At 13, Jimmy Vacca led a student campaign against the MTA.

But the new Transportation Committee chair—who has quickly moved up the ranks, from the Seniors Centers Subcommittee to the Fire & Criminal Justices Committee to his new post all over the course of the last 18 months—comes into the job with other experience as well.

When service cutbacks were threatened, he helped co-author a new stopgap capital plan with the Straphangers’ Campaign, a public transit advocacy group, and convinced Speaker Christine Quinn to adopt it on the Council’s behalf. He voted in favor of congestion pricing and is tentatively enthusiastic about pedestrian spaces like the new Times Square area, assuming that more traffic data proves that it does decrease congestion. But he also led the debate over the contentious five-minute parking grace period bill.

Advocates say his first order of business will likely be figuring out how to prevent MTA service cuts and fare hikes as the agency tries to close a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars. But beyond that, the new Transportation chair says he is interested in looking into new transit options, like a citywide ferry system, all while trying to remain neutral in the battles over bike paths and car-free spaces.

“We are aiming to get to a certain middle ground on that,” said Vacca’s spokesman, Bret Collazzi, about bike paths in Brooklyn. “Communities that have burgeoning cycling populations need to be supported.”

Vacca represents a district in the East Bronx and City Island on the edge of the city.

According to Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers’ Campaign, that gives the new chair an advantage in understanding transit needs.

“A lot of politicians have a windshield perspective where they don't live the lives that their constituents do,” Russianoff said. “He’s very familiar with the transit services in his neighborhood and how people get around.” 

When he was Transportation chair, John Liu used the perch to become a leading critic of the administration and the MTA, drawing attention which benefitted him in his campaign for comptroller last year.

Transportation Alternatives director Paul White said that he expects Vacca to lead a more conciliatory committee, producing solutions that will have a better chance of standing up in Albany during the years of tough budgets ahead.

“I think there are hopes that the Council hearings about transportation policy might be less politically charged and more substantive and productive,” White said. “You can even get more done in this kind of environment where you have a lot of shared values on the committee.” 

While insisting he can be a firebrand when necessary, Vacca said he prefers to wear people down with tenacity. For two months, when fighting to keep the City Island firehouse open, he wore red every day in Council to remind his colleagues of his campaign.

“I really believe in that: the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” he said. “I mean, I can be a team player and I can be a pest. The people in my district elected me to be both.”