Amanda Farías Courts Council Speaker Role on Soundview Ferry, Menin Still Claims Numbers

As New York City Council’s leadership contest intensifies, the candidacy of Amanda Farías raises big questions about the city’s commitment to livable streets, transit equity, and the pragmatic politics underpinning policy progress.

One recent November morning, as the city’s ferries creaked along the Bronx River and through Hell Gate, Amanda Farías—Council Member for the Bronx’s 18th District and would-be Council Speaker—met with a journalist for nearly an hour. Not in the paneled offices of City Hall, but aboard the Soundview ferry, winding through river fog and scattered commuters. This was not mere optics. Ms Farías has staked her bid, pointedly, as the “transportation candidate”—a rare breed in New York’s municipal leadership.

A contest for the speakership will soon decide who leads the 51-member Council, an institution with disproportionate sway over budget, land use, and the tortuous progress of city legislation. The process is as transparent as a midtown puddle: the true vote occurs in private, likely in early 2026, and pre-vote pledges flourish and whither with little warning. Julie Menin, of Manhattan, boldly announced herself victor before Thanksgiving—weeks ahead of the actual vote. Her supporters brandished vote tallies on paper, hastily circulated to media, though recent council history counsels skepticism.

Hovering alongside Menin and Brooklyn’s Crystal Hudson, Ms Farías is, by contrast, running on substantive policy enthusiasm. Her championing of the city’s ferry network (she piloted a reduced-fare program), zeal for six-minute service on transit, and central role in the Bronx’s much-ballyhooed Metro-North rezoning distinguish her bid from the finger-on-the-wind calculations more typical of Council races. The next Speaker will determine the seriousness with which City Hall confronts its transit deserts, aging infrastructure, and the knottier issues of safe streets and micromobility.

This is no trivial matter. Nearly three million New Yorkers rely on subways and buses each weekday; transit “deserts” in the outer boroughs, including Farías’s own district, suffer from paltry access. New York’s ferry system, for all the headlines, carries fewer than 7 million annual riders—a rounding error against the Metro’s massed multitudes, but often a lifeline for the city’s geographic periphery. Ms Farías’s work on better bike lanes, connections between ferries and subways, and reimagined streets aligns with the city’s own 2019 Streets Master Plan: an often-ignored mandate for safer streets and more frequent service.

The speaker’s bully pulpit also extends well beyond transport minutiae. Under outgoing Speaker Adrienne Adams, the Council managed to secure modest improvements in transit schedules and won hard-fought commitments for more protected bike lanes (though progress was, as ever, halting). But the next leader must also shepherd the city through congestion pricing, development fights, and persistent debates over e-vehicle safety—debates made no less piquant by Menin’s reported ties to industry groups like the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance and platform giants such as Uber.

On these fronts, Farías presents both a philosophical and practical contrast. She boasts not just activist credentials (formerly a board member of Riders Alliance), but also hands-dirty policy work, notably in the Bronx rezoning and bus redesign efforts. While her rivals have been more circumspect—one steadfastly declining to answer questions about industry relationships—Farías has, at least, welcomed public grilling.

Should Farías prevail, the implications for the city could be substantial, if not spectacular. A Council newly attentive to livable streets might finally move the needle on protected cycling infrastructure, confront the city’s spotty record on pedestrian fatalities, and—heresy among some colleagues—advance serious congestion charges. Such shifts, skeptics may grumble, could invite the usual backlash from car owners and business groups, but they would also edge New York closer to global peers like London or Paris, where transit options proliferate and city centres are steadily reclaimed from automobiles.

The transit race and the politics of pace

The second-order effects of Council leadership echo through myriad domains. A Speaker genuinely invested in transit equity may tilt public investment away from the boutique projects beloved of donors, toward less glamorous but far more useful expansions in city bus, bike, and ferry access. If city government can deliver not just rhetoric but actual six-minute service—or even a credible plan for it—the impact on working New Yorkers, especially those in boroughs ill-served by legacy infrastructure, could be transformative.

Politically, ascendancy by a transportation reformer would test the resolve of the city’s many competing interests. New York has a storied habit of declaring grand ambitions for the future of its streets—see Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero, or the grandiose targets of the Streets Master Plan—only to see them diluted by budgetary constraints, lawsuits, and a warren of inter-agency wrangling. Successfully threading this maze requires not only ideological commitment but shrewd coalition-building; Farías’s candidacy rests on an ability to galvanize both reformers and more timorous councilmembers.

Nationally, the moment is ripe for recalibration. Federal funding streams, loosened by the 2021 infrastructure bill, await credible local partnerships; cities like Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have begun to experiment, haltingly, with bus rapid transit, “15-minute city” planning, and micromobility pilots. Yet New York—with its global perch and daunting scale—has alternated between inertia and parochial squabbles. The result has been a series of tepid half-measures, from costly e-scooter pilots to cycling networks that stall at bridge approaches or dead-end at borough borders.

In this context, a speaker with granular knowledge of transit policy and grassroots urgency—rather than a penchant for backroom dealing—might finally give New York the push it needs. Progress is rarely swift in this city, nor do upstart candidates always materialise as effective leaders once installed. But the ascendance of Farías, or someone of her reformist ilk, would signal that “livable streets” are no longer a hobbyhorse for activists but a pillar of mainstream city governance.

The city’s labyrinthine politics, as ever, conspire against streamlined reform. But New Yorkers are impatient; for many, another year of hand-wringing, underwhelming bike lanes, and ponderous ferry expansions will not suffice. As the Council chooses its next captain, the question is whether the city’s leadership will finally match its rhetoric with results, or once again punt hard decisions into the fog.

A cautious optimism is warranted. If the city seizes its moment—and if advocates of better streets find common cause with those long consigned to “transit deserts”—then New York might belatedly inch toward a future where livability and mobility need not be at loggerheads. Failing that, our ferry rides will continue to be scenic but solitary—another symbol of promises made and quietly unmet. ■