 Okay guys we're gonna get started thanks for coming so this class today this is normally part of a seminar that we're teaching on the Global Street Design Guide in the urban design program where we have mostly urban design students and a few from the planning program looking at how how do we kind of rethink our urban streets around the world and so we're thrilled today because the godmother of all of the work that we've been doing as part of the Global Street Design Guide is Jeanette Sadekkan and Jeanette used to be the Commissioner for the Transportation Department here in New York under Mayor Mike Bloomberg's term and she's currently a principal at Bloomberg Associates and our chair at NACTO and the Global Designing Cities Initiative and of course Jeanette is also the author of this really awesome book Street Fight and so we've invited her here today to speak to you guys hopefully in the future we can do it in the evening because we know there's a clash with many people's classes so you guys are the lucky few that we've picked a slot that works for your schedule and so please I'd like you to join me in welcoming Jeanette to talk about Street Fight today. It's great to be here with all of you and back at Columbia which is my alma mater I actually went to the law school and it was great training for being a Transportation Commissioner now you might ask why and that is because when you are making change in the world there are so many times when like a lawyer will tell you no I don't think we can do that liability concerns or I don't think we can do that we're gonna lose federal money and so if you are properly armed and trained and you know exactly what's possible within the envelope of your world you can be a very dangerous person and so I was very grateful for that training at Columbia which I think made me a much better Commissioner so before I start I really want to recognize the 4,500 men and women at the New York City Department of Transportation because they were the ones that actually made the change happen that I'm going to talk about on the ground and in particular that guy on the right Seth Salamano who's my press secretary my co-author and also my colleague at Bloomberg Associates and as many of you know when you make changes you know it can be controversial and so having a really smart savvy press secretary it was critical in terms of what we were able to get done so I'm going to start with a question what do you all think about when you think about a street I mean this is a question I'm asking you well that's a really profound answer that's never the answer I get when I ask this question what else do you guys think about cars transit that's good pedestrian bikes asphalt safety furniture's well you are in New York so we did a little bit of that most people think of a scene like this right and streets are what make some cities great and some cities not so great but until recently people have taken a sort of dashboard view of our streets right and our leaders have looked at streets like this and said you know yeah all this is working just fine and streets as you know can be lively places for people but for most of the last few generations they've really been places for cars with devastating results 40,000 people dying every year on our streets chronic congestion lifeless streets and this didn't happen by chance this actually happened by design and you look at a street like this and you don't even see anybody walking there right that's not designed for them where would you even walk to and it reminds me of this video game I used to play anybody play Frogger right I think that this game could have been called pedestrian and this is a real-life translation there are all sorts of signs of how a street wants to be used and you can see here you know with these people stranded you know on the side of the road and a big reason for that is our federal design standards which dictate everything from the size of the fonts on our signs to the width of our streets and this guy is like the 10 commandments in transportation but 500 pages long and as you can see they have spared no cost in clip art right so the other piece about this book is you can read the entire thing and you won't see a single person in it and an emoji interpretation looks like this start with a city add roads throw in some stop lights take out those pesky pedestrians and voila you've got a street with lots of speeding cars and a lot of engineers celebrating yet another job well done just don't try to cross that street on foot and it's clear that our streets need an upgrade when you think about it so much has changed in our world in the last 60 years economically politically socially technologically and yet our streets have remained virtually unchanged you know it's like they were coded in amber it's like their Jurassic Park streets and the thing that we can do which would be amazing right wouldn't be incredible if we just take an app and just sort of like hit it oh safer streets let's add some benches and plazas or maybe some bike lanes or maybe bus lanes right making it easier to walk or bike or take transit and the problem is is that our streets really don't come with an app the closest thing to an app that we had was Mike Bloomberg and he drafted this plan yc agenda which was looking at how we were going to accommodate the million more people that were expected to move to New York City by 2030 and still improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods and business districts and this plan yc long-range sustainability plan didn't start out as a long-range plan it actually started off in an exercise that Dan doctor often his team did to look at where we were going to cite a lot of the operational components of the city so where we're going to put sanitation depots where we're going to put truck depots for paving all of that and it was an eye-opening exercise because it looked we looked at how we were using these spaces and it was clear that we were going to have to use our spaces differently it was a very profound exercise and it had deeply profound implications for how we use our streets right we're not going to accommodate a million more people in New York City by tripling triple