Mayor Eric Adams declined an invitation to a forum held by transit advocates on Monday, but that didn’t stop a group of candidates gunning for his job from lambasting his transportation policies.
The event — which was organized by the nonprofit Riders Alliance and moderated by Gothamist and WNYC City Hall reporter Elizabeth Kim — came during the early days of the campaign trail ahead of next June’s primary election. It drew a half-dozen mayoral hopefuls who all characterized Adams’ lack of progress on building new bus lanes as a slight to transit riders.
Several candidates were critical of the mayor’s failure to comply with the “Streets Master Plan” law passed by the City Council in 2019, which mandates the city transportation department to install 30 new miles of bus lanes each year. Adams has fallen far short of that target, with the department installing just 15.7 miles of bus lanes last fiscal year, according to the mayor’s management report.
Adams’ office referred all questions to his political campaign, and his campaign representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State Sen. Jessica Ramos of Queens noted that Adams in 2022 pledged to create even more new bus lanes than the 2019 law requires.
“The current mayor promised 150 miles of bus lanes and hasn’t delivered, I don’t think, on a dozen,” she said. “We have a lot of catching up to do to live our wildest rapid bus transit dreams.”
The mayor’s promises to improve bus service were so sweeping that Riders Alliance members in 2022 gave him a jacket embroidered with the phrase “bus mayor.” The following year, the group asked for it to be returned.
City Comptroller Brad Lander and his predecessor Scott Stringer both vowed they would earn that jacket if they were elected mayor.
During the forum, Lander also took aim at city Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, who was hired for the job after campaigning alongside Adams in 2021.
“I’m going to promise you tonight: a professional, world-class DOT commissioner, not a political patronage appointment, and serious management of DOT,” Lander said. “A lot of what prevents bus improvements from happening is people who are clinging to parking spaces. And you have to be willing to just go and have some leadership and do something about that.”
Stringer said the federal indictment against Adams has caused distractions that make the mayor less capable of speeding up the city’s sluggish bus service. Adams has pleaded not guilty and is contesting the charges in court.
“This mayoral administration has basically been a roving crime scene,” said Stringer, whose 2021 run for mayor ended in a fifth-place finish in the Democratic primary. “I’m telling you right now, when I’m mayor, zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. New DOT, new ethics reform. Ending pay to play, and then we’re gonna do the people’s business.”
State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani of Queens pledged to stand up to businesses that seek to halt transportation projects. He specifically pointed out the transportation department’s reversal of plans to add a bus lane on Fordham Road in the Bronx, after the proposal faced pushback from groups like Fordham University and the New York Botanical Garden.
“If the Botanical Garden calls me to cancel the busway, I’m not going to be picking up that phone call,” Mamdani said.
The other candidates at the forum, lawyer Jim Walden and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, also made transit-friendly promises to the crowd, but they weren’t as blunt in their criticism of Adams.