Bloomberg unveiling his budget yesterday.Photo: Getty Images
Mayor Bloomberg announced this afternoon that environmentalists’ preferred candidate, Janette Sadik-Khan, will be the new commissioner of the Transportation Department. Sadik-Kahn’s appointment had been rumored since last week, and her selection puts muscle behind the transit element of Bloomberg’s PlaNYC green goals, like instituting congestion pricing in Manhattan. Indeed, the city has submitted a “conditional application” for federal funds to help pay for the congestion-pricing experiment in advance of a Monday deadline, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said at the same press conference, though the state must also join the application and hasn’t yet done so. Bloomberg was working the angles. “The geography of New York lends itself to something like this,” he said. “It will make deliveries quicker for trucking companies, and it’s a godsend for them … This will clean up our air and improve our economy, and the fact that money is available for technology that has been refined in other cities is a lucky thing, so I’m terribly optimistic.” If only the road to Washington didn’t go through Albany, we’d be optimistic too. —Alec Appelbaum
