New York City Department of Transportation

Responsibilities

The Department of Transportation's responsibilities include day-to-day maintenance of the city's streets, highways, bridges, sidewalks, street signs, traffic signals, and street lights. DOT supervises street resurfacing, pothole repair, parking meter installation and maintenance, and municipal parking facility management. DOT also operates the Staten Island Ferry. DOT is the exclusive provider of day-to-day operations and maintenance on state-maintained roads and highways in city limits, while major repairs and capital improvements on state-owned roads are performed by the State DOT (NYSDOT). Both DOT and NYSDOT reserve the right to install signage, signals, and other roadway features on state highways, which then become maintained on a daily basis by DOT. DOT sets the speed limit on all roads and highways in the city, including those owned by NYSDOT.

DOT is also responsible for oversight of transportation-related issues, such as authorizing jitney van services and permits for street construction. DOT also advocates for transportation safety issues, including promotion of pedestrian and bicycle safety.

Its regulations are compiled in title 34 of the New York City Rules.

Traffic and street lights

The first traffic lights in New York City originated from traffic towers installed along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1910s. The first such towers were installed in 1920 and were replaced in 1929 by bronze traffic signals. As of June 30, 2011, the DOT oversaw 12,460 intersections citywide with traffic lights. By 2017, the DOT controlled nearly 13,000 signalized intersections, almost all of which had pedestrian signals; of these, over half (7,507) had countdown timers for pedestrians. In addition, 635 signalized intersections under the DOT's control had exclusive pedestrian phases as of 2017.

As of 2019, the DOT maintained 548 accessible pedestrian signals for blind and visually impaired pedestrians. The first such signals were installed in 1957, but few accessible signals were added for the next half-century. In 2021, a federal judge ruled that the DOT had to install accessible signals at 9,000 intersections; the DOT plans to install these signals through 2031. All remaining intersections are planned to have accessible signals by 2036.

The DOT maintains 250,000 streetlamps as of 2019. Most of them are LED lamps, installed between 2013 and 2018.

One of the larger groups of traffic restrictions implemented by the DOT is in Midtown Manhattan, where the DOT maintains a system of "thru streets" and split traffic-signal phases to prevent congestion on west–east streets.