Janette Sadik-Khan

Janette Sadik-Khan
Walter B. Hook, Janette Sadik-Khan, Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Enrique Peñalosa
Born	San Francisco, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Occidental College Columbia Law School
Occupation	Civil service
Spouse(s)	Mark A. Geistfeld
Parent(s)	Orhan Sadik-Khan Jane McCarthy
Signature

Janette Sadik-Khan was the commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007-2013,^[1] appointed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to replace Iris Weinshall. She is Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Biography

Sadik-Khan was born in San Francisco, California to Orhan Sadik-Khan, managing director of UBS Paine Webber.^[2][3][4]

She received a B.A. from Occidental College with a major in Political Science, and a law degree from Columbia Law School.^[5]

Janette Sadik-Khan married Mark A. Geistfeld in 1990. He is a professor of law at New York University.^[6]

She worked at the Mayor's Office for Transportation under David Dinkins in 2007, the Federal Transit Administration,^[7] Parsons Brinckerhoff, as a Senior Vice President^[8] and was a board member of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.^[9]

DOT Commissioner

Janette Sadik-Khan famously converted a segment of Broadway into a pedestrian plaza, but this was part of a larger framework of wherein the DOT would paint, measure, then finalize street re-designs. The pedestrian plazas built by the DOT tended to be where streets intersected at non-right angles, as with Broadway, or where the space was under-utilized for parking, as in the early Pearl Street Plaza project. Under her predecessor, the notoriously ineffectual Iris Weinshall, traffic designs were finalized on paper and then built based on the AASHTO Highway Designs that have long been criticized as being tailored for rural and suburban needs . Under Ms. Sadik-Khan, the NYC DOT worked with NACTO on street designs more appropriate for city needs and would do street redesigns with paint and temporary breakaway bollards, then measure changes in capacity and collision frequency and severity before repaving or making other permanent changes. Her DOT also issued the first strategic plan in the agency's history.^[10]

Janette Sadik-Khan is also known for her work in implementing the New York City's 1997 Bicycle Master Plan. In her first year as commissioner bike lanes and painting of sharrows doubled from 29 miles in 2006 to 63 miles 2007. In the following five years an additional 254 miles of bike lanes or sharrows were painted. She also installed the city's first parking-protected bike lanes on 9th Avenue.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Janette Sadik-Khan.

• Archived biography of Commissioner Sadik-Khan from NYC.gov
• Janette Sadik-Khan at the Internet Movie Database