Sam Schwartz
Samuel I. Schwartz, also known as Gridlock Sam, is an American transportation engineer, formerly the New York City Traffic Commissioner, notable for popularizing the phrase "gridlock".
Life and career
After graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1965, Schwartz was educated at Brooklyn College and the University of Pennsylvania, 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 New [York City Department of Transportation|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 tried to ban cars from Midtown Manhattan but the project was aborted just before implementation by then-Mayor John Lindsay. He also introduced the first physically separated bike lanes on city streets on 4 Manhattan Avenues in 1980. The project was short lived as Mayor Ed Koch ordered him to remove them after only 6 weeks. He earned the nickname Gridlock Sam during the 1980 [New York City transit strike|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. 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 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 / History of congestion pricing in New York City.
After he left city government in 1990, he started his own firm. He wrote columns for New York City's Daily News, lower Manhattan’s Downtown Express, The Queens Chronicle and in the Yiddish News Report as Gridlock Shmuel.
In 2025 he donated more than $1M to Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College to start a Transportation Research Program where he serves as Board Chair.