a speeding car, one
block from their bedroom.

- When I was informed
that Mr. Jensen was struck

and killed in a hit and run accident,

I didn't even need to ask where, I knew.

Greenpoint has grown, more people,

more cars, more cyclists,

and yet the streets haven't changed.

- There was another hit and run
that just happened on Norman

and McGuinness Boulevard
about 20 minutes ago.

- I saw a cyclist get clipped
and knocked off their bike.

In the very place where
there's a ghost bike already.

You feel powerless. It's a design issue.

It's entirely flawed.

- We have the numbers.

It's really quite striking. Since 2014,

1,443 reported crashes injuring 331 people

and 230

of those injured people
happened in the last five years,

suggesting that safety has deteriorated.

- For years there is a crash

on McGuinness Boulevard every single week.

It is wrong. It is shameful.

The status quo is literally killing us.

- Enough is enough.

We're gathered here

to insist on a comprehensive
infrastructural

redesign of McGuinness Boulevard

in honor of our dearly
beloved Matthew Jensen.

- Friends ask me, oh,
isn't it dangerous riding

around New York?

I've been doing that
for about 40 years now.

Something like that. Kinda lost count.

Biking in the city has changed a lot

since I started doing it.

In the beginning, of course there were,

I don't think there were any bike lanes.

I used to live on the lower East side.

There weren't very many cabs
that would come around there.

Then I lived in Soho.

Similar, not too many cabs
in Soho in those days.

So a bike would get me where
I wanted to go. If I wanted

to go hear some music, meet
some friends, whatever it was,

you could just zoom from
one to another very quickly.

There was not that much
traffic downtown in those

days, especially at night.

I find it incredibly
empowering and liberating.

You feel connected, but watch out.

I see this one kind of edging over.

They're going to turn out.

I find at the present
moment there's an awful lot

of vehicles sharing the roads.

You have people going the wrong way.

You have really fast electric vehicles.

There's an incredible number
of cars that run red lights,

trucks that run red lights.

Even people riding gas powered
motorcycles in the bike lanes

and there's almost no enforcement.

- To everyone from PS 110, I'm so sorry

that you're gathered here
in pain and mourning.

For years, we have been trying
to undo the car culture,

laws which favored cars and motorists

regardless of what happened to people.

Human life matters a lot more than cars

and trucks in this city,
so it's time for a change.

We are putting money in the
budget immediately to redesign

and fix McGuinness
Boulevard once and for all.

We're going to just plain
do it. We have to do it now.

We have to do it now to save lives.

- Let's hear it again for this redesign

of McGuinness Boulevard

and show the Mayor

that he's doing absolutely
the right thing.

In that moment,

I was overwhelmed

because I had been involved in too many

advocacy campaigns already to
know that things weren't easy

and they weren't, even
when they seemed easy,

something was going to go wrong.

So I said to DOT when we
first started working on this,

I said, I want this to
become like the vanguard

of public input.

I want there to not just be one meeting

and I don't want just one community board,

I want you to do this over
and over and over again.

And then I had a talk with the advocates

who were celebrating and I said, look,

you've gotta make sure
you just shore it up

because something could go wrong.

- In New York City, more than
half of the pedestrians killed

and injured on our roads
are killed on just 7%

of roads. Wide arterials with
lots of lanes that are moving

through pedestrian dense areas,

through shopping centers,

through areas where there's schools

and hospitals, where
people live and interact

and need to cross the street.

- The idea that these are accidents

allows people to think,

oh, well, you know, it couldn't be helped.

Somebody slipped in the bathtub.

And they're not, you know.
We know exactly, you know

what we can do that would
eliminate most of these,

and to me it's criminal that we don't.

- It's almost like people
literally have to die for us

to be able to see changes happen,

and that's not the way
you want to do things.

- I always tell people,
don't say accident,

but also when you hear the word accident,

let it be an alarm bell.

Let it raise your antenna.

Let it be something that makes you ask,

has this happened before?

Could it happen again?

Will it definitely happen
again if we do nothing?

- When we go back a hundred
years, we see streets

that were pretty much the
bailiwick of the pedestrian.

The pedestrian walked every which way.

If we were in middle of
Park Avenue in Midtown,

we would see a park with benches.

We would see the Brooklyn
Bridge had four tracks going

across, and a little
carriageway & a pedestrian way,

and was handling 400,000 people a day.

Kids ran the street. There were no adults.

It was our meeting place, our playground,

our football field.

We had races between sewers.
The curb was our dugout.

You might see 15 kids waiting
for their turn to bat.

- Up until the 1920s,

the streets were also places for commerce.

They were places where goods were sold.

They were places where
waste was disposed of.

They were places where
materials were stored.

That all kind of gets pushed
aside as the automobile begins

to take over in the early
part of the 20th century.

- As more and more people were driving,

more and more people were
dying, particularly in the teens

and in the twenties in city after city.

We saw a death rate in the
1920s that was horrible.

- With cars going by at
30, 40 miles an hour,

the street was no longer a place

where people could gather selling apples

or sharpening knives.

So that compelled the
reorganization of streets

to make official the priority

of the automobile in
the public right of way.

In fact, the streets are
in some cases redesigned

to get rid of a lot of that flexible space

that had once served other uses.

The stoops get cut off the buildings so

that the lanes can be wider.

The park disappears from Park Avenue so

that the street can carry more traffic.

- Prior to 1910,

every single major bridge had
a bikeway and a pedestrian way

and had transit.

Since 1910, none had transit going across

and some didn't even have
pedestrian or bikeways.

As a teenager growing up in Bensonhurst,

we watched the Verrazano Narrows Bridge

go up in construction.

And when that bridge
finally was completed,

I couldn't get more excited.

We immediately on day one
went to ride across the bridge

and lo and behold,

a construction worker
stopped us from going

across the bridge.

Bikes were considered kids things

and not taken seriously as
a form of transportation.

- Look at this street, it's all cars.

Look at this beautiful street

with the London plane trees behind me.

This was probably the most
gorgeous street in all

of America in 1850 when it was laid out

and in 1880 when these
trees got to full height,

and now all I see are cars
and all I hear are cars,

- What happened?

Just a man crossing against the light.

Here's somebody else.

He's in a hurry.

- This could happen to you.

The automotive industry was
brilliant in creating this idea

that the pedestrian was the violator.

The pedestrian was there first,

and the pedestrian had
claimed all of that space

for hundreds, thousands of years,

since they were walking upright.

Don't cross against a red light.

Don't cross between parked
cars. Don't jaywalk.

They came up with this
brilliant pejorative jaywalking

and criminalized the behavior
that people did for centuries,

walking in a straight line.

