New Yorkers want more open streets, bike lanes, and bus lanes, and they’re willing to sacrifice some free parking to get them.
According to a Siena College poll commissioned by Transportation Alternatives and released on Tuesday, 68% of registered voters in New York City supported adding more protected bike lanes, while 63% of those polled wanted to expand the city’s Open Streets program in their neighborhoods.
A majority of those polled also said they wanted more dedicated bus lanes, wider sidewalks, greenery, and spaces for children to play, even if it means sacrificing parking or space for vehicles.
Support for protected bike lanes was highest among voters who earn less than $50,000 a year, with 73% saying they’d back adding more of them in their neighborhoods; protected bike lanes also garnered the support of 82% of Hispanic/Latino voters and 71% of Black voters, as well as 61% of whites.
“We need to think about how our city recovers from COVID-19 and these results reveal that some communities that were impacted the hardest by pandemic, whether it’s communities of color or low income communities, are some of the most supportive for transforming streets,” said Cory Epstein, the communications director for TransAlt.
The poll of 805 New Yorkers was designed to resemble the city’s electorate; 64% reported owning a car, and just 30% said they rode a bike in the last month.
Of the voters who said they support adding protected bike lanes, 66% responded that they would still support them even if they had a negative effect on car flow or parking; 50% of voters who did not favor protected bike lanes said they would support them if they had no impact on traffic or parking. The poll did not appear to ask voters if they generally supported protected bike lanes if it meant less parking.
Jon Orcutt, a former DOT policy official who is now the director of communications of the cycling advocacy group Bike New York, recalled the slew of polls conducted during the “bikelash” against bike lanes and the Citi Bike rollout a decade ago.
“Two mayoral terms later, TransAlt commissions this poll and they found the exact same thing: It’s the abiding underlying support, underneath all the bullshit and nonsense that we constantly have to contend with,” Orcutt said.
De Blasio announced his own Vision Zero initiative after taking office in 2014, and while overall traffic fatalities have maintained a steady decline, city streets remain extremely dangerous. Last year was the deadliest year of the Vision Zero era, fueled by an increase in speeding and reckless drivers.
The mayor has frustrated transportation advocates by ignoring their advice to use the pandemic to make sweeping, fundamental changes to improve street safety in his last months in office. The popular Open Streets initiative was spurred by the City Council, with de Blasio fully embracing it later. The mayor’s Department of Transportation Commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, was recently tapped by President Joe Biden to be Deputy Transportation Secretary under Pete Buttigieg.
It is now up to DOT Commissioner Margaret Forgione to complete de Blasio’s transportation goals, including the installation of 20 miles of new bus lanes and busways.
The poll showed that 56% of voters supported using existing parking spaces for “protected citywide bus lanes.”
“DOT is glad to see so much public support for our programs that make streets safer and more livable. We look forward to working closely with communities on all of these programs as we look towards the 2021 implementation season,” DOT spokesperson Brian Zumhagen said, when asked about the poll results.
Orcutt said that it would be up to a new mayor to usher in a new way of approaching transportation and equity issues, and that this poll would spur more policy discussions in that race. At least three of the declared candidates said they support a car-free Manhattan.
“I think we have a pretty good sense of what we’re gonna get out of the de Blasio administration at this point,” Orcutt said.
