Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for the kind introduction and for having me today. It is a real pleasure to be here. You know, a number of times each day I am stopped by New Yorkers in our city's streets, parks and public transit systems. Sometimes it's a high five, sometimes it's a "Let's go Knicks!" [and] sometimes it's a series of words that I would rather not repeat here. So, it is a pleasure to be together today with the people who spend their days developing and thinking so deeply about those very public spaces where New Yorkers have the chance to approach their names. It is a true testament to the history of urban planning - to its very democratic nature - that there are so many places in this city where I can be yelled at.
And for that, and for so much more, I thank you. I know that we do not have New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill in the room, but I do still want to extend my thanks, especially if her team is still present - for her leadership and her partnership in building a more affordable Tri-City. I also want to thank our borough presidents, Donovan Richards and Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who are here with us today, as well as Council members who are here in the room. I see Gale Brewer and I know there are a number of others, for all that you do to support the people of our city.
And I want to extend my congratulations as well to Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority. Your commitment to civic excellence continues to set a high bar for all of us across the city and the state. To the city, state, Port Authority and MTA leaders and staff present here today, thank you for everything that you do to keep this city running. And to the civic, business and infrastructure leaders here today, thank you for the ambition you hold for what our city can be. And to those who I have somehow forgotten to mention, I also want to thank you.
So many of the public works that define our city - Battery Park, Governor's Island [and] the Verrazzano Bridge, began as ideas first imagined by the Regional Plan Association. For more than a hundred years, this organization has gazed upon our city and seen not simply what is but, frankly, what could be. Where once there was light, there could be green space. Where once there were tenants, there could be affordable housing. Where once there were congested roads, there could be congestion prices.
This imagination comes from a deep love for this city, and it has existed since the Regional Plan Association's earliest days. In 1921, Charles Dyer Norton, the Commissioner of the Chicago Plan, wrote to Frederic A. Delano, advocating for an association such as yours here in New York City. He could hardly contain his enthusiasm at the opportunity New York City presented, imagining an elevated parkway along the perimeter of Manhattan, marveling at our Navy Yard. This was not his first attempt at coordinating a city plan for New York City.
But of previous efforts, he said this: "Our advisory committee met in a beautiful room in the City Hall once or twice and wisely resolved to give our advice only when it was asked for, which was never." Progress stalled. The dreams he and his fellow committee members had for New York City languished. That is, until the incorporation of the Regional Plan Association in 1929, the release of your first plan, and the election of a leader in City government who did not balk at boldness but rather ran to word it.
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once famously said, "I dread snow." Which is true, but he also once famously said: "We need imagination at City Hall, imagination for the other fellow." He saw what the Regional Plan Association saw in our city. A metropolis unlike any other. One full of creativity and ambition, and one that deserved an urban landscape as great as those who called it home. That is why he looked to the RPA not solely as civic-minded experts, but, frankly, as partners.
Together they turned ideas into action, delivering on transitways, parks and a more livable New York City. A century later, let us do the same. Already we are off to a strong start. And as I speak about that, I first want to also take a moment to acknowledge the number of leaders we have within our administration. Deputy mayors, commissioners, co-chairs of our transition -there are so many. I would ask if you would give them a moment of appreciation for all that they have done. I only ask that because in politics, often times achievements are ascribed to one individual, when we all know the reality of it is that there are so many working every single day, whose names many of us know, and yet their work can impact and transform their lives.
And it is that kind of vision that I have seen in this scheme and in our City Hall. A vision to go after the crises that afflict New Yorkers, beginning with the housing crisis. In our first hundred days in office, our administration has moved quickly to build affordable housing and to cut down on the time it takes for future projects to be delivered. We have moved to implement the new tools that voters approved in November, kicking off the city's first Expedited Land Use Review Procedure and finalizing rules for the new affordable housing fast track. We didn't stop there.
