Janette Sadik-Khan

If only our RTA had a boss like Janette Sadik-Khan who was appointed to be the commissioner of New York's Department of Transport in April.

According to Sadik-Khan, New York streets should be brimming with activity, not cars. She wants to see broad sidewalks filled with people and elegant street furniture, public plazas with places to sit and chat, and bike lanes where children feel safe on their bikes. “Whether you’re cycling and you lock up to a fanciful bike rack,” she says, “or you’re a pedestrian and you come across a fabulous open space that makes you want to linger—that, I think, defines the quality of life in cities.”
Getting there means “we’re going to have to do some things a little differently,” she warns. “We’re going to have to get people out of their cars.” To that end, Sadik-Khan is rolling out pilot programs as fast as she can—new public plazas, wider sidewalks, a bike-rack design competition. Her mission, fundamentally, is to remake the real estate between buildings by, as she puts it, “reclaiming the street from cars.” In traffic-management circles, such a statement is practically heresy.