- Show consideration for the
drivers. Don't be a jaywalker,

be an A walker.

- We ride and walk with love
in our hearts with sadness for

what has been lost,

with rage that these crashes
did not have to happen

and with hope that we never
have to do this again.

We do not know the name of this victim.

He was in his thirties, he was male

and he died on October 17th, 2002.

He was a pedestrian right
here at the traffic signal.

We can see exactly why this
would be such a dangerous place.

When I moved to the district in 2010,

I witnessed some fairly
catastrophic car accidents.

I just couldn't understand
why this kept happening

and there was seemingly
like almost no, no reaction.

There was no infrastructure change.

This just remained like
a real thorn in my side

and I was trying to figure out
what was going on politically

that was disrupting

what I felt was a common
sense kind of thing.

I decided to run for office in part

because another person was
killed on this road in 2019.

I remember when I was first
running, I was thinking of it,

I was like, this is like an experiment

and I'm probably going to lose.

But I didn't lose. I won by a lot.

So, because in my last election I won

by 80%,

I have to really consider that people want

what I'm offering them.

- Even as car ownership
remained the province

of a relative few in the early
half of the 20th century,

it was of course the
aspiration of everyone.

A woman in Muncie, Indiana
said she bought a car

before she installed indoor
plumbing at her house,

because you can't go to town in a bathtub.

In those early days, I
do think that it was kind

of a miracle to be able to
just go wherever you wanted

whenever you wanted and
have that total freedom.

And especially as the highways begin

to open up the natural resources
around the city, to be able

to get to the beach or up into
the mountains on the weekend.

I mean, that is the dream of

so many working class families
in New York at that time.

So I think there is a broad feeling

that things are moving in the direction of

progress.

There was a saying when I was a child,

"What's good for GM is
good for the country."

- The car industry

and the corporate sort of influence on

how this country was
shaped was was massive.

It was shaped around cars
entirely. Driving cars

and owning cars and selling cars

and having ample places to stick

the cars when you weren't driving them.

In the 1940s and fifties, wealthy

and even middle class families
are leaving for the suburbs.

It's hard to ignore the role
of racism, both in perpetuating

that movement out of cities

and perpetuating the system

of automobile that accompanies it.

And that's all made possible

by this web of federal subsidies,

both for interstate highways,

for mortgages and everything else.

- There was an attitude that
the city is like a machine.

It's a matter of zooming
from A to B or whatever,

and not really about the quality of life

or enjoying a place.

I think that kind of
overlooks what it means

to be a human being,

what it means to be a social animal.

This is the American dream,

- Traveling on time,
saving super highways,

free flowing channels
of concrete and steel.

- Robert Moses is a world
famous highway planner,

a man who knows his business.

- Robert Moses was a pioneer in ramming

highways through cities.

You know, the United States
embarked on a full scale

campaign of building in post World War II

with the interstate highways,

but Moses was doing that here in New York

before that, during the New
Deal - the parkway system,

the expressways, the Gowanus.

We really chopped up a lot of
the city, especially in Queens

and the Bronx during that period.

- In this jet age, events move fast

and our progress is certain to be steady

as we clear away the
structures that block progress.

- One of Moses' projects

after World War II was
McGuinness Boulevard,

which had been Oakland Street,

a two lane cobblestone
residential corridor,

and that was widened dramatically
with many more car lanes,

really as part of a connecting road

between the Long Island Expressway

and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

To really increase that footprint

and create all the new
lanes meant taking out a lot

of homes and other buildings.

So cars came in

and it's a high volume
of cars at higher speeds,

with gas stations and
retail with big parking lots

and the kind of things you tend to see

in you know a totally car
dependent suburban area,

but there is still a
residential neighborhood there.

- I grew up right down
the block from here.

My great-grandmother's house
was knocked down in the

first place to build McGuinness Boulevard.

And my dad when I was growing
up here in Greenpoint,

this is the story of so many parents

that raised children in this neighborhood,

my dad used to wake up in the middle

of the night in a cold sweat
having had the same nightmare

over and over again, which was
that I ran out of the house

and I was hit and killed on the boulevard.

This story has repeated itself over

and over again here in Greenpoint.

- Years ago when I was on music tours,

I started bringing a folding bicycle.

We'd put them in the tour bus

and pull them out in the morning

and explore where we were before

we had to do soundcheck and do a show.

I really enjoyed that

it allowed me to explore all these cities.

I remember riding around Istanbul,

which has terrible traffic,
but I could explore the

whole city, Reykjavic, Rome.

A lot of people are
familiar with Amsterdam

and Copenhagen where everybody
gets around on bicycles.

Oddly enough, some of those
places, I think Copenhagen,

was not always a bike city.

It was given over to cars
like a lot of American cities.

And then little by
little it was taken back.

They took some parking spots

and turned them into public
spaces, which then filled up

with outdoor restaurants.

They put in bike lanes.

And it made it a much more
pleasant place to live and work.

As happens in many other
places, it ends up being good

for business and good for
people's quality of life,

and brings in tourists
and all the rest too.

- I'm seeing a gentleman right
now with two kids on the back

of his bike and here he comes.

It's beautiful, they're
happy, they're smiling,

they're together, going to
camp, school, whatever it is,

and that was my husband and our kids.

We rode them to school on
their bikes almost every day

unless it was pouring or freezing.

And we continued like that

until the summer of 2006.

My husband, Dr. Carl Henry Nacht,

who was a physician on the
upper west side of Manhattan,

serving by this time, thousands of people,

and we decided to try out
the fairly new greenway.

We had a green bicycle light,

it was probably the first
bicycle light in NYC, to go.

And we were riding next to each other

and all of the sudden these
headlights are coming at me

and this truck is swerving
around into the intersection,

missed me by inches, but hit my husband.

And he died three days
later from his injuries.

These are deaths that
create a huge hole in a

community and the ripples out
from it go on and on and on.

And these are violent deaths.

I was there. I know what it looks like,

I know what it sounds like,

and I know the desperation
of sitting in that place

with my husband, still alive,

and hearing the sirens from

Saint Vincent's Hospital coming north

and not able to get to me

because the West Side Highway
is chock-a-block with traffic.

- Oops.

- Hi.

- No motor vehicles.

- On the bike path.

- I know - they should
have done this a while ago.

- Well, we're doing their
job for them. Thank you.

I'm glad you appreciate.

- I'm a bicycle rider.

- There you go. It's not hard.

- A lot of tickets. Yeah,
that's not even readable.

I don't even know what he's thinking.

Hey, it's Gersh Kuntzman,

Still on the criminal mischief
beat. Still got my pen.

