He Coined The Word ‘Gridlock’ Now New York City’s Sam Schwartz Plans A Bicycle Bridge To Prevent It

“I took a roadway from cars at the Queensboro Bridge for [pedestrians and cyclists in the 1980s],” says Sam “Gridlock” Schwartz.

“I want more lanes to be taken from bridges but believe [cyclists and pedestrians] should have as much access as cars,” adds the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT).

To give “equity for shoes and human-powered vehicles” he wants the city to build the first bridge serving Manhattan’s central business district since 1909. The car-free bridge would connect Manhattan to Long Island City in Queens. The $100 million bridge—named the Queens Ribbon—was developed during lockdown by a group of transportation engineers led by Schwartz.

The consortium—NYU Tandon School of Engineering, T.Y. Lin International, and Sam Schwartz Engineering—want the 20-foot-wide bridge to have an observation belvedere providing panoramic views for those crossing.

“The Queens Ribbon will be a small investment to make compared to the savings that will be derived from reduced pollution and traffic,” says a statement from the engineers.

“The urban travel mode of the future won’t be flying cars, or robo-cars or even cars; it will be shoes and bikes,” predicts Schwartz.

The proposed bridge would have separate lanes for pedestrians and cyclists and would link into NYC’s expanding cycleway network, helping to take cars off the road by providing enhanced facilities for those on foot and on bicycles.

“Several new and enhanced bike routes need to be provided,” says a statement from the consortium. These include protected cycleways in Queens on 11th Street, 44th Drive, and Center Boulevard and new bike facilities on Jackson Avenue, Borden Avenue, Review Avenue, and Rust Street. In Manhattan, reliance on First and Second avenues’ protected bike lanes would serve the new bridge, adds the statement.

A spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio said the mayor’s office would review the proposal to “give New Yorkers more bike and pedestrian transit options.”

Schwartz is a former NYC taxi driver. He later moved into traffic engineering and helped spread the word “gridlock,” a term that gained common currency during an eleven-day 1980 transit strike that crippled the city.

Schwartz is now known as “Gridlock” Sam, but he doesn’t take full credit for the word, believing he heard it first used at New York’s Department of Transportation sometime after joining as a planner in 1971.

Schwartz’s first task was to stand on street corners, counting motor vehicles to gather data for a clean-air proposal known as the “Red Zone.” Within this downtown zone, private cars would be banned during the day. But then-Mayor Lindsay, who had initially championed the plan, got cold feet, and New York City’s “transportation control plan” was spiked.

In 1978, “Gridlock” Sam was appointed as New York City’s assistant transportation commissioner. Ostensibly, he was in a position of power. Still, the transportation department’s engineers only ever wanted to “pump as many cars into Manhattan as possible,” said Schwartz in his 2015 book, Street Smart.

NYCDOT now estimates that over 490,000 cycling trips are made each day in New York City—triple the amount taken 15 years ago. The agency predicts that within the next few years, 10% of journeys in NYC will be made by bicycle.