NYC Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan likes cicLAvia!

NYCDOT head Janette Sadik-Khan speaking Thursday March 18th at Occidental College - Photo: L.A. Streetsblog

New York City’s Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan came to Los Angeles last week to speak at Occidental College and at the 2010 Los Angeles StreetSummit. A few times she mentioned her support for L.A.’s cicLAvia, which is similar to New York City’s Summer Streets.

Here’s a brief quote from Janette Sadik-Khan’s appearance on KPCC’s Airtalk last Friday:

We started this two years ago. We closed seven miles of Park Avenue from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, on three Saturdays in August and you know people came out of the woodwork. They materialized out of nowhere. They walked and skated and danced and we held boxing classes and cha cha classes. I ended up boxing with my deputy mayor and I thought that was really very [laughter] cathartic.

It was a great home run. Hundreds of thousands of people came out. It was the notion that our streets don’t have to be used the same way all the time. You can look at them differently at different times of the day and people really enjoyed the ability to sort of look at the architecture – enjoy one another’s company. 

It was really inspiring and I think it’s the kind of a program that could work really well in L.A. – the idea of trying something different. Also it’s not expensive to do. We were able to do it very very quickly. Within six months of my coming back from Bogota we got it up and running.

She goes on to discuss how police and sanitation workers brought their families to the event after working on it, and how Summer Streets is taking its place as one of the city’s iconic events – alongside the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and Times Square New Year’s Eve ball-dropping.

Click  to listen to the full 20-minute interview. She discusses Summer Streets and cicLAvia just before halfway through, responding to a call from Stephen in Angelino Heights (who we’re pretty sure just happens to be cicLAvia’s very own Stephen Villavaso.) There’s also some mention of ciclovia events from her talks Thursday and Saturday, audio posted at L.A. Streetsblog.