The Woman In Charge Of NYC Transportation Has Done An Incredible Job

In her six years as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan has made a lot of changes.

Those changes are all aimed at her goal of making it easier and safer to get around in New York, and to make the city a better place for residents and businesses, she wrote in a 2011 essay for Slate.

Sadik-Khan manages a $2 billion annual budget and 4,700 employees. She is in charge of maintaining and improving 6,300 miles of road, nearly 800 bridges, 12,000 intersections with traffic signals, and the Staten Island Ferry.

(Governance of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs public transit in New York, falls outside her purview.)

In her tenure, Sadik-Khan has focused on reducing the number of cars on NYC streets. She has built hundreds of miles of bike lanes, introduced a new bike share program, created pedestrian plazas, transformed Times Square, and installed maps designed for those on foot — all while making New York a healthier, richer place.