Listen, it's not that
often I come along a car

that's so egregiously defaced.

You could ask yourself, is
that just normal wear and tear?

I don't think so, the rest of
the car looks pretty pristine.

So it's time for this
guy to get the special.

I call this the special.

Just a simple free paint job.

I'm not going to say it's
Picasso, but it's not bad.

And now this guy will only
get the tickets he deserves,

and it's a lot.

- In New York City,

bicycles somehow managed to
survive all these decades,

with the automobile coming in.

But it did that the way
cockroaches survive,

it was in the cracks where
nobody could notice it.

- In 1966,

New York City mayor John Lindsay
made Central Park car free

on Sundays.

And that kind of pried
open the door to important

changes, at least changes
in thinking about the place

of the car in the city.

In 1973, there was the deus ex machina

of the Arab oil embargo
and the OPEC price increase

and suddenly overnight
gasoline doubled in price,

when you could buy it.

And that ushered in an overnight boom

in the amount of cycling, not so much

because car drivers switched to bikes, but

because people who had
a bike in the basement

or in the living room felt
emboldened to go on the streets

because they weren't going
to get run over by cars.

It's five o'clock in the
afternoon, there are no other cars

and there may be a
million people on bikes.

In 1980 Ed Koch went to
Beijing and saw so many bikes.

I say, isn't this marvelous?

All these people on bikes -

I gotta do something about
that in New York City.

Then in 1980 we also had a transit strike

and thousands upon
thousands biked to the city.

After those two events, the
Mayor called me into his office

and said, let's build some bike lanes.

So we installed continuous,

physically separated bike lanes
from Washington Square Park

to Central Park on Fifth
Avenue, Sixth Avenue

and Broadway, Seventh Avenue.

We had about an eight foot bike lane

and we thought that was terrific.

I remembered thinking, yeah,
we're not going to get a lot

of bike riders now,

but by the year 2000 they'll
say we were geniuses.

Well, after about six weeks
when the bike lanes were in,

I got another call to the Mayor's office

and he said to me, Sam,
rip up those bike lanes.

I can't go anywhere
without people telling me

how pissed they are with those bike lanes.

And we had to call in our bulldozers.

There were some people that
just laid down in the middle

of the road, but it was
really just a handful

of bike riders.

There wasn't much a bike
constituency at the time.

And the bike lanes disappeared

- In 1987,

Ed Koch decreed that cyclists
wouldn't be permitted

to ride in Midtown on weekdays,

and that became the galvanizing event

that propelled bike activism
from a very moribund

quiescent, nothing into
a vibrant movement.

Bike messengers
spearheaded the resistance,

and, more importantly, established cycling

and cyclists as an environmental
and city friendly vanguard.

- Toward the end of the
Dinkins administration,

things started to happen.

We got the city to close
some of the entrances

to Central Park, to get cars out

and the DOT was starting

to use phrases like traffic
calming, which were, you know,

direct imports from
Western Europe at the time.

And then nothing much happened under

eight years of Mayor Giuliani.

They were putting bike lanes in places

where you didn't really need them and

where they wouldn't get in anyone's way,

so not that useful.

- One thing that happens
in the 1990s and 2000s is

that almost every center
city in the country begins

to recover some of the residents

that it lost in the fifties,

sixties, seventies and eighties.

But this trend is particularly
prominent in New York City,

and one of the reasons for that
is that New York maintained

so much of its urban fabric

and so much of its charm and vitality.

And so New York becomes the
epicenter of this phenomenon

of lots of people moving back into cities.

And certainly this puts
stresses on the usage

of the street. For example,

while most of Fifth
Avenue is in fact made up

of the roadway, the vast majority

of people are using its sidewalks.

And that imbalance is what
attracts reformers to thinking,

what if we could reallocate this?

Does the traffic really
need all this space

or is the traffic just
using all this space

because that's the space
we've given over to traffic.

And what would it look like if
we were to give over some of

that space to other uses?

- Critical Mass took root in
New York City very successfully

in the 1990s following San Francisco.

Critical Mass is this
flood tide of cyclists

who take over the streets,

not in a possessive way,
but just we are here,

we are traffic.

- It's amazing -

As far as I can see in
either direction is bicycles.

- For the first 10 or 12 years,

Critical Mass was growing all the time.

By 2004 there might have been five

or six thousand people
in the monthly rides.

- Who's streets? Our streets!
Who's streets? Our streets!

- The crackdown

during the Republican
National Convention in

2004 put an end to that.

The Mayor of New York
City, Michael Bloomberg,

had a phobia about public
disorder, so his police went in

and broke it up.

- Do you know why you're
being arrested? I don't know.

- The NYPD arrested hundreds of people

and they continued to arrest

and confiscate bikes at most

of the subsequent Critical Mass rides,

so that by '05 and '06
it was a game of cat

and mouse against the police
and it was no longer fun.

It was scary.

Ironically, just two or three years later,

Mayor Bloomberg appointed
Janette Sadik-Khan

to engineer a transportation
and streets revolution.

- My interview with Mike Bloomberg
started with a question -

Why do you want to be
Traffic Commissioner?

And I said, I don't want
to be Traffic Commissioner.

I want to be Transportation Commissioner.

And I talked about building bike lanes

and making them a real option
for how people got around.

Building bus lanes, rapid bus lanes.

We talked about congestion
pricing, you know,

talked about making our streets safer,

making it easier to walk.

Mike Bloomberg had a big
vision for what the future

of this city could be with a
million more people by 2030.

- The Bloomberg administration
was different than the usual

political class in that they watched

what was happening around the world.

- It was the first stirrings
of the climate crisis.

He was feeling winds
of change from Europe.

- He was very susceptible to the idea

that other places were
doing it better than us.

You could go in and say, London
just did congestion pricing

and they revamped their bus
system and it's working great.

And Paris is closing waterfront highways

and doing public bikes

and they're using them
to fill up the new bike

lanes they just created.

Or South American cities with a fraction

of our wealth are kickimg our
ass on bus transportation.

They're making buses
work in a way we're not

even trying to do here.

And he would turn around and
ask the people who worked

for him, why aren't we doing that?

And that mattered to them.

I don't think we'd be anywhere if

Bloomberg hadn't been the mayor.

- Early on in my DOT
tenure, I went to Copenhagen

and they had these
parking protected lanes,

where they took the parking lane

and moved it away from the curb.

And then those parked cars served

as this strong barrier for the cyclists.

It also shortened the crossing
distance to make it easier

for people to cross the street,

older people, younger people.

It really improved the
safety of the street.

And so we brought that
back to New York City,

and tried our first protected
bike lane on ninth Avenue.

