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 (BS Physics) and the University of Pennsylvania (MSCE), and first worked as a New York City cabbie before being hired by the City of New York in 1971. 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 transit strike when he developed a series of transportation contingency plans, called the Grid-Lock Prevention Program. Even with a change in leadership (Mayor Lindsay was replaced by Abe Beame in 1974) it looked like the tolls would be reinstated. However, an act of Congress nixed the proposal in 1977. Congestion pricing was eventually introduced in 2025.

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 $1 million to Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College to start a Transportation Research Program where he serves as Board Chair.