decking our roads right we needed to make it easier for people to take the bus to bike to walk around to be safe walking around and we created 400 miles of bike lanes plazas all that kind of stuff which was the sort of short version and the slightly longer version is that it was a fight every day it was a fight to change the culture of New York City and we were fighting to give people more choices for getting around and I learned some lessons along the way and the first is that you can paint the city you want to see it doesn't take millions of dollars it doesn't take years and years of planning studies and you can accomplish a lot with just the materials that you have on hand so shortly after I started we worked to create the first pedestrian plaza in Brooklyn and we turned it from a place that people parked to a place that people wanted to be and again did it over a weekend just with paint tables and chairs and planters and we showed people what the possibilities were for their streets and we made these transformations all over town so this is 14th Street which had this completely outdated traffic pattern on it you know it was a reverse bus lane that was here and now we created space for people so people are now in the space 3 a.m. 3 p.m. all times of the day and night and Apple Store moved next door you guys have probably been there we moved north to Madison Square this used to be this crossing used to be the largest crosswalk in New York City was larger than a football field and it was a real problem we had three streets coming together it was like this whole tangle of traffic and so we redesigned the street and we created 65,000 square feet of new public space and it was really interesting people are so hungry for public space in New York City right when we put out the orange barrels people just came to the space like this art class two hours after we closed the space this art class was sketching in the street right the only question that I have is why are they that aren't they sketching the flat iron building you know like what are you looking at people right so anyway today it is it is one of the most successful public spaces in the city and people will sit in the plaza rather than the park next door Madison Square Park just to feel the pulse of the city so after creating a showcase of projects around the city and show what's possible on city streets we took our toolkit to the crossroads of the world Times Square and as all of you know Manhattan's on a grid Broadway cuts a diagonal through it does great things by creating public spaces and plazas but it also creates these you know these hot spots of congestion right and Times Square was a particular problem because you have 350,000 people walking through Times Square every day they were 90% of the traffic but they only had 10% of the space so this was a basic math problem and people had tried for years and years to fix it by coming up with slip lanes or changing the signalization of the street lights to try to make it work better so nothing works so we brought this idea to Mayor Mike Bloomberg that we were going to try something new we were going to close Broadway from 42nd to 47th Street close it to cars and open it to people and we were going to do it as a pilot program we were going to test it and measure it and see if it worked and if it worked we would keep it and if it didn't work we'd put it back to the way that it was right so I brought this idea to Mike Bloomberg and we're up there in in City Hall and the committee of the whole room there's this huge table it looks like a nights of the round table table right and all the deputy mayors were there and so the mayor went around and asked all the deputy mayors what they thought about this idea right it was kind of like a vote and oh I forgot to mention this was during his reelection campaign so not everybody let's just say thought that it was a very good idea and so by the time the poll was done the mayor turned to me and he said and my heart at this point was sinking because it was clear that this was not going to happen and the mayor turned to me and he said you know I don't ask my commissioners to do the right thing according to the political calendar I asked my commissioners to do the right thing period and he shook my hand and he said let's do it which was this awesome moment everybody nobody nobody thought this was a great idea or at least at that time right like I'll just wait to not do it later anyway so we did it you know and people came out immediately and one of the other pieces to know because all of you are studying planning and you're going to be doing this kind of work going forward I hope I hope the future transportation commissioner for New York City is in this room so I'm telling you whoever you are the next future transportation commissioner that when you get into trouble because every project has trouble no project goes through the process and comes out perfectly so for us one of our big issues was when we put the orange barrels out the night before we were closing Times Square to cars and opening it to people we realized there was nothing in the space we created two and a half acres of new public space but there was nothing there we got to do something so we ran to pinch a hardware store in Brooklyn and bought hundreds and hundreds of beach chairs and we put the beach chairs out and I got to tell you the thing that the reporters reported on and everybody talked about the next day was the beach chairs did you like the beach chairs the color of the beach chairs nobody talked about the fact that we closed Times Square to cars they just talked about beach chairs so I'm telling you when you have a big project that's controversial I just want you to think beach chairs and you can see today the space is used for all sorts of different things I don't know if any of you have done the yoga classes the Sun Ryan yoga classes there it's amazing people have proposed all sorts of fantastic uses and it's important to note that all of these projects these temporary projects went through the capital construction process right and it was important to demonstrate them because if we'd gone through the traditional process we would still be talking about