People said, oh, it's
going to be dangerous.

The cars are going to speed.
Nobody's going to use the bike

lanes, it's not going to work.

And we said we would try
it out with just paint,

and if it worked we would keep it.

And if it didn't work,
okay, we'll put it back.

And, you know, we saw
injuries go down 58%.

We saw retail sales, the local
businesses, go up almost 50%.

We saw dramatic increases in cycling.

This was a win-win-win.

- We are a city of pedestrians,
cyclists, skaters, drivers

and mass transit.

Under the Bloomberg
administration, it really took off.

We need to continue what
was put in place under

the de Blasio administration.

When you go to other cities

and countries across the globe,
they're so far ahead of us.

We don't follow in New York.

We lead in New York.

And so we're going to
regain our leadership

under the next a few years to make sure

that this is the place where
people will come and study

and analyze how we got it right.

- McGuinness Boulevard
will get a different look

in the coming weeks.

It'll have a different flow.

The NYC Department of Transportation is

moving ahead with changes.

- A new plan aims to redesign
the mile long four lane

street, which runs between
the Brooklyn Queens Expressway

and the Pulaski Bridge.

The plan would remove one lane

of traffic in either direction

and install parking protected bike lanes,

a project that the DOT
says has worked on other

major streets.

- The DOT says it will
also include delivery zones

along the corridor.

And they will continue
to work with stakeholders

and monitor developments.

- Supporters of the plan

say this road diet is necessary
to protect pedestrians

and cyclists from speeding
drivers and large trucks.

Let's give it a chance.
Let's give it a shot.

It's going to work. We know
that it's going to work.

Makes McGuinness safe!
Make McGuinness safe!

Make McGuinness safe!
Make McGuinness safe!

No more deaths! No more deaths!

No more deaths!

- We don't want to hear you!

We're Greenpointers! We're Greenpointers!

- Yeah - get off your phone
when you cross the street!

- We're Greenpoint people!

Make McGuinness safe!
Make McGuinness safe!

Make McGuinness safe!
Make McGuinness safe!

Make McGuinness safe!
Make McGuinness safe!

- Now the city's proposed a
road diet for McGuinness Blvd.,

to take that nearly highway back to more

of a neighborhood street,
which makes complete sense

because the neighborhood is growing.

If we didn't do the road diet,

the safety problem is
only going to get worse.

The city's been doing road
diets for about 15 years,

starting in 2007 with
ninth Avenue in Chelsea.

And we've done that on a bunch

of overbuilt streets since then -

Broadway, Prospect Park West in Brooklyn

and both of the big avenues
on the east side of Manhattan,

First and Second. And you know,

they've all worked really well.

Traffic calming allows other things

to start happening on the street.

You will get more pedestrians.

You'll get more people
hanging out on the street,

because they can have a conversation

with the people next to them.

Pretty much every great city in the world

except New York has a lot
of pedestrian streets,

and those are great for businesses.

The stuff that people buy still gets

to those places overnight,

and then people flockt
there during the day.

- Hey there, have you signed

the Make McGuinness Safe petition?

Thank you. Appreciate
it. Excuse me my friend.

Have you signed the Make
McGuinness Safe petition?

We are going to need
to keep the pressure on

to show the Mayor's office
that there's public support.

- That's what I thought too.

But you know, what I learned is that most

of the traffic on McGuinness is not local.

They're like just using it as a shortcut.

So if they took away a lane,
less cars would come through.

So it would work. Yeah, I
know it's counterintuitive.

- I oppose this plan.

- Tell me why.

- I know it comes from a good...

- I want to hear why.

- I've been here for 15 years,

If you're going to shut down
one lane on the McGuinness,

this whole neighborhood
is going to suffer.

- This plan was such a good
compromise for the neighborhood.

You keep parking, you
keep the travel lanes,

you eliminate a lot of cut through traffic

and you get protected bike lanes.

What's your hesitation? You're sighing!

- It's just opposite to my,
to my experience, to my logic

or experience or anything.

You know, traffic flows.

If you compare it to water, to oil,

to any, to anything other.

If you clog one way and
don't provide an alternative,

so the other ways are
going get more congested.

- But the difference is choice.

If you cut off one path of water or oil,

that oil or water is not saying,

oh well perhaps I'll ride my bike today.

Or perhaps I'll take the train today.

- This is literally paint at
least for the next like decade.

- If it doesn't work, if it is a disaster,

if it all falls apart, which no one...

- It's reversible.

- It's reversible.

- I'd like to hear that.

- That's it.

- Yeah, you should try
everything to make things right,

but also have the option

to reverse if your
calculation were misleading,

- If our calculation

and the Department of
Transportation's calculation

and the elected officials'
calculation is wrong,

which I don't believe that it is,

but if it is, then you know,

- We really hope that you know
everybody's going to be safe

and we'll have less traffic.

This is the goal of everyone.

- That's the hope.

- Thanks again.

- You know when it comes
to changes on the street,

sometimes they are seen
as counterintuitive.

For a hundred years
we've looked at the way

to improve the streets, to
improve transportation is

to build more lanes.
More lanes, more ramps,

more signals, that'll get us there, right?

And actually we've got almost
a hundred years of data

to show no, that actually isn't right.

- People often think of
traffic flowing like water,

so they have this sort
of hydraulic model of it.

But it's not, it's a set of human choices.

- I think the best example

of this was in Los Angeles
when they were adding another

lane on Interstate 405.
They spent $1.6 billion

and, at the end of the project,

traffic didn't move any better.

In fact, in part of the rush
hour, it was actually worse.

So it is kind of
counterintuitive. Actually,

the way to improve traffic
is to give people options

for getting around that
don't involve driving.

Making it easier to bike,
making it easier to walk,

making it easier to take the bus.

People aren't just going to take the bus

because they think it's, you
know, the right thing to do.

People are going to take the bus

because it's the faster thing to do,

it's the easier thing to do.

There is no question that
you get what you build for.

- When I came to New
York in the seventies,

we had people selling heroin
on the street, publicly,

graffiti everywhere.

And to my surprise, Bloomberg
with Janette Sadik-Khan,

they really did tame the
beast to some degree,

with the bike lanes and
the pedestrian areas.

But we have a snake!

I have never seen this level of civil

misbehavior as much as the
mopeds in the bike path.

It's the speed that is
the danger here and their

unpredictability. It's
just right in your face.

It's physically scary and it's
an affront to our dignity.

I believe strongly

that what's happening here
is an injustice against

bicyclists, pedestrians,
wheelchair users, old ladies,

old men, babies, people walking dogs,

everybody who has to put up with this now.