We also announced the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, reducing the time it takes to select a development team for new projects on city-owned land by more than half. We have broken ground on thousands of new units across our city, from Harlem to Bed-Stuy and these will be both units that are affordable enough to rent, as well as those that are affordable enough to buy. As we said earlier, we've added heat pumps to NYCHA housing, unveiled an ADU toolkit to help homeowners more quickly build accessory dwellings and announced our effort to introduce a publicly supported insurance provider for affordable and rent-stabilized housing, which I know will be critical to so many in this room.
We are also proud to support Governor Hochul's push for SEQRA reform to make it easier to build something advocated for in the Fourth Regional Plan. Earlier this week, commissioners from my administration were able to travel to Albany to add their voices in support of this change in the state's budget - support because of how transformative it would be for our ability to build at the scale and the timetable necessary to confront the crisis that New Yorkers are facing.
Now, a cornerstone of this new era of partnership is something that I like to call "Pothole Politics." It is a vision aligned with the common-sense wisdom of the Regional Plan Association, a vision built around the idea that government cannot be trusted to deliver on its most sweeping ideas if it cannot fulfill its most basic obligations. Since January 1st, New York City has now filled 130,000 pockets, including 22,800 in just three days alone. It has gotten to the point where from Pelham to Tompkinsville, Bay Ridge to Inwood, city workers have been fixing roads at a rate not seen in more than a decade.
I was recently biking where a woman yelled at me that we had personally filled two potholes that had come to have a lot of immense personal significance for her because of how long they had been left unfilled. To her, the credit goes to our DOT workers, and that will continue. And by the end of this fiscal year, the Department of Transportation will repave 1,150 lane miles of our own streets. We will take down thousands of feet of scaffolding that have darkened city streets for years.
And we will not shy away from one of the most persistent blights in our city, one that touches nearly every block across the five boroughs, one of the few things that unites New Yorkers, frankly, whether you toast your bagel or not. The way that many New Yorkers have described my jump shot: trash. The long-promised plan for trash containerization will finally become reality.
Last month, alongside a number of leaders within our City Hall as well as partners in city government, we announced an ambitious campaign to complete full citywide containerization by the end of 2031. Over the coming months and years, I look forward to working with the many leaders here who have long advocated for such a measure so that we may accomplish that goal and accomplish it together.
Finally, I want to talk about transit. For years, you and the RPA have advanced thoughtful plans for public transit. We share the belief that in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the world, it is unacceptable that some buses run as slow as five miles an hour. And I say that as someone who - when I went to Bronx Science and I got off the 1 Train and I knew that I'd miss the bus, if I ran fast enough, I could catch up to it three stops later. And that is why in our first months in office, we have focused on delivering to the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who ride our buses every single day.
We kicked off street redesign projects on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and we've announced a bus action plan that will speed up bus routes by 20 percent along 45 New York corridors. This plan will cut down commutes by up to six minutes each way, returning that most valuable commodity to New Yorkers' lives: time. And for that, I want to thank not only our partners at the MTA but also our partners in advocacy and imagination, because for too long, we have suffered in this city from a reverse New York exceptionalism, one where we have told ourselves that the thing in which we lived were simply the way things will always be, when in fact they are invitations; they are opportunities to match up to municipal competitors across the world and we see our streets as exactly one of those opportunities.
When I was sworn into office, I stood before the people of our city, and I made a promise. The era of small imagination and smaller ambition in City government was over. The era of the Knicks having to wait until the end of the game to win it was over. We couldn't tie the game by half; we could in fact show in the first hundred days of our administration that we could get things done. And I said then that the only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.
Together, let us work to build a New York City that's cleaner, healthier and more affordable for every person who calls it home. A city where small expectations are a relic of the past. In that same letter to Frederic A. Delano, Charles Dyer Norton said of New York: "No American city is so rich in competent personnel. None has so superb a situation or presents so great an opportunity for a noble city plan." That was true in 1921, and it is true today. Together, let us run towards bold ideas; let us work together to build a city worthy of its citizens and let's win that championship. Thank you so much.