closing Times Square instead of enjoying it the way we are today a big focus of our work was data I worked for a data-driven mayor and as he likes to say in God we trust everyone else bring data so we brought lots and lots of data and we spent time measuring the impact of our work which went way beyond just what was happening with traffic speeds we looked at the mobility benefits we looked at the safety benefits tracked you know what was happening not just curb to curb but what was happening at the cash register and these detailed analytics really helped make the case particularly for small business owners that turned from some of our biggest opponents into some of our biggest supporters and not surprisingly we found that you know when we put down protected bike lanes we saw streets and businesses saw a 50% increase in retail sales along the corridor which really isn't surprising when you think about it because cars don't shop people do and so when you make it easier for people to get to their stores right that has a net benefit to local businesses we saw the same results with our plazas we saw the same results with our bus lanes but economics aside there is nothing that's more important than safety and we used data from 7,000 crashes it was the largest traffic safety study ever funded by the Federal Highway Administration to look at what was happening on our streets where people were dying when they were dying how they were dying and we did this because we knew that with leadership and analysis that these traffic crashes could be predicted and they could be prevented and now we're seeing this idea explode across the country with vision zero which builds on this idea and it brings me to another point that great ideas cross borders and that no one has a paint patent on pavement every every city is different you know they all have their own challenges but we all face some of the same problems and so when you see something that you think works other places you can try it out on your own streets and that worked for me I went to Bogota and Curitiba shortly after I was appointed and saw the incredible sort of mobility magic that they were bringing to their streets where you know trips bus trips that used to take hours then taking minutes and it was a great model for New York City why because we have the largest bus fleet in North America and we have the slowest bus speeds as you all probably know right my chief engineer used to say that the only way to get across town was to be born there which is really not a good model for a world-class city and so we imported the concept we created off-board fare collection dedicated lanes we gave buses the green light when they hit an intersection with transit signal prioritization we created seven lines over six years in all five boroughs so again you can move quickly to transform your streets and we did we brought a very similar approach to our bike lane program how many of you ride bikes okay so you've all seen the difference that this can make we I actually took a trip to Copenhagen and I was amazed at what I saw because what they did is that they just basically took the parking lane and moved it out and they created a protected lane for cyclists and again this doesn't cost a lot of money right it's just about imagining your streets a little differently pushing the parking lane out there did two things one created this amazing safe passage for cyclists and also preserved parking and for any of you that are engaged in parking issues you know that you take away a parking space and it is like taking away somebody's firstborn child right it is that much of a flashpoint so this was really a win-win and you can see this is the map of bike lanes in 2007 and this is the bike lane map in 2013 and I love this because it just looks so easy no problem there yeah and now we're seeing an explosion of protected bike lanes all across the country but it is not just about moving people by bikes it is about moving people and by following their footsteps you can see the possibilities that are hidden in plain sight whether it's the need for a mid block crossing this is on 51st between 6th and 7th Avenue where we sort of channeled a little Harry Potter and created 6th and a half Avenue yes we thought that Seth came up with that or the need for a sidewalk that was basically written in the grass or the need for public space creating plazas and importantly we turned many of our programs into application based programs so people could apply for street seating they could apply for bike wrecks they could apply for bike lanes and that was an important change in the relationship that people have with government right they could ask for the changes that they wanted to see on their streets and at the end of the Bloomberg administration you had a tsunami of demands from across the city from communities that wanted these different changes and it was really important moment because it doesn't matter then who's the mayor or who's the transportation commissioner it is the people that are demanding change on their streets we also worked with local artists to bring new life to old spaces sculptures to places like Madison Square lighting on places like the Manhattan Bridge even the lowly Jersey barriers got a makeover working with community groups across the city as anybody participated in the summer streets program right summer streets a great program you guys should check it out summer Saturdays and we closed Park Avenue seven miles of car free streets 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. programming dancing all sorts of fun stuff this is an example of one of the things we did we closed the Park Avenue tunnel to cars and invited an artist to come in through competition who created the sound and light show that was really extraordinary again just imagining our streets can be used a little bit differently and in a city where this actually passed as public seating right which is really not great for people or parents or anybody really we added thousands of new benches and I think you were talking about the street furniture which made me smile and we asked New Yorkers where they where we should put them so again it was an application based program that we