Bloomberg’s Traffic Ideas: First the World, Then, Maybe, the City
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Version 0 of 1. The roads may soon teem with miles of new bike lanes, made possible by Michael R. Bloomberg. In Turkey. High-capacity buses zip through exclusive traffic corridors, part of Mr. Bloomberg’s bet that better public transit options will discourage private car use. In Brazil and Mexico. And in Egypt, between the uprisings in the streets, speed-tracking cameras were hung along the Ring Road of Cairo. They resemble the ones expected to reach New York City, eventually, under a bill approved in Albany last month. Though often hamstrung at home by headstrong state lawmakers, an entrenched taxi industry and a city in which even a single bike lane can inspire years of litigation, Mr. Bloomberg has found success overseas in pushing — and financing — a global transportation agenda during his final years as the mayor of New York City. Since 2007, Mr. Bloomberg’s charitable foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, has committed more than $130 million toward traffic policy and road safety worldwide, outstripping donations for every cause except the reduction of tobacco use. He has personally presented children with yellow riding helmets in Hanoi, Vietnam, smiling through a helmeted song-and-dance number from students at the Nam Trung Yen school, and helped assemble a fleet of auto-rickshaws in Rajkot, India. He has lobbied successfully to drive down the legal blood-alcohol limit in Guadalajara, Mexico — where “tequila and roads just don’t mix,” he said in 2011 — and armed police in Cambodia with Breathalyzer equipment. As a result, traffic policy and public health experts say, Mr. Bloomberg has emerged as perhaps the world’s leading transportation force, acting as a catalyst abroad for helmets, seat belts and slower speeds at the same time that bright blue bikes and pedestrian plazas have been affixed to his local legacy. “We have never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Etienne Krug, the director of the World Health Organization’s Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability. “This is by far the largest international road safety project ever.” As a global cause, traffic safety is of a piece with Mr. Bloomberg’s past public health pushes — from a proposed ban on large sodas in New York to his bid to improve maternal welfare in Tanzania. He hopes to prod as much change as possible as quickly as possible, current and former advisers say, displaying two of his hallmark qualities: impatience and a thirst for wide-scale influence. Without intervention, traffic crashes would become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030, according to the World Health Organization. Mr. Bloomberg’s charity has focused on many large cities, and on 10 countries — including China, India and Russia — that account for roughly half of the world’s road-related deaths. “We’re not as rich as you guys in New York,” said Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, where Mr. Bloomberg is aiding the installation of four new bus rapid transit corridors in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Mr. Bloomberg’s example is so rousing that Rio de Janeiro has elected to lift other ideas from New York without a dollar of his help, Mr. Paes said. He noted plans for a large bike lane expansion and the use of an information hot line, 1746, modeled on Mr. Bloomberg’s 311 system. In New York, though, Mr. Bloomberg often has been stymied on matters of transportation. The state controls the subways. His pitch for congestion-based pricing languished. A plan for a near-uniform fleet of yellow taxis — the first major redesign since the age of the Checker cab — was invalidated in court, though the city passed a new set of rules last month in the hopes of reviving it. At times, his frustration has shown. In May, according to a lawsuit brought against Mr. Bloomberg by one of the plaintiffs in the taxi case, Mr. Bloomberg threatened, “When I am out of office, I will destroy your industry,” adding an expletive, during an altercation at a Knicks game. (Mr. Bloomberg initially said that he did not recall the conversation, but he seemed to allude to the episode on his radio show days before the suit was filed.) In March, as it became clear that momentum for speed-tracking cameras had stalled in Albany, Mr. Bloomberg assailed state lawmakers, blaming them by name for the future deaths of children killed by speeding cars. In last month’s vote, the three senators he mentioned all supported the speed camera bill. In American cities outside of New York, Mr. Bloomberg’s transportation footprint is less pronounced, for now. But his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has attracted a national following amid the expansion of bike lanes and the introduction of the bike-share program in May, serving as president of the National Association of City Transportation Officials and speaking often in other cities about the mayor’s local transportation feats. Mr. Bloomberg has cast his philanthropy as an extension of his local initiatives. He invoked his foundation’s work last week at a news conference hailing the passage of speed camera legislation. In a 2011 speech, Mr. Bloomberg cited New York City’s expanded medians, recalibrated traffic signals and better-regulated pedicab industry as he explained his broader traffic goals. “Our record of improving safety in New York encouraged me to try to replicate this same success around the world,” he said then. “Road safety has not typically been a top priority, yet the number of lives that could potentially be saved is incredible.” He has long taken particular pride in the city’s falling traffic fatality numbers during his tenure, though the 274 traffic-related deaths of 2012 were the most in the city since 2008. While the mayor’s philanthropy has hit the occasional roadblock abroad, some stumbles have been understandable. Since installing the speed-cameras, among other efforts, the foundation has suspended operations in Egypt amid political upheaval, with officers ill-positioned to enforce speed limits. “The police were too busy with other things,” Dr. Krug said. In India, where Mr. Bloomberg’s team has evaluated 2,600 miles of high-risk roads for potential safety improvements, helmet laws have proved difficult to enforce without setting off religious tensions, Dr. Krug said. In communities with large Sikh populations, some locals have interpreted the laws as discriminatory against those who wear turbans. But across many regions, Mr. Bloomberg has made strides quickly. In Suzhou, China — where more than half of road-traffic hospitalizations were attributable to electric bike crashes, according to the foundation — program officials helped draft new electric bike regulations. In Vietnam, motorcycle helmet use has more than doubled, to 90 percent, since Mr. Bloomberg and the foundation’s partners helped pass a national helmet law. The foundation estimates that its efforts will save at least 13,000 lives over a five-year period. For Mr. Bloomberg, the work has supplied a useful credential to cite during local disputes, like the tussle over helmet use for the new bike-share program in New York. The administration once supported a mandatory helmet law for cyclists, but has since resisted calls to require helmets. (Officials have said that mandating helmets depresses ridership.) Questioned last year about the stance, the mayor produced his trump card: “Well, look,” he said, “keep in mind my foundation works on traffic safety.” |