Help protect our sidewalks,

help protect our streets! Make them safer!

- Once COVID hit, people in
large numbers were switching

to e-bikes, scooters

and other forms of private transportation

that they didn't have to
share with anyone else.

- The food delivery

that the pandemic required
ensured that electric assist

and motor assisted bicycles,

and now of course mopeds as well,

were not going to be barred
from the streets of the city

because they were providing
this essential service.

And now that they've gotten
their foothold, they're here

and they're here to stay.

- If you look at the
actual device, the moped

or the electric bike is
one of the great inventions

because it's very low
impact on the environment.

It allows you to cover
really long distance,

relatively safely.

And also they're relatively inexpensive.

The problem with the electric bike

and the moped is we haven't created safe

infrastructure around them.

- So in New York fashion, they kind

of like just opened the floodgates

and now you are relying on cops

who really don't do this anyway,

to think about like is it a moped?

Is it an e-bike, is it a, like what is it?

Is it legal, is it not?

And they don't know! And
they don't get trained

really to to know.

- When it happens in America,

it seems like it always happens bigger

than you expected and then
it's sort of out of control.

Good afternoon everyone.
Thanks for coming.

We are the Deliveristas Unidos.

And we are fighting to improve
the conditions of this job.

Because delivery work is recognized

as an essential job in New York City,

but the apps don't treat us that way.

Working on the streets everyday

exposes you to accidents,

exposes you to being robbed,

and it is very dangerous.

And it's a job that
deserves to be dignified.

But we must also insist
on and ask for our rights.

We are also an organization

to help you do things the right way.

There are a lot of people
that aren't very happy with

delivery workers because many
don't respect traffic laws.

They ride on sidewalks.

They do whatever they want on the street.

So we have to spread the word:

Let's respect traffic laws.

Let's respect bike lanes.

If you have a motorcycle,

you can't be in the bike lane.

You have to be in the street.

There are things that can be improved

and we need to keep fighting.

- It is something really sad for me

because a lot of people, they say, no,

I hate delivery workers, I
hate bikes, I hate e-bikes,

but they need us.

So that's something crazy about people.

This is the world that we live in.

When you see someone riding a
bike, sometimes it looks easy,

but you never know what's
going to happen to them.

Because during the pandemic in the 2020s,

we lost like 22 or 24 workers,

and in those coming years,

the number is almost the same.

And last year we lost 18 workers.

So 18 workers was like hit by a car

and then they never came back home.

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

(Names and ages of cyclists
killed in traffic.)

- In Europe and Japan,

the rate of traffic
fatalities is far lower

than it is in the U.S.

Are Europeans better drivers?

Are people in Japan better
at walking? Of course not.

They face less dangerous conditions.

Their policies and infrastructure

allows them to make mistakes and not die.

By contrast, in the U.S.,

our mistakes are death sentences.

Our systems are built so that
unless we are perfect drivers

and perfect cyclists
and perfect pedestrians,

we risk being killed or killing someone.

If we build our roads so that they're safe

for a drunk person, then
they're safe for everyone.

- Can you paint your way to street safety

in a 9 million person city?

No, you can't. You gotta build stuff.

Well over in Europe, there's
very little of this paint

that's forced to sit here for 15 years.

In London they don't paint
it, they just build it,

but they build it faster
and they build it for real.

- You know, cities around
the country have been

building out protected bike
lanes and that is so important.

But we have this dynamic that's emerged

where being on a bike in New York City

and in cities across
the country is largely a

solitary experience.

You get a flat tire, you're on your own,

your gear start messing
up, you're on your own.

You're looking for bike
parking, you're on your own.

You need a place to charge your E-bike,

you are on your own.

We have to divorce ourselves
from this road warrior

mentality. Oh, you're going to
ride this beater bike around.

And yeah, if it gets stolen, you know...

We've got to get ourselves away from that

if we want to see average
people adopt micro mobility.

Infrastructure is legitimizing.

It's about elevating expectations.

We should expect
world-class infrastructure,

world-class design,
world class technology,

when we think about micro mobility.

- Next is McGuinness Boulevard
design review and discussion

I would like everyone to be
respectful of everyone else.

We're just going to keep it civil.

- Hello everyone. I'm with the
Department of Transportation.

Over the past year we did a bunch

of outreach, three workshops with one

of them being in Polish.

We also sent the street ambassadors out.

We were able to survey pretty
much every business owner

that was capable of talking to us.

We also had this online feedback
map. We got 744 comments.

- We've been hearing loud and
clear from community members

and elected officials that
we need to move forward.

We need to make the changes on

McGuinness that will improve safety.

- Leave Greenpoint alone already!

- You're going to get kicked
out if you interrupt again,

just fair warning.

- I'm just against this bike idea.

I don't think we should
mix bikes with cars

and trucks and buses.

- This dieting of McGuinness Boulevard,

it's just going to create a traffic havoc.

- This is a crazy idea.

- Where does all the traffic go?

- So where are the people
supposed to park their cars?

- As a single mom, I can't make it

to Key Food on a bike with a baby.

- It just makes sense
to not have bike lanes.

I would also recommend getting rid of some

of the greenery, cutting it down.

- Yeah, thanks for your comment, Shannon.

We did a lot of outreach
related to this project

and overwhelmingly,
you know, the bike lane

and safety for cyclists has been something

that the community's been asking for.

- Tony Argento, thank
you for giving me time.

I'm a business owner and
a resident of Greenpoint

and a taxpayer.

My company and my clients
are heavy truck users,

and if we can't get our
trucks to our location,

what good is being here anymore?

- We Need Trucks will surely go out

of business with this proposal.

- You guys gotta get the input
of the longtime residents.

- For the people in
opposition to any of the plans

this evening, safety has gotten
lost in this conversation.

- The leading cause of
death in New York City

for children under 14
is being hit by a car.

The leading cause of
death for seniors over 65,

number one is falls, number
two is being hit by a car.

If the first thing out of
someone's mouth in this discussion

is about parking and not human lives,

then I think DOT should take

that into consideration.

- That's going to end the public session.

I want to thank DOT...

- You barely public speak.

- Exactly.

- You serve the public, not yourself.

(Many agitated voices
talking over each other.)

- ...stopping the traffic on McGuinness!

- That is not true...

(Many agitated voices talking at once.)

- I want to thank DOT for coming...

- Have the meetings in
person, COVID is over!

- Tney don't want democracy!

- This is a done deal
folks, remember that.

- This is favoritism!

- Reach out to your elected officials -

- How did the StreetsBlog
know about this?!

- Okay, meeting adjourned! Thank you.