used on making it easier for people to walk and sit and take in the city we also started a system of way finding that you've seen you know we had a great system of signs for cars but not a great system of signs for people on foot and you know we did this survey before we started this and we found out that at any given point in time 10% of New Yorkers were lost right and that's just the New Yorkers that would admit it right so we knew we had a problem and this was a way to make it easier for New Yorkers to get around the public domain is the public's domain and they will do as you know anything they can to protect it to keep it put it back the way that it was so a city government that's looking to do big things will naturally have a kind of push-pull relationship with these groups and building those relationships is as important as anything that you put down in concrete asphalt or steel and there is a growing coalition of New Yorkers that are passionate about taking back their streets fighting to take them back and there's a great set of advocates that are doing just that and I can't say enough for the advocates that we worked at that helped us make this change happen Eric McClure Paul Steely white from transportation alternatives Brad Lander in the city council Clarence Eccleston and in street films I mean really amazing people you needed to have that push to help us get over the line and building relationships new ways of engaging stakeholders very very important somebody is a couple people you may know here lots of ways to engage right and so we look for innovative techniques to get that done but it wasn't always easy there were bumps in the road you know I learned that when you push the status quo the status quo pushes back hard anybody know the street you will get a free copy of Street Fight if you say it right now no you don't count what street is this huh Central Park East no who said that who said that you don't count either did somebody else say prospect Park was nobody said prospect Park was well well you're gonna have to alright well that's amazing okay yes I think that will count for you then I think that will count for you you really didn't know where it was so this was prospect Park West this was actually ground zero in the bike lane fight the community asked us to fix it it was a dangerous speedway next to the park you know it was like a you know a tarmac with like jets taken off it was just like the light went green and cars sped cyclists were so scared the street that they rode on the sidewalk so the community asked us to fix it put in a two-way bike lane which we did made the sidewalks you know speeding went down 75% nobody's on the sidewalk anymore it was great right everybody's so happy because this happened and this work turns out not so much so these protesters came out complaining that somehow because we made the street slower it made the street less safe right and a local paper got really into it they started they said that this was the most contested slab of concrete outside the Gaza Strip right amazing and you can see what they found so threatening I mean who would want to live next to a scene like this and it led to this full-blown backlash right but you need to stand your ground and not make policy based on the press and when we launched the city bike program it's now 12,000 bikes people have taken over 50 million rides we knew it would be popular but we also knew that we would be criticized along the way and a local magazine analyzed just why city bike elicited such strong reactions New Yorkers didn't like anything healthy that involves sharing that was environmental or my favorite anything that was vaguely French and the tipping point in this backlash came with this Wall Street Journal editor she called us bike craze she said that we were advocate that we were working with the advocates part of this all-powerful bike lobby working hand-in-hand with this totalitarian mayor I got very she got very exercising you can probably still find it on YouTube but my hero John Stewart told it like it was and I think backlash is a sign that you are doing something right it is what happens when you challenge the status quo and you move to a new road order and today the typical rider looks much more like the guy on the right than the Mad Max messenger on the left and it's a big step bikes being used for commuting for getting around for errands for getting married I love that one and it's popular people are way ahead of the press and politicians when it comes to their street at the last poll taken at the end of the Bloomberg administration we found a 73% support for bike share 72% support for plazas 64% support for bike lanes if this had been an election it would have been a landslide and we saw just how much had changed a few years ago when the de Blasio administration thought it would be a good idea to take out the Times Square plazas to deal with the scantily clad women and costume characters that were soliciting tips from tourists and it did not go over well once the idea was floated New Yorkers rushed to defend their plazas I mean I was getting all geared up to start to defend it and it didn't matter like that people were completely in a new place about this and it was amazing because you think you know just a few years earlier people were outraged that we were taking cars out of Times Square and now few can imagine putting them back it's truly a new status quo and it's amazing how far New York City and other cities have come in implementing these kinds of opportunities and a big buzz that's happening right now is how new technology is going to revolutionize our cities and it's right around the corner and there's a lot to like if we can connect vehicles to the worldwide street you know and eliminate the 40,000 traffic deaths that we see every year that would be great you know and seen this way we shouldn't be afraid of driverless cars we should be afraid of the ones that we already have the only problem with this future is that there are no people in it if you Google AVs you will see images of hundreds of people chilling in cars just chilling in cars and it looks like if you get driverless cars you also get people with streets I mean or this token