In June 2020, May­or Bill de Bla­sio announced one of the most ambi­tious bus pri­or­i­ty pro­grams for any U.S. city—much less the most pop­u­lous city, with the nation’s most devel­oped and pop­u­lar pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems. May­or de Bla­sio pledged to build 20 miles of car-free busways and ded­i­cat­ed bus lanes based on the mod­el of suc­cess cre­at­ed by the 14th Street busway, which opened in Octo­ber 2019. The 20-mile promise has with­ered and con­tract­ed, but now there’s a new twist in this saga of unre­al­ized ambi­tion.

A Fifth Avenue bus lane project “was sup­posed to have been com­plet­ed before Mr. de Bla­sio left office, but the city announced last week that work would be put on hold until after the Decem­ber hol­i­days,” report Dana Rubin­stein and Win­nie Hu. “That effec­tive­ly shifts respon­si­bil­i­ty to the next may­or, who suc­ceeds Mr. de Bla­sio in Jan­u­ary.”

Accord­ing to this bomb­shell report, May­or de Bla­sio capit­u­lat­ed to the lob­by­ing efforts of Steven Roth, “one of New York City’s most pow­er­ful real estate devel­op­ers.” A slide show bear­ing the name of Mr. Roth’s real estate com­pa­ny, Vor­na­do Real­ty Trust, that cir­cu­lat­ed in City Hall in Octo­ber claimed that express bus­es would trav­el at unsafe speeds if grant­ed new pri­or­i­ty on 5th Avenue.

The arti­cle insin­u­ates that de Bla­sio’s capit­u­la­tion could be con­nect­ed to his bur­geon­ing guber­na­to­r­i­al ambi­tions. “The devel­op­er, the Vor­na­do Real­ty Trust chief exec­u­tive Steven Roth, is one of New York’s most pro­lif­ic donors, though city records indi­cate he has not donat­ed to Mr. de Bla­sio’s may­oral cam­paigns.”

In addi­tion to the con­text pro­vid­ed by the de Bla­sio’s retreat from its June 2020 bus pri­or­i­ty ambi­tions, the arti­cle also men­tions the poor results of de Bla­sio’s Vision Zero promise.

Mr. de Bla­sio’s ambiva­lence about the Fifth Avenue plan comes dur­ing the dead­liest year for traf­fic fatal­i­ties dur­ing his eight years in office and as some of his oth­er trans­porta­tion pri­or­i­ties appear to have fall­en by the way­side. The trans­porta­tion depart­ment has been recon­sid­er­ing plans to put a pro­tect­ed bike lane on a main thor­ough­fare in Sun­set Park, Brook­lyn accord­ing to one of the two peo­ple famil­iar with the may­or’s deci­sions.

More details about the retreat of the de Bla­sio’s admin­is­tra­tion’s retreat from its June 2020 ambi­tions are includ­ed in the source arti­cle.