- You know, the status quo
is a very powerful thing.

And, you know, we've had
our streets be designed

the same way for over a hundred years.

And if you change it, you
know, people get upset.

- So all of a sudden
a new group comes out.

Now this group had been
around for a while,

and they had been making themselves known.

But it was clear in these meetings

that they were in the minority

and that the questions

that they had actually
had scientific answers.

But with the right kind of backing

and money involved in their
campaign, it really took off.

- There are 8.4 million New Yorkers

and there are 8.4 million
traffic engineers.

You know, when we started
putting these bike lanes down,

people thought, what are you doing?!

There was a very powerful backlash

and bikelash. Our streets are for cars,

you're from the government,
you know, I'm not sure

that this is going to go well.

So, you know, it got intense.

There were several lawsuits about it.

Prospect Park West was kind of ground zero

in the bike lane battles.

You know, don't be conned by Sadik-Khan,

which I thought was so clever.

- You know, fairly wealthy
people on Prospect Park West

with access to the Mayor
were criticizing him directly

at parties and stuff.

We went in one day to
talk about something else,

he's like, I need to ask you
about Prospect Park West.

And he said, are more
people riding bikes there?

And is it safer? That's all I care about.

And Janette was able to say yes and yes,

I'll get you the numbers
when I get back to work,

to the office.

But that was the extent
of the conversation.

- Bloomberg was imperious,
he could be tone deaf,

but at the same time he wasn't
afraid to try new things.

- He took a lot of shit for it at the time

and said, look, the stuff
she's doing is succeeding.

I don't care what the tabloids
say, I'm looking at the data.

I'm looking at how these projects work,

and they are working,

so we're going to keep doing them.

- We really looked at
the safety of the street

very much like a scientist
looks at a stream.

What happened to safety before and after?

What happened to local
businesses before and after?

What happened to the number
of cyclists before and after?

You know, after all of the fighting,

after all of the backlash,

after all of the lawsuits,

the bottom line was that it worked.

You know, we saw a tripling

of people in the bike lanes.

We saw the safest streets

that New York City had
seen in a hundred years.

You saw people of all
backgrounds, ages, sizes,

biking in bike lanes.

It really was a matter of
affording them the opportunity.

- You don't think a change is
possible in your own behavior

until you see somebody else doing it,

or somebody that you
didn't expect doing it,

like you see a business person
going to work on a bike.

That kind of plants a little
seed in people's heads,

and they realize, oh,
this is a possibility.

- People became very comfortable
with the new status quo

and it was a very different
city six and a half years later.

- Every place in New York where
you create room for people

and activities that aren't driving

and parking cars are the most
popular places in the city.

Central Park.

The West Side Greenway, the
protected bike lane behind us,

which gets 500 bikes an hour.

We may not be Amsterdam,

but we're in Williamsburg and it works.

The same rules of humanity apply.

No one's talking about
putting traffic lanes back on

First Avenue in Manhattan.

No one wants to bring
cars back to 14th Street.

No one wants to reintroduce
two-way traffic on

Kent Avenue in Brooklyn.

And in fact, the arguments
are largely forgotten within

a very short time,

as people take up the new
space, the buses start to move,

the bikes lanes attract cyclists,

& you don't have a high profile
death on that street again.

- It's astonishing to think that all

of the sustainable investments

that we made were less than
2% of the entire DOT budget.

You can do so much for
pennies on the dollar

to truly transform your city.

- A battle in Brooklyn over a busy roadway

reaches a boiling point.

Supporters of the DOT plan
are pointing fingers at the

Argento family,

which owns the Greenpoint
based company Broadway Stages.

Some have accused the family
of using their influence

to drum up opposition to the road diet.

A spokesperson for Broadway
Stages said the proposed plan

was based on flawed data

and poses a catastrophic threat
to the future of Greenpoint.

- I'm sorry, Kevin, you guys have?

- Is it a public forum or private forum?

- I just don't think right now...

- Is it public or private?

- It's a public meeting.
Public or private?

- This is a public meeting.
For DOT, the city right?

- Is DOT public or or private?

- This is a public meeting Monica.

- Monica, I'm registered.

- Are we closing or opening?

- I think we're shutting the door.

- Public meeting! Public meeting!

- I just want to thank
everyone for coming here today.

I've been here since 1996.

It was dirt streets full of garbage.

I've helped clean this
neighborhood up block by block.

We're a community of
studios where thousands

of jobs have been created,

and you know, I think we
should reanalyze the plan,

and you know, try to get more business

input and more community input.

North Brooklyn is the third
largest industrial hub in NYC.

We're talking thousands of
businesses and thousands of jobs.

We did some research ourselves

and I think personally,
this will further bolster

gentrification in this neighborhood.

- You have to get this right!

So I ask that you stop moving forward.

We're adults, let's act like adults!

Let's get together and
freaking figure out this thing!

- I'm so disappointed!

There was never a time when
we couldn't find solutions!

We are here this morning

because we do understand your

concerns and we're here to listen to them.

We'll listen to them more.

This is a road diet
again that was proposed,

that has been done in
many corridors citywide,

and it has worked and
has made things safer.

But again, we can absolutely, again,

have a continued discussion.

- You show up the CB meeting...

all of you, and you
never gave us a chance!

- The Commissioner wants to say a word!

- Thank you. I know how important it is

to make our streets safer
for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Mayor and I, we are very clear.

Traffic violence is equal to gun violence.

We know how important it is in this area.

We know the numbers of crashes,

we know the numbers of victims.

We know that we have
to really look at this

as an important project for our city.

- I know there are a lot of
strong feelings in this room.

There's a lot of disappointment, a lot

of frustration, a lot of concern.

And frankly, we often see
familiar dividing lines

between longtime residents,
lifelong residents,

and some of the newer folks.

We've been engaging with
the community for close

to two years around how
to make McGuinness safer,

and today is yet another opportunity

to give actionable specific feedback

for modifications you'd like to see

to the plan to make it better.

But what I will tell
you is this, safety has

to be prioritized.

(Yelling and screaming.)

- I'd be happy to chat with you further...

(More yelling and screaming)

- Wait stop, I want this to be beneficial!

(Chaos!)

Stop being angry, stop being violent!

- It's against the law, keep
it moving if you're protesting!

- Broadway Stages bought up a lot

of Greenpoint's property in
the nineties, so they own

quite a lot of this district.

And in the past, that meant

that they had a seat at every decision.

And they weren't really
invited to the table this time

as anything more than a community member.

And I think that's insulting to them.

And maybe this is getting in
the way of a business plan?

Sometimes I feel like
it gets into this like

feudal lord territory.

