NEW YORK — New York City voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly cast their ballots for faster implementation of new bike and bus lanes, along with making it easier to set up outdoor dining, according to preliminary election results for Mayor Zohran Mamdani's ballot proposals.
In a sweep, all five proposals on the back of New Yorkers' ballots passed by a large margin Tuesday evening, giving a boost to Mamdani in his first year in office. The questions were drawn up by City Hall's government efficiency committee over the summer.
New Yorkers approved all five proposals from the mayor's Commission on Government Efficiency, or COGE, with 66 percent for Proposal 3 to repeal bureaucratic hurdles to redesign streets for safety, and 64 percent for Proposal 1 to accelerate the outdoor dining application process.
Proposal 3 in particular will reform the city's "major transportation projects" law, which opponents of bike lanes and bus lanes have repeatedly used to justify legal challenges to the Department of Transportation's street safety work. The City Council enacted the law in 2009, when Michael Bloomberg was mayor, and has expanded its mandate several times since, creating significant bureaucratic hurdles to any street redesign exceeding three blocks or 1,000 feet.
Mamdani pledged to streamline the outdoor dining application process on the campaign trail, and the new reforms will create a single permit for sidewalk and roadway dining applications and "modernize" requirements to give public notice for the permits.
Transit activists want to turn bus riders into their own constituency, and the Fix the Bus campaign is focusing on three areas where the city wants to execute its bus rapid transit plans: Tremont Avenue and Fordham Road in the West Bronx, Northern Boulevard in Queens, and Flatbush, Church and Utica avenues in Brooklyn. Earlier this year, Mamdani embedded his 2025 campaign vision for fast and free bus service in an official city plan that promised to dramatically change the layout of streets across the city.
