Exit Interview: Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan

New York City's streets and transportation hubs have changed dramatically in the past 12 years. 

And one of the main architects of those changes is Janette Sadik-Khan, who has served as Commissioner of the City's Department of Transportation since 2007. From the pedestrian plazas in Herald Square and Times Square, to the city's Select Bus Service, the expansion of bike lanes, and the rollout of thousands of new Citi Bikes, Sadik-Khan's initiatives have been both excoriated and praised.

Sadik-Khan said when she started in 2007, she and her staff had to figure out how to meet the challenges of the city’s streets: “Traffic, congestion, dangerous streets, pollution, you name it. Our streets simply weren’t organized to meet the demands we had on them today.”

Sadik-Khan’s solutions to these problems were sometimes greeted with intense opposition and her department was criticized for not being adequately forthcoming with data.

“One of the lessons learned … is there’s never enough input. There’s never enough outreach. Whether it’s bus lanes, whether it’s plazas, whether it’s Citi Bike. I mean the streets are really theirs,” Sadik-Khan said. 

Sadik-Khan will join outgoing City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden and other Bloomberg officials at Bloomberg Associates.