Zohran Mamdani’s very first act as mayor was to announce his Department of Transportation commissioner.
The newly minted Hizzoner named transportation veteran Mike Flynn as the head of DOT, an agency that is key to executing one of his central campaign promises: delivering “fast and free” city buses.
Mamdani named Flynn, who has years of experience as a transportation official and consultant, as DOT’s new boss moments after being sworn in as mayor during a midnight ceremony inside the decommissioned City Hall train station.
“It is an honor to have Mike here alongside me as we embark on an administration that will take seriously the responsibility and the opportunity we have to make this streetscape and the public transit of the city we call home, the envy of the world,” Mamdani said during the Jan. 1 ceremony.
“It will require someone who’s experienced, who is fluent in the landscape as it is, and who is ambitious and imaginative towards the landscape as it could be and I can think of no better person than the man alongside me,” he added, referring to Flynn.
Flynn had been rumored to be a favorite for the role throughout the day on Wednesday.
DOT oversees New York City’s streetscape. The agency’s purview includes paving city roads, managing traffic patterns, adding road safety features, and installing bus and bike lanes across the city.
During the ceremony, Flynn — who spent nine years at DOT under former Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio — said he is “thrilled” to be joining the administration because Mamdani and his team “fundamentally understands the role that transportation plays in the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers.”
Flynn worked at DOT for nearly 10 years, ultimately serving as the agency’s director of capital planning and project management until 2014. During that time, he oversaw major capital projects such as street reconstruction and pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
Since then, he has worked in the private sector, leading the transportation consultancy TYLin City Solutions’ New York office. He also taught courses on urban planning, transportation, and sustainable design at the Pratt Institute for eight years.
Following Mamdani’s Thursday inauguration, Flynn outlined how he plans to take the agency in a new direction for the transportation news website Streetsblog.
“I think that we need to aim higher, we need to be bolder and more ambitious,” Flynn said. “I think that DOT is an agency that has largely remained as is for a long time. Something that I’m really interested in, and I know the mayor is too, is helping government deliver better for New Yorkers, more efficiently and more effectively. I’m excited to work with my team to identify those opportunities.”
Mamdani picking Flynn as DOT commissioner, as well as Julia Kerson as deputy mayor for operations, quickly drew praise from the transportation advocacy world this week.
Riders Alliance Executive Director Betsy Plum, in a Wednesday statement, said the group expects Flynn’s DOT to both restart street redesign projects stalled by former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and making city buses fast and free a priority.
“Fast and free buses can’t be an aspiration tucked behind competing priorities,” Plum said. “They must be the measure of success. A city that works for bus riders is a city that works for everyone, and we’ll be looking to this administration to make that standard real — and to hold the entire system accountable for getting riders where they need to go, quickly and reliably.”
When it comes to Mamdani’s pledge to make buses fast and free, Flynn will have no say over the latter.
Public transit fares in the city are controlled by the state, which Mamdani will have to convince to make his proposal a reality. He must work with Gov. Kathy Hochul, the MTA, and the state legislature to realize that vision.
However, as the head of DOT, Flynn will play a critical role in speeding up city buses. A large part of accomplishing that goal will be through building far more protected bus lanes — enforced either by cameras or physical barriers.
Adams’ DOT consistently fell short on hitting legally mandated targets for new bus lane construction under the NYC Streets Plan, which was passed by the City Council in 2019. Although the city was required to construct 150 miles of protected bus lanes over the past four years, it ended up building about 28.
Flynn told Streetsblog that he hopes to start making progress toward building more bus lanes right away by getting projects that had been stalled by the Adams administration, such as the Fordham Road bus lane in the Bronx, back on track.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber has said that he expects the Mamdani administration to quickly get bus lane construction back on track.
“So I do expect to see, after the inauguration day, pretty fast, that the city will move quickly to make good on those legally required commitments,” Lieber said late last year. “And help us make more progress on the bus system.”
