In 2019, when then-City Council Speaker Corey Johnson unveiled his NYC Streets Plan law, he took the stage to Queen’s anthem “I Want To Break Free.” At the time, other politicians picked up on his call to “break car culture.” But Freddy Mercury and his bandmates didn’t want a break, from a past ridden with “lies,” they wanted to be free.
Last year, Mayor Mamdani won office on a promise to make New York’s slow buses both fast and free. Mercury, who took his last name from a Roman god with winged shoes, knew the need for swift passage and the freedom it affords. As Mamdani prepares his own Streets Plan, due in December, fast and free on a grand scale should be his guiding lights.
Last month, a dozen organizations from the Regional Plan Association to the NYC-DSA Transit Working Group, urged NYC DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn to put the mayor’s rapid bus plan, announced in July, and the affordability crisis front and center in the plan, with a focus on “streets we can afford.”
Flynn has promised “capital light” street safety and transit improvements that speed the pace of transformation to deliver fast buses and pedestrian and bicycle protections sooner than before. Some of his urgency comes from the high cost of driving, which he pegged at $8,000 per year over what car-free households spend.
It’s that cost, in money for the drivers who shell it out, in time for the bus riders who suffer poor service, or worse for pedestrians and cyclists, and their families, who pay the ultimate price, that is helping drive growing organized labor support for the mayor’s fast and free vision in the broadest sense.
PSC-CUNY, which signed the Streets Plan letter, has members who must commute to multiple campuses spread out across the city that can include difficult to reach Kingsborough and Queensborough Community Colleges and the College of Staten Island, and who know all too well the importance of saving time and money on their slow, unreliable commutes.
Beyond freeing grownups from an onerous fare policy and sluggish transit that robs people of time for work, family, friends and community, this comprehensive approach to freedom on our streets also captured the support of parent group Kids Over Cars, underlining the importance of safe routes to school that can foster kids’ independence and save families valuable time.
With drag racing and illegal micromobility devices harming New Yorkers, it can be hard to square a shared vision of fast buses, and a government working overtime to deliver them, with a selfish, fast-and-furious design on our streets. That’s yet another reason why “fast and free” are such a crucial pairing; New Yorkers have a right to walk our streets free of danger.
We don’t just need a break from the car culture that Corey Johnson identified. We deserve to be free from the costs of crashes, respiratory healthcare from air pollution, stroke and cardiac care from vehicle noise, even the extra childcare expenses that result when otherwise capable kids can’t walk to and from school, the playground and the library.
The next Streets Plan can’t reinforce an all-of-the-above approach to how we get around. It’s no coincidence that streets that are the “envy of the world,” as Flynn says, are car-free or car-light.
Millions of us already depend on transit, cycling, and walking every single day. We need a plan to design all of our streets to maximize and build on that success in every neighborhood to free New Yorkers up for what matters most. And we need to get it done fast.
Pearlstein is policy & communications director at Riders Alliance.