When the holiday season ends, it’s time to send out thank-you cards — yes, even to Uncle Ken for the grocery-store fruitcake that will end up in the closet next to last year’s fruitcake.

So this year, why not thank some people who really deserve it, like NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her bosses, Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and Mayor Michael Bloomberg?

Consider what NYC has done over the past three years:

• The well-known opening of Times Square to pedestrians. The city has also rolled out the welcome mat at iconic spaces like Madison Square, Union Square, Broadway, and Grand Army Plaza, making them safer and more welcoming. Across the city, streets have been redesigned to give more space to people walking, biking, and riding transit.
• Major bus improvements on Fordham Road in the Bronx and First and Second Avenues in Manhattan that have bus riders getting to their destinations 20% faster.
• The city’s first protected bicycle lanes on 1st, 2nd, 8th, and 9th Avenues in Manhattan; Sands Street and Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, and 250 miles of bike lanes built across the city.
• Countless other innovations, like countdown clocks at crosswalks and a Safe Routes for Seniors intersection safety program.

And the city’s got plenty of big plans ahead: Big bus improvements for Midtown, Brooklyn, and Staten Island; a bike-sharing program that would be the biggest in the country; revamps of Fordham Plaza in the Bronx and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, and much more.

But some politicians and media types are reacting to pedestrian safety, bike, and transit projects as if they were ugly holiday sweaters. To listen to them tell it, it’s time to remove the more balanced streets and bring back the car-focused status quo.

So if you love the new New York City, please let Mayor Bloomberg and city transportation officials know by sending them a thank-you note. Visit http://tstc.org/nycthanks/ to sign our card, which we will send to City Hall in January.