We're working the land and living on it,

but we owe deference.

- Why are you touching my
car? Just don't touch my car.

But you want us to be like Amsterdam.

Well, no, I just, I want
us to be like nicer.

I want people to be nicer.

And I think a lot of the
reasons why people are

so un-nice is because the
car turns them into assholes.

I mean, look, it's well
documented in academia

that cars, you know,
make you more hostile.

And when you're in a car, you care about

your community less.

They call it moto-normativity.

It's like that once you're in a car,

your behavior is normalized,

well by the fact that we have
roads where you can drive fast

and highways and the way in
which every supermarket has a

big parking lot.

The car companies want you to feel safe

and they want you to feel powerful,

I mean, that's what they market.

And there's no check on that.

- Look at advertising on
TV now - bigger, faster.

I mean the size of the vehicles

that are now coming into the city,

the size of the trucks that
are coming into the city.

- The sheer physical power

and the inertia, the political inertia

of car ownership and car use

and car entitlement is
incredibly powerful.

- Everything becomes a culture war -

those cyclists want to take all our space.

Well, in fairness to the drivers,

they have had a hundred years to believe

that it is their space.

- This plan is so flawed.

It's really just sort of one
big bike lane experiment,

when we're talking about...

- You keep coming back to the bike lanes,

but it is so much more than that, right?

The changes that are proposed
now are really standard

traffic calming measures.

If everybody wants there to be fewer cars

and fewer accidents and fewer injuries

and death, what's the division?

Hpw are there two sides to this?

- They are going to
push 12,000 vehicles off

of McGuinness Boulevard daily.

We do agree though that
we don't necessarily want

12,000 vehicles on the road.

These vehicles are going to go onto,

some of them are going
to go onto local streets,

some of them are going to go onto the BQE.

- And some of them are
going to just figure out a

different way to get
where they're going...

- But either way you slice
it, it's going to be thousands

of vehicles pushed onto these
quiet residential side streets

- Or people will just
make different choices.

I know I certainly would.

- Politics are about
feelings and not facts,

and that's, that's really a problem.

And it's one of the reasons why

things have been going
the way they have been.

- You know, resistance
to change is baked into,

it's always been baked into politics.

It's baked in even more now.

- We also have this, this
exceptionalism issue.

Folks that like to fight
against change always

say, this is New York.

It isn't Bogota, it isn't
Spain, it isn't Barcelona.

You can't...

Don't compare those cities to New York.

We can't do what they do.

But then when it comes to
something else, they'll be like,

oh, we're the best city in the world.

We're exceptional. It's
just like they choose when

New York City is great
and can do amazing things.

And then other times...

We can't do what other cities
do because we're different.

- I think New York City is
exceptionally provincial.

I really do. It's, it's really incredible.

Because we are a place where

people come from all over the world

and yet we can't seem to
see past our little area.

- In America right now,
we have a big problem.

We've let decadence and
we've let greed, you know,

corruption eat away at our civic soul.

No country, no society
has ever been wealthier,

than America is right now.

And what do we do with it?

We can't build subways,
we can't build bus lanes.

We can't build bike parking.
It's incredible to believe!

- Hey it's Gersh Kuntzman -

I'm in, as you can see behind me,

the police parking zone in
front of the 78 Precinct.

And we got a cop, who's
got an illegal cover.

I'm just going to let
the Mayor know that one

of his employees is running
around with an illegal cover.

- The defacement of license plates

by NYPD on their private cars,

it's become a thing, so
that maybe, you know,

one in 50 license plates

that you see are defaced in some way

that they will evade
automated enforcement,

as well as tolls, you know,
on the bridges and tunnels,

- If you've covered or, or defaced

or foliated your plate, you're
saying to me and my kids,

I'm claiming the right

to drive at whatever speed I
want to through a school zone.

And that's wrong.

- Most of our cops or a lot of
our cops live in Long Island,

they live in New Jersey,
they live in Staten Island,

or they live in the outer
parts of the outer boroughs.

And when you have cops
that are car-centric,

you end up getting
folks that don't want to

enforce things that they are against.

- They will not get rid of cars

that are parked in the bike paths,

often it's their own cars!

- If you had a mayor
who said, cut the shit,

we're going to do this for real,
people will get the message

You know, Mayor Adams
says that once in a while,

but it, you know, you don't, you know,

from the city's actions

and the fact that he lets the cops

A. not enforce any traffic laws

and B. Park wherever they
feel like it, you know,

suggests it's not real.

- This never used to be such
a crazy committee, right?

McGuinness has become
bigger than this committee,

bigger than this community.

It's become a flashpoint
from a lot of the crazy stuff

that happened like
leading up to the pandemic

and the, you know, people
having death threats...

Like all this crazy shit
about like fucking roads!

- I make a motion for moratorium.

Until we can get some kind of compromise

because the two sides are too far apart

and nobody's going to be happy.

We've spent two years

of community outreach
on this exact proposal.

To think that at the 11th hour,
after DOT has been studying

transportation study, multiple
transportation studies

specific to this redesign
of McGuinness Boulevard,

and that we're going to ask them to stop?

after we've been talking about...

- We talked about this
in August, in May of 23.

In June of 22.

In June of 22 in Polish,

- Where?!

- It's all on the DOT website...

Okay, roll call vote.

Roll call vote, roll call vote!

- Four for, seven against, one
abstention, the motion fails.

- People need to recuse
themselves from voting.

- Why? Did they work for DOT?

Are they contractors
on the project? No, no.

Keep organizing, for and against...

- Keep McGuinness moving!
Keep McGuinness moving!

Keep McGuinness moving!
Keep McGuinness moving!

- You will not silence us!

You will not silence us! Damn straight!

Anyone who is really from
Green Point knows just

how much the Argentos

and Broadway Stages have
given back to this community!

To the tune of millions of dollars!

- Broadway stages

were here taking a chance
on this community at a time

no one wanted to be here!

- We are mot the leftovers!
We the belong here!

- We built this neighborhood!

- Shame on the DOT! Shame on
the DOT! Shame on the DOT!

Shame on the DOT! Shame on
the DOT! Shame on the DOT!

Shame on the DOT!

- I think we have to be careful,

because the loudest voices in
communities don't want change.

And we are being educated

about the extent to which
baby boomers, you know, people

of my generation, most
of whom are retired now

and who are people of means

and whose affluence is very
much bound up with the property

that they own in the city,

or, you know, the below market rate

apartment that they're able to rent.

And they are the ones who come out

to community board meetings and yell

and scream against change.

- Especially in
neighborhoods like this one,

there's always been a narrative

that if you are a renter
here, you're not part

of the real community.

