Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz

Gridlock Sam: Avert Climate Catastrophe, Ride a Vespa^®

By Aaron Naparstek | Feb 12, 2007 | 29 Comments

While Parisians are starting to complain that "an invasion of noisy scooters and motorcycles and a rise in accidents involving pedestrian and motorcyclists" is one of the "unintended consequences" of Mayor Bertrand Delanoe’s traffic reduction policies, "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz’s consulting firm just issued a report claiming that New York City could better meet its […]

Streetfilms: An Interview with Sam Schwartz

By Sarah Goodyear | Feb 2, 2007 | No Comments

Sam Schwartz, aka "Gridlock Sam," is best-known to many New Yorkers through his Daily News column about the city’s quotidian traffic woes. Schwartz is the president and CEO of Sam Schwartz LLC, a traffic planning and engineering firm that has worked on projects including the JFK AirTrain, the IKEA project in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and […]

Who Will be the Next DOT Commissioner?

By Aaron Naparstek | Jan 31, 2007 | 18 Comments

People are starting to kick around the names of potential successors to outgoing DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall. This morning, Crain’s Insider reports: Insiders believe that Mayor Mike Bloomberg will look inside his administration for Iris Weinshall’s replacement as transportation commissioner. But because Bloomberg will be out in 2009, top transportation people may favor state jobs: […]

Three Concrete Proposals for New York City Traffic Relief

By Alec | Dec 7, 2006 | 15 Comments

This Morning’s Forum: Road Pricing Worked in London. Can It Work in New York? Three specific proposals to reduce New York City’s ever-increasing traffic congestion emerged from a highly anticipated Manhattan Institute forum this morning. One seeks variable prices on cars driving in to central Manhattan, with express toll lanes and higher parking fees to keep things […]

Congestion Charging in New York City: The Political Bloodbath

By Aaron Naparstek | Dec 4, 2006 | 11 Comments

Though many New Yorkers are learning about congestion charging for the first time this week, the transportation policy community has been working to sell this idea to a resistant public for more than three decades. What happens when Nobel Prize winning theory meets bare-fisted New York City politics? A heavily condensed version of this story ran in this week’s […]

Gridlock Sam Tells the Story of NYC’s First Bike Lanes

By Aaron Naparstek | Nov 13, 2006 | 18 Comments

Last weekend, former DOT Deputy Commissioner "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz wrote an op-ed in the New York Times urging the city to start creating bike lanes that physically separate cyclists from motor vehicle traffic at some locations. This weekend, as DOT laid down a brand new "shared lane" design on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, a letter to the editor […]