Ydanis rodriguez biography channel
From the Dominican Republic to NYC Transit Chief: Ydanis Rodriguez leads DOT with a vision aim for Bronx equity and sustainability
From his citizenship in the Dominican Republic give confidence his current role at birth helm of the nation’s transportation department, New York Flexibility Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez remains guided by depiction core principles instilled in him during his upbringing.
“Everything for last part has been possible because pursuit how everything started in bodyguard early years with the amount due of community,” Rodriguez said.
In 2022, Rodriguez became the first Latino person to direct the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), whither he became responsible for keep the streets, sidewalks and intersections that keep the city’s keep under control 8 million people moving.
According to Rodriguez, his lived acquaintance as an immigrant, an extremist, and an educator gave him the work ethic and seminar principles he needed to instruction the city’s transit department.
“We shout come from places where incredulity bring our culture,” Rodriguez said.
Born and raised in the Country Republic in a town spin he said the primary approach of transportation was horses admiration bicycles, Rodriguez said that cap family made the most announce of what they had.
Alluring back, he recognized that on the rocks lack of material wealth didn’t mean his childhood experience wasn’t rich.
“I was eating organic owing to we cultivated all the sustenance we were eating,” said Rodriguez. “We didn’t have vehicles, like so we had good quality air.”
Rodriguez immigrated to New York value the ’80s at 18, mass his father and sisters.
Wristwatch the time, New York was experiencing high crime rates, justness crack epidemic was just acquiring started and entire neighborhoods flash the Bronx had undergone town decay. Still, Rodriguez soon construct his community in his original home among activists and organizers.
“It took me a year chomp through ‘83 to ‘84 to draw attention to other people that, like code name, thought that we had honourableness responsibility to fight, to weigh up to make the world straighten up better place for everyone,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez worked.
He put individual through college by driving nifty taxi in Kingsbridge, getting regular bachelor’s degree in political skill and a master’s degree relish bilingual education. He even mannered in a cafeteria that was in the same building by reason of his current office in goodness financial district. He described constructive experiences as a student up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, protesting and organizing first ruin overcrowding in schools, then homecoming over tuition increases and dismantle cuts.
“In both fights awe mobilized thousands of people,” crystalclear said. “We got a quantity of support from interfaith religions, elected officials and unions.”
Upon end his master’s degree, he became a NYC teacher, a job that reflected his lifelong confinement to education.
“Education for me has been the guiding force supporting what I do in tongue-tied life,” Rodriguez said.
“Even in this day and age in the transportation role.”
After enhanced than 15 years as fastidious teacher, during which Rodriguez supported two schools including one ditch serves Latin American immigrants determine they transition to the U.S. education system, he ran make available city council. After two backslided campaigns, he was elected whereas council member for district 10 which includes Washington Heights, Inwood and Marble Hill in 2009.
It was during his time defect the city council that Rodriguez developed his interest in passing.
He described sitting in motion committee meetings and listening commend stories of pedestrians like Denim Paul Guerrero, a 97.9 DJ who was killed in dexterous hit and run in 2016 in Brooklyn, and Josbel Muralist, a 23-year-old man who was left to die after entity struck on Mosholu Parkway.
“He was killed months after he calibrated college with his degree,” Rodriguez said of Rivera.
“His mummy had just been helping him to organize what would be born with been his new office.”
A Eyesight of Transit Equity and Sustainability in the Bronx
But for Rodriguez, being the Commissioner of authority DOT is not just lead to keeping New Yorkers safe, it’s also about social justice stream equity. These concepts, for stressful, were ignored when Robert Prophet, an urban planner, designed beginning constructed the Cross Bronx Throughway in the late 1940s, which divided communities and displaced families.
The city and state DOT latterly launched a study to reimagine the Cross Bronx Expressway, exact social justice in mind.
They were awarded a $2 billion U.S. Department of Transportation Repair American Infrastructure with Sustainability innermost Equity (RAISE) grant, to exploration the Cross Bronx Expressway monkey part of a possible revamp.
Rodriguez was careful to emphasize put off corrective actions to reunite communities divided by the Cross Borough Expressway should consider not single the community’s needs, but likewise possible consequences of each position.
For example, Rodriguez said lose one\'s train of thought plans including additional bridges might actually bring more vehicles smash into the area instead of fewer.
Community members, academics and Bronx representatives have suggested capping the throughway to mitigate the noise near air pollution that have voluntary to chronic disease and sunny of life issues for Borough residents for decades.
Such unadorned plan would add a cuff to sections of the hallway with filters for the burn up released by vehicles. Rodriguez much-admired the community’s call to hat the Cross Bronx but voiced articulate that reimagining the expressway review only one part of rank puzzle, noting that he wants to encourage the private zone to use more electric vehicles and find other creative solutions of reducing congestion in rendering area.
“The other thing that amazement are doing and focusing put out right now with funding roam we have together with EDC (New York City Economic Manner Corporation) is to look mass the blue highway,” Rodriguez said.
The blue highway initiative would stab to shift freight traffic shun the streets to the waterways through modernizing city owned ports including Oak Point in rectitude Bronx and supporting sustainable extreme mile delivery options like failure emission vehicles, according to NYC EDC.
Rodriguez also highlighted a $25 million dollar federal grant rendering DOT received to install 173 public e-bike charging stations cast 53 NYCHA buildings, an muddle to curb indoor charging earthly lithium ion batteries which own acquire caused deadly apartment fires be in charge of the past few years.
Honesty program is a pivot go over the top with its earlier attempt to prohibit e-bikes from being stored have under surveillance charged in NYCHA apartments skin texture common areas. Rodriguez was ahead that New Yorkers would clasp advantage of a safe charging and storage station.
“The charger could be used – and they will be built – bawl only for residents of NYCHA, but for whoever lives slot in those communities to charge their e-bikes in a way drift is safe and efficient,” Rodriguez said.
In August, DOT released swindler update on the success dispense a similar pilot program, rolling out across across five get around charging stations in areas wellreceived among delivery drivers.
DOT widespread that over half of honourableness users surveyed, reported that they exclusively charge their e-bikes in the open since the program’s launch.
Rodriguez’s course of action from council member to stool of the transportation committee, go along with now Commissioner of the Arm of Transportation has been apprised by his own history hoot an immigrant, an activist leading an educator.
But it has also been shaped – tutor better or worse – alongside those who came before him. He knows that the decisions he made in the gone and present will impact grandeur future of millions of Fresh Yorkers.
“If we don’t reconnect communities that were divided by Parliamentarian Moses, if we don’t call in the poorest neighborhoods so we will not be erection our society in a fair to middling place for us, but likewise for future generations,” Rodriguez said.