But this district is 80% renter

and only one out of five people
uses a car in this district.

- On Thursday, Mayor Eric
Adams ordered the Department

of Transportation to pump the
brakes on a contentious plan

to redesign McGuinness Boulevard.

Some have accused Broadway Stages

of using their influence
to drum up opposition

and ultimately get the
Mayor on their side.

- Listen, I'm a biker,
everyone knows that.

My desire, we will have
protected bike lanes everywhere,

but I'm going to respect
the voices of the people

who live in these communities
and we can find a win.

You know, it's unfortunate
that we're in a position now

that everyone feels as
though you must lose

so I can win. And I
just don't believe that.

We will find a way, we will
find, don't cut me off!

We will find a way to get
what we're looking for,

a safe place.

And if I decide within
my role as the mayor

that I want to reexamine and
look at other ways of doing it,

I'm going to do that.

- All of the sudden the
brakes were pulled on the plan

and it was heartbreaking.

Because honestly for the
first time, this is one

of the first times that
I think we really saw

the community participating in
a way that was reflective of

who lives in the community.

- I can't imagine who
would want this to stay

as it is, seriously,

as somebody who drives
through there a lot.

- Yeah. What we're really
looking at is a few people

really getting into the Mayor's ear

and manipulating the situation,

because the reality is we did
two years of work with many,

many community engagements.

- So when you say two years, it

predates this administration?

- Yes.

- So previous administration,

DOT, community engagement,
the Mayor liked it

and then the Mayor changed his mind.

- And in fact, every
single elected official

that represents my district,
supports this plan.

I saw somebody write on Twitter -

What's the point of voting if
the person that I voted for

can't actually fix the
material realities of my life.

It's really, really disempowering.

And it's actually really
dangerous for democracy.

- The mayor didn't believe

that our community supports this plan!

So we are delivering 7,000
signatures with names and

addresses to prove it to him!

- I'm disappointed in the recent

and confusing decision by the mayor.

So I'm inviting him to come
spend some time in Greenpoint,

walk the streets with us,
with our children in tow,

let him see what we are dealing with,

how unsafe it is at every intersection,

especially McGuinness.

- For a long time we've
been fighting to use data

and information and experts
to help us build safe streets.

Bloomberg started the
process of using it...

(Yelling, booing)

Leave him there.

We're going to do the best
we can. He can stay here.

He can stay here.

(Yelling)

Leave him. Leave him.

- You complain about the mayor
but you're in bed with him!

- The thing here... This
is a perfect example!

- You're a clown and we told you before!

- This is a perfect example!

- You were a clown as a council
member & you're a clown now!

- We have individuals, individuals...

- Clowns like you, puppets
like you, destroying our city!

I'm a native New Yorker!
You guys are outta line!

- Don't match that energy!

We're from Brooklyn - we show love!

- McGuinness safe now!
McGuinness safe now!

- Shame on you! You're a clown!

- This is a perfect example
of what we're talking about -

He is literally a one man show.

He has no supporters behind him.

What we're doing is standing
up for 7,000 people!

7,000 people saying they want something!

The Department of Transportation
puts forward a plan

under the administration of Adams

and people like that get the mic!

- Mic check. Mic check!

- Mic check. Mic check!

There were two years...

where research...

was done....

to try to solve...

a problem...

with safety!

If there was opposition...

they should have participated...

in that process!

I understand...

that change is hard!

That change is difficult!

But we have to move forward!

If we don't move forward...

people will lose their lives!

And that's what what we have to focus on!

Let's go to City Hall folks, let's do it!

McGuinness safe now! McGuinness safe now!

McGuinness safe now! McGuinness safe now!

- Traffic safety advocates are fuming

after they say this city changed
plans to redesign a roadway

that many people say is dangerous.

- This plan is not what we fought for.

And it's confusing because
people see a bike lane,

but it's really not at all
what we had advocated for,

because there's still two lanes

of traffic in both directions.

So we continue to have
this highway-like culture,

with cars speeding through,
cut-through traffic.

It's actually a less safe street.

- You're creating points
of conflict, whether it's

between a pedestrian
waiting in the bike lane

to cross the street, whether
it is for a business, trying

to get their delivery and then doing

that delivery in the bike lane.

Whether it is for a cyclist
that's just trying to get

safely from the Pulaski Bridge
back home on McGuinness.

- The neighborhood's pretty
disappointed in it, honestly.

- You know, there's a really
tragic element to all this.

This entire process sort of defies belief.

I don't want to say that
it's incompetence, right?

- It's not.

- It's weaponized incompetence.

I hope with every part of my being,

that I'm not watching
thisfootage a year from now,

or two years from now, right?

And there has been a death in the interim.

God forbid, there's another
death on my McGuinness Blvd.

- Why does change happen? I
think about that all the time.

- We have a natural
tendency to assume that

the way things are is inevitable.

They had to be this way.
And that's just not true.

They can change. And
in some places they do.

Here's the problem with change in America.

Change in America is
incredibly slow. It is so slow.

It's so frustratingly slow.

And I'll give you the best
example is global warming.

Everybody in this country is desperate,

desperate about climate change.

But what we're really desperate

of is we don't want to change.

We, we literally do not
want to change our behavior

or our lifestyles in any way.

- We are not in a good
situation right now, right?

The earth is like literally dying.

Or at least humankind is,
we're running our course.

So if we don't start like
really fighting for the facts

and fighting for them viscerally,

we're not going to get anywhere.

- This idea of waiting,
you know, overthinking...

Every other city has done
these types of things.

They have been proven to work.

There's data and science behind it all.

Why not just move with the
things that we know work?

And it all comes out to leadership.

- You know, you've seen
it in London and Paris,

in Barcelona and Milan.

Those mayors that made
those most, you know,

dramatic changes to their streets

were reelected overwhelmingly.

Anne Hidalgo in Paris, reelected.

Sadik-Khan in London, reelected.

Sala in Milan, reelected.

Reelected, reelected, reelected.

So, you know, it's not only
good policy, it's good politics.

- I would say most change
that I've seen in my career

occurs through happenstance.

- I'm kind of heavy on
the deus ex machina,

the bolt out of the blue,

the thing that comes out of nowhere.

Nobody can predict where the next wave

of change will actually come from.

All we can do is to be ready

and to pounce when the opportunity arises.

- We have some breaking
news this evening -

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has been
indicted on federal charges.

- I don't want to connect dots

that don't need to be connected.

But did somebody's mind
change at City Hall?

- You know, the world
moves in mysterious ways...

- In the words of Jane Jacobs,
cities have the capability

of providing something for everybody,

only when they are created by everybody.