Janette Sadik-Khan knows what it’s like to face adversity.
As the former transportation commissioner for the City of New York, from 2007-2013, Sadik-Khan says she had to jump over plenty of hurdles in her quest to alter the landscape of the nation’s largest city.
In her new book, Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, Sadik-Khan details her transportation triumphs, from installing 400 miles of bike lanes to building 60 open-air plazas.
And she says the urban revolution she oversaw in New York can be applied around the world.
“We need to make it easier for people to get around without a car,” Sadik-Khan says. “We aren’t going to double deck the freeways.”
Sadik-Khan says projects like the 405 Freeway expansion project in L.A. – which cost the city more than one billion dollars – will not solve the region’s greater transportation problems. In fact, it only makes them worse.
“The idea that you’ll solve congestion with more roads is kind of like saying you will deal with obesity by loosening your belt,” Sadik-Khan says. “We need a new strategy.”
Sadik-Khan sat down with KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis to talk about the best path forward for transportation in L.A.