kid playing with a soccer ball underneath this multi-lane highway I don't know what that is but if this looks familiar it's because we've already seen this movie you know it was a sort of technicolor fantasy before you know people sipping cappuccino and they're kind of Logan's run turtlenecks and today the fantasy still is automatic cars and these people in the blue turtlenecks I mean I really don't know what it is with these blue turtlenecks but they are there I urge you to check it out although this version has more of a sort of Xanax and chill kind of vibe to it I think don't you know right so but this driverless fantasy is this kind of fugue state and we're too busy daydreaming that we don't realize that we may be driving ourselves back to the same dead end as the last century because a driverless car is still a car you may know some of you may know this image you know how much space is taken up by 60 people in cars versus on a bus or on a bike and my colleague John Orcott showed that AVs aren't going to solve the problem if people just trade in their personal cars and take Ubers right you're just changing the kind of car that you see on the street and the point of shared driverless mobility isn't to have better cars it's to have better cities and we need a vision to establish these principles before we make decisions that we can't undo and that's why the new guides that NACTO put out the National Association of City Transportation officials is so important and Sky Duncan and Keeta and Fabio all deserve a tremendous amount of credit you know they Sky leads the Global Designing Cities Initiative which is the global arm of NACTO and these guides are literally changing facts on the ground in cities around the world why even in the United States you know we had this design guidance that I talked about before that was 60 years old and so cities didn't want to make changes because they didn't they were scared that they'd be liable for the changes they were scared they'd lose federal money and now the urban street design guide at the top has been adopted by US DOT and federal highway as new design guidance it is giving cities and new permission slip to change their streets and there's a transit street design guide and a bikeway design guide and the global street design guide and I can't tell you what a huge difference that is making for cities and mayors around the world and it builds on work that we've seen in cities around the world whether it's Vancouver whether in LA and you know there's a seismic shift happening in LA when we've got protected lanes there in Toronto you can see the changes in Bogota we've been working with Mayor Panulosa their Addis Ababa Sky Inter team literally painting the streets overnight they're working with communities we're working in Athens to reclaim spaces for people on foot in Paris you probably read about the pedestrianization efforts underway there in Mumbai same thing with the work through GDC I and Santiago you know cities are seeing what's possible when they look at their assets differently what the potential that's there that is hidden in plain sight because as we know it is not a question of engineering it is a question of imagination and we know it's a fight to make space for people it's a street fight but it's a fight that we can win it's a fight that we must win because when you change the street you change the world thank you so we're going to do questions lower Manhattan yeah we actually did some work on that and Polytron Berg the new the Transportation Commissioner is continuing that work and I'm hopeful that we'll actually be able to see something like that happen in the next few years yeah well I mean you sort of see that at Hunt's Point in the Bronx and I mean there's lots of it's yeah there's the design guidance that I'm talking about has provisions in all of it for all different types of uses and all different types of vehicles so that's embedded in the work that's there but so much of the challenge is actually getting pedestrians to a level playing field right and but but but but you know every city every every environment's different and so you know you have to tailor the designs to work in a particular area but the truck piece is is is embedded in the design guidance thank you well I helped write it so I think it's an awesome guide and I encourage you to get a copy of it as soon as possible all right excellent I mean it's really important because you know it's it's it's uncertain what's happening right now and so cities really need to get back into the driver's seat on this before these changes happen without them and a big piece of this is not only the sort of what happens in an analog situation on the streets although this design guide is pointing in this direction and the policy considerations that need to be taken into account but as as importantly what are we doing to map the streets of the future because when we're talking about an autonomous sort of robot cars on the streets they have to read the street differently right and so what's happening is the map of the street the digital map of the street is is really the sort of gold going forward right because that's what everybody's fighting over and so there are a lot of entities Google's one of them that actually would like to own the map and sell it sell that information back to cities and it's our belief that cities that that asset belongs to cities right and so the shared streets platform which is work underway through Natto an organization called OTP is and I encourage you to look up shared streets is actually looking at a way for the public and the private sector to share information about what's happening on the street right so you've seen what's happening with Uber and Lyft on the streets of New York City right tripling of the amount of cars on the streets of the city right and yet nobody gets information you know decision-makers don't get information about what's happening in the street New York does actually because of mirror Yoshi at TLC is doing an awesome job of collecting that information and working with these private sector players but in most cities the transportation department or the planning department don't actually have access to this