As Bill de Blasio launches his quixotic quest to run for president, it’s important to remember one thing: Gov. Andrew Cuomo fully and completely controls the MTA.

Despite Cuomo’s attempts to convince New Yorkers otherwise, the governor has total control over management and personnel appointments at the MTA; he controls the purse strings through majority appointments to governing bodies that approve budgets; and he even names a plurality of members to the MTA Board, a largely symbolic body that does not have responsibility for setting policy or naming leadership.

Thus, a reminder: As the city’s ongoing subway crisis percolates in news stories across the country, the governor, not the mayor, is the sole New York politician responsible for getting us into (and getting us out of) that crisis.

That’s not to say Mayor Bill de Blasio gets a pass on transit in New York City. Even if the city’s transit is defined by its subways, de Blasio sets much of the rest of the transportation agenda. He is, after all, the mayor who brought Vision Zero to New York. He determines the fate of most travel modes in the city. If buses aren’t moving because streets are choked with single-occupancy vehicles; if bus lanes are filled with cars of city employees abusing their placard privileges; if cycling infrastructure is designed to prioritize parking rather than safety; if pedestrians and cyclists keep getting injured or killed by drivers; and if street redesigns are reactive rather than proactive, that’s all on the mayor.

As de Blasio asks for a promotion to a new job with a few years left in his current one—and as the country’s aging infrastructure dominates the national conversation—it’s worth exploring the transportation legacy he leaves behind. Is it easier and safer to get around now than it was six years ago? Has the mayor done enough to improve mobility in New York City? And what are his blind spots?

His transportation legacy starts with the Park Slope Y, a nondescript neighborhood gym 12 miles away from his Gracie Mansion home. On a near-daily basis—when he isn’t cavorting around Iowa or South Carolina, that is—the mayor and a phalanx of security officers drive from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn so he can ride a stationary bike for 30 minutes before getting back in the car and driving to City Hall. He doesn’t walk to Asphalt Green; he doesn’t take the subway to work; he doesn’t hop the M86 to Equinox; and he doesn’t bike the six miles to City Hall. As his campaign launch video showed, he is a minority in New York City: a car passenger who gets driven everywhere. It’s the lens through which he views the city and the lens through which he implements (or fails to implement) transportation policy.

Vision Zero has long been de Blasio’s most visible transportation policy platform. For a few years, on the surface, Vision Zero appeared to be working; traffic deaths started to decline, hitting a low water mark in 2018 when only 202 New Yorkers were killed by drivers. But behind the numbers, the picture looks different. Pedestrian deaths increased in 2018 and are again up by around 25 percent this year, according to numbers released by NYC DOT; cyclist deaths have also spiked, with 10 already recorded in 2019, matching last year’s total. Meanwhile, traffic injuries are up by nearly 20 percent since de Blasio’s first term. Fewer people are dying, but far more people are getting hurt.

For the city’s pedestrians, this spate of injuries is a public health crisis, but de Blasio thinks he can claim victory if deaths reach zero. “Vision Zero is working,” he said on The Brian Lehrer Show a few weeks ago, “but it’s been a tough few months.”

De Blasio believes Vision Zero is working because of increased enforcement efforts and more ticketed drivers, but he hasn’t yet learned New York City cannot enforce its way out of crisis; it must design its way out of crisis. This means safe biking infrastructure from the start, widespread daylighting of crosswalks, and fewer on-street parking spaces—all measures that challenge his preferred mode of travel.

Instead, de Blasio and his Department of Transportation approve long-requested redesigns only after tragic pedestrian deaths, as was laid bare in the case of a three-year-old killed by a candy van, and constantly kowtow to reactionary community boards who would rather give up lives than free public space for their cars.

But de Blasio’s blind spots don’t stop at Vision Zero. As the bus system bleeds riders and travel speeds decrease—to the point where most crosstown buses are slower than walking—the mayor has failed to push for dedicated bus infrastructure. His recent Better Buses Action Plan calls for only two miles of physically separated bus lanes and includes a lukewarm call for Albany to approve more camera-enforced bus lanes.

The team of seven tow trucks to move cars out of bus lanes seems almost quaint, and they don’t make a dent in clearing roadways blocked by postal vehicles, delivery trucks, and cop cars. The mayor has the power to clear vehicles out of the way by aggressively advocating for bus prioritization and truly separate infrastructure based on international design standards. Instead, bus riders suffer through slow speeds, unreliable travel times, and service cuts. It takes a bus rider to understand how New York’s bus network falls short, and the mayor just isn’t one.

On bike lanes, it’s more of the same. The de Blasio administration touted 20 miles of protected bike lanes added in 2018, but after closer examination, the real number appeared to be closer to 16 miles, as the DOT was counting lanes marked only by paint that are not actually separated from traffic. Meanwhile, the city goes out of its way to preserve parking rather than ensuring streets can be used safely by people in motion, and de Blasio has no plan for a comprehensive bike network that allows New Yorkers to pedal around without worry. Already, Corey Johnson, a 2021 mayoral hopeful, has called for 50 miles of truly protected bike lanes per year, a direct challenge to the mayor’s haphazard and subpar approach to safer biking.

And all the while, new bus and bike lanes often become parking spots for the placard class. Under de Blasio, the city has handed out over 50,000 new parking placards, and abuse via the creation of fake placards that traffic enforcement agents are more than happy to overlook is rampant. Thus, those with real placards park in places intended for moving vehicles, and those with fake placards park wherever they want with impunity. The mayor has vowed a crackdown that never materialized, and a team of volunteers tweets out placard abuse on a daily basis. The mayor also recently claimed on the radio that he never sees anyone driving on city sidewalks; in response, the #CarsOnSidewalk hashtag has been filling up Twitter for weeks.

For de Blasio, the failure to act quickly and decisively in the face of multiple crises is one of perspective. He sees the city as a driver, and thus, he does not act to limit the free rein drivers have over city streets. His refusal to consider limiting space for drivers and the giveaway of on-street parking results in a subpar Vision Zero that is reactive instead of proactive, poorly designed bike and pedestrian safety infrastructure, slow bus service, and rampant placard abuse.

His major addition to the transit landscape—a heavily subsidized ferry system I have previously questioned on Curbed—gives away the game. The mayor rolled out the ferry system quickly because it didn’t require allocating parking spaces to a better and higher use, and he didn’t have to hear complaints from the pro-parking NIMBYs with whom he routinely seems to sympathize. The BQX streetcar is supposedly his signature achievement, but since it is not scheduled to open until long after de Blasio’s term expires, odds are that the next mayor will kill a project of dubious transit value and high costs.

Every decision over space allocation on public streets should prioritize safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and speed for high-capacity buses. But the mayor views the city through his daily car rides, so we’re still stuck in traffic—literally and figuratively. As he comes begging for that mid-term promotion, keep in mind how de Blasio has not used the tools at his disposal to improve the way New Yorkers get around the city, even as the governor has governed his own way into a subway crisis not of the mayor’s making. The MTA may be Cuomo’s, but the rest of these travel failures are de Blasio’s.

Benjamin Kabak is the editor of Second Ave. Sagas. You can find him on Twitter at @2AvSagas.