Interview with Keith Todd Kerman

Safe, Sustainable Mobility in New York City

The City of New York manages the largest municipal vehicle fleet in the United States. From a large scale power conversion to the implementation of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero, Keith Todd Kerman explains how the City is positioning itself as a leader in sustainable practices and road safety.

Keith Todd Kerman is the City of New York’s chief fleet officer and a deputy commissioner with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS).

NYC Fleet manages over 31,000 vehicles, one of the largest fleets anywhere. We have over 2,000 full-time fleet and dispatch staff and 80,000 fleet operators.

Under Mayor de Blasio’s NYC Clean Fleet policy, NYC has committed to achieve 50% greenhouse gas reduction from our fleet by 2025. The city is implementing one of the nation’s most comprehensive fleet sustainability initiatives:

Over 60 agencies and offices own and operate fleet units as part of NYC Fleet. The major fleet agencies are known as the Fleet Federation and include NYPD (Police), FDNY (Fire), DSNY (Sanitation), DOT (Transportation), DEP (Environmental Protection), Parks, DOC (Correction), DHMH (Health and Mental Hygiene), TLC (Taxi & Limousine Commission), OEM (Emergency Management), DOE (Education) and DCAS.

Shared servicing is a critical priority of NYC Fleet. The city implemented one of the largest consolidations and shared service initiatives in fleet. Each day, agencies like NYPD, DSNY, Parks, DOT and DCAS service and support fleet units from other agencies, breaking down traditional silos across agencies and reducing costs. Last year, DCAS successfully partnered to service 1,000 vehicles from the NY Housing Authority in our latest consolidation.

This March 2019, Mayor de Blasio signed Executive Order 41. His initiative will take our shared services, utilization tracking, and efficiency efforts even further.

This initiative requires NYC to reduce at least 1,000 vehicles from the fleet and 10 million miles. The city will use advanced telematics to track fleet usage on a daily basis and will establish a minimal 80% usage standard for fleets. NYC will work to find alternatives to vehicle operation, such as subway use; will reduce vehicle commuting; and will study routes to improve efficiency.

One of the most exciting aspects of this effort is our fleet share program. NYC has over 750 city-owned vehicles that use Zipcar technology and are shared within agencies. Staff get card keys, not car keys, and reserve vehicles online as they might a conference room. This type of sharing holds the prospect of greatly increased efficiency, reduced costs, and enabling fleet managers to focus on fulfilling transport needs—not assigning cars to people.

As part of this effort, DCAS has also rolled out over 60 all-electric GM Bolts to be shared across all agencies. These are now among NYC’s most used fleet units. Many are powered by solar carports.

Shared, all electric vehicles, powered by the sun. Nothing better represents the fleet of the future. We have them today.

Under Mayor de Blasio, NYC has been a leader in traffic safety through our Vision Zero initiative. NYC Fleet works in partnership on Vision Zero with the dedicated team from the Mayor’s Vision Zero task force, including DOT, NYPD, TLC, DHMH, BIC (Business Integrity Commission), and the Mayor’s Office.

NYC streets are safer than they have ever been. We adopted Vision Zero from our international partners and now NYC’s Vision Zero effort has become a model for our nation. We are committed to doing more and intensifying these efforts.

Vision Zero has many components, including traffic and roadway design, police enforcement, health monitoring, and fleet safety, which is our focus at DCAS and also TLC. We are working to make our fleet the nation’s safest and most sustainable as well.

Among many initiatives:

It’s our view that the design of fleet systems is as critical to safe streets as the design of roadways. Through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure, the two come even more closely together, with tremendous potential for long term safety improvement. Cars talking to cars. Infrastructure talking to cars—all to prevent collisions in real-time and safeguard drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

All of these efforts are having an impact. Fatalities and crashes per mile are decidedly down for the city fleet. We have lots more to do, however.

NYC Fleet has recently established a Fleet Office of Real Time Tracking (FORT). This operation is located at the Municipal Building at City Hall and will operate as a watchtower for city fleet operations. This initiative will help us improve safety, reduce and respond to crashes, better track fuel economy, study fleet use, and more.

FORT will also be a pivotal tool helping our 60 client offices deliver direct services to the public and will support NYC’s capacity to address major emergencies. Many years in the formation, FORT is our most exciting new initiative and offers the prospect of re-inventing fleet operations and servicing in every way in the next few years.