Polly Trottenberg

Trottenberg was the Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy, helping develop the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant program.[6]

Trottenberg also served as a transportation policy adviser for Senators Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in addition to holding positions with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the nonprofit Building America's Future.[7]

Polly Trottenberg was appointed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on December 31, 2013, to replace Janette Sadik-Khan as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation.[8] Trottenberg was sworn in on January 27, 2014.[9][10]

At NYC DOT, Trottenberg spearheaded the de Blasio administration’s efforts around a range of transportation issues, including:

• Expanding cycling with the growth of the city’s on-street protected bike lane network from 36 miles to over 120 miles, DOT committed to the Green Wave, a plan to create key commuting connections and extending further into traditionally underserved communities.  The Citi Bike bike share system, the largest in North America, also continued to grow.
• Working closely with MTA New York City Transit, DOT expanded access to buses, including an additional 64 more miles of dedicated bus lanes around the City since 2014, for a total of nearly 138 miles. The 14th Street Busway, begun in 2019, received international attention for increasing ridership and decreasing travel times.
• In 2014, New York City was the first American city to adopt Vision Zero, a multi-agency effort to reduce traffic crashes and fatalities through enforcement, engineering and education. Traffic fatalities in New York City have been recorded since 1910 — and seven of the city’s eight safest years happened after 2013.  As part of Vision Zero, Trottenberg successfully advocated for State legislation that allowed the City to lower its default speed limit to 25 MPH and expand its speed-camera program to 750 zones and 2,000 cameras, making it the largest such program in the world.
• In 2020, DOT served as New York City’s lead agency addressing changes to the urban streetscape in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. New York City was dramatically transformed through major DOT initiatives like Open Streets, Open Restaurants, Outdoor Learning and Open Storefronts. The Open Restaurants Program, with over 10,700 restaurants serving diners on sidewalks and streets, is among the largest in the world.[11]

Trottenberg was also a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, having been confirmed for a 10-year term on June 23, 2014.[9] Seen as a voice of "sanity" on the board,[12] she resigned from the position on June 3, 2019.[13] Trottenberg also served as the chair of TRANSCOM, a coalition of 16 transportation-related agencies in the New York metropolitan area, from 2015 to 2019.[14]

In November 2020, Trottenberg was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Transportation.[15] On January 18, 2021, it was announced that Trottenberg would serve as United States Deputy Secretary of Transportation in the incoming Biden administration.[16]