information because they won't share it and they won't share for three reasons they say the first reason is they don't want to compromise the privacy of their customers I could go on with that all of you could go on with that given recent events to they don't want to share the data because they don't want to give their competitors an advantage and three and I love this one they don't want to share it with city agencies because they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway and so what the shared streets platform does it's a way for cities to actually say no here's a platform that you can use to share data that's anonymized aggregated does not affect privacy competitive advantage and by the way we know how to use the information and so a coalition of cities are coming together to push for this shared streets platform and to encourage if not mandate private sector players to use this so that we're not planning blind in the future right we need to know what's happening on our streets and that's a critical tool to allow us to get there so it's both the design guidance in the blueprint and then also creating a sort of digital commons for our streets that are shared by everyone probably more than you wanted but yeah yes well I wrote part of the Tolling the East River Bridges report when I worked for Mayor Dinkins in 1990 and then I worked for Mayor Bloomberg where we tried to pass the congestion pricing program so I feel deeply strongly about it for only about 27 years so I am hopeful that we will get there because this is not optional right as you all know our subway system is falling apart you know I mean I was lucky I got here on time today taking the train but I could have been half an hour late and that's just not acceptable in a world-class city our system has now got 58% on time performance right that's just pathetic so we need to find dedicated revenue streams to do it and with congestion pricing you can deal with the demand side of the equation and you can find the MTA so it's a win-win I do think that the name congestion pricing is a bit unfortunate it merries together two names that everybody hates congestion and pricing right terrible the marketing of that was terrible so I like the new marketing campaign which is move New York right move New York and you're absolutely right there's a lot of technology that's out there that can get us beyond you know easy pass technology so I'm hoping it's a matter of when and not if but you know Albany is always a surprise well they're part of the all those cities are part of the same coalition that's working toward that goal and so whether it's a shared vision about the designs that we want to see on our streets whether it's a shared vision of the information flow on our streets whether it's I mean it's a way also for transportation commissioners and planners and people that are passionate about it to come together to talk about what works and what doesn't and share that kind of information and so you know those cities are also on the AV side there was a Bloomberg aspen AV initiative that involved 10 cities working through both the design piece the sort of policy implications about who's served and and the financing piece and all of the rest of that and so I encourage you to go on site there's actually a really good site that maps all of the different cities that are doing pilot projects in AV and sort of goes through the description of what they are so but it's early days and so it only is your point is a good one because it's it's really important that everybody's sharing information right now and sharing and having a shared sense of what they want what's the future we want to see we're not just planning the car we're planning the future we want to see and that's a critical change in terms of how we're envisioning how this new technology operates on our streets well they already have I would cap the number of right now on TNC's I would cap the number of TNC's without question and so we really need to be thoughtful about the decisions that we're making now and not just you know there's cities that are kind of rushing they want to be the next smart city you know mayors think oh I want to be smart you know test out all your ideas on our streets and you know you have to be really careful you tempy you know we just saw what happened with Ms. Hertzberg and when we're not paying attention to some of the issues that come down the line and we're not regulating them even the bill that you know Congress was considering allows a three to five year period of time for testing of AVs that window where there's no guidance in place whatsoever that's like we are going to be guinea pigs on the street right in what world is that a good idea don't quote me on that but yeah yes there's in fact there's a whole piece on resiliency and there's also a stormwater guide that just came out that's focused also on that as well and looking at ways to build in resiliency to our existing infrastructure programs it's critical it's critical thank you so it's a it's a critical issue you know if you create you know world-class infrastructure it needs to be maintained and taken care of right one of the ways that I worked this issue through under Mayor Bloomberg was working with the police commissioner on these initiatives and so we would do kind of SWAT team targeted enforcement blitzes to send drivers the message that they can't park in these lanes and so you know you have 35,000 police officers that are engaged in public safety in any number of ways so you can't have like a whole force doing just that but you can use you know targeted efforts to send a message that this is unacceptable behavior and I think that's one important way of making sure that that these streets are protected and used for the purpose that they were put in for so that's that's it's almost like a planted question I feel so strongly about this so there's a street cut in New York City every 30 seconds every 30 seconds the street is cut into 6,000 miles of streets that's a lot of street cuts and what ends up happening is these private utilities will cut into the street and they will say it's an emergency right and they don't so they don't follow protocol one of the first