Council Member Marte Blasts Dept. of Transportation Study Delays

In late August, not long before Council Member Christopher Marte declared his ambition to become the next Speaker of the City Council, he made another interesting announcement that got rather less attention.

The announcement—or, really, a threat—was directed to a familiar target, the Department of Transportation (DOT), over a familiar complaint: They haven’t done the work they are supposed to have done and they have no explanation why.

“The time for excuses is over,” Marte said. “It has been nearly 10 years since money was first set aside for this study, and in that time, DOT has repeatedly delayed the project,” which involves streets in Manhattan’s Financial District.

“Had the agency acted on schedule, the redesign could have already been implemented, giving residents safer, more accessible streets. Instead, the community has faced years of excuses while conditions have only worsened.”

The story is an old and maddening one, for since at least the first de Blasio administration, the DOT has repeatedly proven itself unable to complete certain tasks assigned to it, especially those that concern the less-than-glamorous aspects of street design and traffic control.

In this instance, Marte wants to know what’s going in the Financial District, an area the DOT has ostensibly been “studying” for almost a decade, with zero tangible results.

Marte’s FiDi concerns aren’t unique. In Red Hook and Gowanus, Brooklyn, locals have been waiting since at least 2014 for the DOT to address poorly timed crosswalk signals, broken bicycle lanes, and heavily trafficked streets without adequate traffic lights.

Also, the final draft report for a Red Hook Truck and Traffic study was due in October 2024, superseding studies that didn’t happen in the 2010s. It too hasn’t appeared. A DOT sign posted at the intersection of Court Street and Hamilton Avenue in Red Hook announces that a project to “Enhance Pedestrian Safety” was beginning in April 2025. As of September, nothing has happened.

While Marte may not know the details of those districts, which are presided over by his Progressive Caucus colleagues, Alexa Avilés and Shahana Hanif, he knows enough—including about dystopic Canal Street—that his patience with the DOT is over.

And so the restive solon let them have it, “demanding that the agency finally begin the long-promised Financial District Street Redesign Study—or return the $500,000 in discretionary funds allocated for the effort to his office.”

Technically, it should be noted, those funds predate Marte’s time in office, going back to his District 1 predecessor, Margaret Chin. While there’s no love lost between Marte and Chin—Marte made a strong challenge against the incumbent Chin in 2017 before winning the open seat in 2021—what’s good for FiDi, generally speaking, is good for everyone.

What’s also true is that the unrushed, often non-responsive DOT of today, under Eric Adams’s Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, doesn’t seem that different from what it was under the de Blasio administration and his DOT commissioner from 2014 to 2020, Polly Trottenberg.

That both de Blasio and Adams are notoriously poor managers can’t be seen as coincidental to the ongoing problems at DOT. Whatever complaints one might have about Rodriguez, nearly the same criticisms could be applied to Trottenberg, who had seven years to make, or at least publicly advocate for, changes in project management—yet didn’t.

“The plan has been discussed for decades, and the need for action has only grown,” Marte points out regarding the FiDi situation. “Over the last 30 years, tens of thousands of new residents have moved into the Financial District, transforming it from a largely commercial corridor into a vibrant residential neighborhood, but the street design was not adapted to a change in use.”

The DOT did not respond to Straus News’s request for comment on Marte’s threats and allegations by press time, but in a prior statement to PIX 11 News, a spokesperson said the agency was “actively preparing an update on this important project for both the Council Member and the community.”