Samuel I. Schwartz, a.k.a. Gridlock Sam, is an American

transportation engineer Transportation engineering or transport engineering is the application of technology and scientific principles to the planning, functional design, operation and management of facilities for any mode of transportation in order to provide for th ...

, formerly the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Traffic Commissioner, notable for popularizing the phrase "

gridlock Gridlock is a form of traffic congestion where "continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill". The term originates from a situation possible in a grid ...

Life and career

Schartz was educated at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

(BS Physics) and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

(MSCE), and first worked as a New York City cabbie before being hired by the City of New York in 1971. He served as NYC Traffic Commissioner from 1982 to 1986, and when the traffic department became subsumed by the Department of Transportation he held the second-in-command post of First Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer from 1986-1990. While employed with the city, he attempted to introduce bicycle lanes and public plazas. They were vetoed at the last minute by then-mayor

John Lindsay John Vliet Lindsay (; November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician and lawyer. During his political career, Lindsay was a U.S. congressman, mayor of New York City, and candidate for U.S. president. He was also a regular ...

. He earned the nickname Gridlock Sam during the 1980 transit strike when he developed a series of transportation contingency plans, called the Grid-Lock Prevention Program. It was under Schwartz's watch that the city almost became the first city to implement

congestion pricing Congestion pricing or congestion charges is a system of surcharging users of public goods that are subject to congestion through excess demand, such as through higher peak charges for use of bus services, electricity, metros, railways, tele ...

. The city's bridges had not been tolled since 1911 and beginning in 1973 he worked with Mayor Lindsay to reintroduce them. Even with a change in leadership (Mayor Lindsay was replaced by

Abe Beame Abraham David Beame (March 20, 1906February 10, 2001) was the 104th mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977. As mayor, he presided over the city during its fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, when the city was almost forced to declare bankruptcy. ...

in 1974) it looked like the tolls would be reinstated. However, an act of Congress nixed the proposal in 1977. See:

Congestion pricing in New York City In New York City, a planned congestion pricing scheme will charge vehicles traveling into or within the central business district of Manhattan. First proposed in 2007, this disincentivizing fee to cut down on traffic congestion was approved and ...

. After he left city government around 1996, he started his own firm. He writes columns for New York City's '' Daily News'', lower Manhattan’s ''Downtown Express'', The ''

Queens Chronicle The ''Queens Chronicle'' is a free weekly newspaper based in the New York City neighborhood of Rego Park, Queens. It was founded in November 1978 as ''The Paper'' by Susan Merzon. In 1984, it expanded beyond its Howard Beach constituency and was r ...

'' and in the Yiddish ''News Report'' as Gridlock Shmuel. He also tweets, and blogs for the

Public Broadcasting Service The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...

and ''

Engineering News-Record ''Engineering News-Record'' (widely known as ''ENR'') is an American weekly magazine that provides news, analysis, data and opinion for the construction industry worldwide. It is widely regarded as one of the construction industry's most authori ...

''.

References

External links

BiographyOfficial Gridlock Sam websiteSam Schwartz' consulting firm
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schwartz, Sam Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Brooklyn College alumni University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Transport engineers American civil engineers American columnists American taxi drivers