things that I did is commissioner was to create this street works manual which was basically doping out who cut into the street how they cut into the street when they cut into the street all of this was it was a three-year effort it was you know it was exhausting but really important work I'm surprised I actually it's a good point to put this in the presentation anyway what we did is we got agreement with all of the entities that touched the street that they were going to follow a certain protocol and what we had found when we first did this was that they too didn't want to share the information about where they were making cuts in the street for customers because they felt that that gave their competitors an advantage knowing where they were who they were serving all of that so we created this data island that made it possible for them to share this information you know without you know compromising their you know competition competitive advantage and so that worked for a while and we tripled the fines for people that you know cut into the street illegally and so at the beginning that was good but to your point it takes a tremendous amount of enforcement and it's difficult to have the boots on the ground to do the enforcement that you need there but it is critical and similarly on the maintenance side and the problem in so many cities too is that you know everybody gets a big rush from cutting the ribbon on a new project right but you don't get like a big press conference when you're like I'm maintaining the street right I mean we need to give you know more tender living care and appreciation for the kind of street maintenance work that needs to get done and in New York City we had a very healthy capital and maintenance program that we work very very hard on to make sure that the streets were in a state of good repair I don't think any of these changes would have happened if we hadn't taken care of the basics and the basics is everything from filling potholes fixing signs and street lights and bridges but your point is a good one that the maintenance side of new mobility needs to include the maintenance component and so I think I've seen great work from the New York City Department of Transportation I can't say enough or I think the good work that they do in a very difficult environment where people are cutting up the street all the time yeah I mean that there's all sorts of possibilities and there are fairly strong players on the government scene but I think it's a great idea I mean anything we can do to ensure that our streets are taken care of and that the people that are making changes in them are responsible for putting them back to the way that they were I mean we created a program where it used to be that like somebody would cut into the street and then they would like you know fix up their other part of street even the whole street was like messed up and so we created a whole like if you were going to touch the street you're gonna you're gonna fix the entire street you're not just gonna fix this little piece of it we also created a program where we created protected streets where you can't touch a street for 10 years you know unless it really is an emergency because we've just done an entire rebuilding program resurfacing reconstruction of that street and I think taking that kind of an approach that I have this fantasy that we'll be able to implement a program that is in Tokyo in Japan where they actually have their streets are broken up so that if you have to get underneath it it's like a jigsaw puzzle you just pull it up right it's such a great way to go of course the cost for that initially maybe the bond could go for that but that's a great idea is there a question over here yeah that's a great question one of the things that we do with this inacto network is we have affiliate cities and so you know cities of all sizes can apply and it's a great way to sort of we do then charrettes and trainings and go out there and convene all of the stakeholders it could be sanitation public works transportation planning whatever coming together and we'll actually take a street in a city and and redesign it and work with the players there again to show what's possible and work through the coordination issues illegal issues whatever it may be so that's been I think a good good way to get the message out and I think you're seeing it in lots of different kinds of cities particularly the idea of pilot projects right because what you're seeing is mayors in cities of all sizes want to be able to show that they've done something on their watch right and since capital projects are generally five years and you know if they're going well start to finish this is the piloting and painting is a way for a mayor to show what's possible and so a lot of times when I show mayors this sort of before and afters I've got a deck of before and afters they're like drooling because they love that idea and then it's like when what could we do now let's do something right and so there's an excitement now that's really building around these kinds of interventions did you we don't have projects in China right now although this is being translated into Chinese I'm happy to say and we're going to Beijing and Shanghai and a number of Guangzhou a number of cities next year but China is is an incredibly important part of the world to focus on and one of the other things that we've been trying to do is to get the World Bank and IDB to adopt the global street design standards as a condition for the award of funding and so that we don't continue to repeat the mistakes of the past right and that we're building streets of the future that actually build in uses for everyone you know particularly important in Africa and also in China and so Sky's been a leader and trying to bring that development community together to bring a different sort of lens to their funding arms yeah Seattle is doing a good job on that Chicago did a nice job on the waterfront there Toronto is doing some good work on the waterfront but I think that's a study tour that we should engage in okay no no you don't see a problem with people dying from electric bikes you see a problem with people dying from 2000 pound cars thank you very much