By FRANK BRUNI
Published: September 10, 2011
From the New York Times
SOMETHING lovely and all too rare happened to Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s frequently demonized transportation commissioner, as she and I rode our bikes down Park Avenue South one morning last month: Sadik-Khan got unsolicited, unfettered praise.
It came from a young cyclist who happened to pull up beside us, glanced over at her and suddenly beamed.
“Oh, it’s you!” he stammered, then mentioned that he owned a bicycle shop and had recently placed a newspaper ad publicly thanking her for her cycling advocacy. “You’re going to leave a legacy, you know.”
He’s right. Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg both. And it’s past time that more than just a passer-by trumpeted it.
Since the mayor appointed her in 2007 and she began to bring her agency’s work more closely in line with his vision of a greener New York, the city has roughly doubled its miles of bike lanes, to about 500. If you did any biking at all in Manhattan or Brooklyn this summer, you may well have noticed the improvements, including protected bike lanes (ones that separate cyclists entirely from street traffic) on such major arteries as Columbus and First Avenues in Manhattan.
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