Today’s Headlines

  • New Yorkers Offer Their Own Traffic Reduction Plans (NYT)
  • Lipsky Spins: Impossible to Evaluate Mayor’s Traffic Plan Vs. Fidler’s (Mom&Pop)
  • For Lew: Don’t Plan on Driving a Hydrogen Car Any Time Soon (New Yorker)
  • Paying an $8 Congestion Charge Is the Least This Little Sociopath Can Do (NYT)
  • State Legislators to Float $660 Million Transit Bill (Sun)
  • Proposed MTA Hike Follows Electoral Pattern; Also: MTA "Not Deaf" (NYT, News)
  • Praise for Sander and Sadik-Khan (AMNY)
  • More on the City’s Hudson Yards Parking Bonanza (News)
  • In Portland, Cultivating a Culture of Two Wheels (NYT)
  • Seattle Commuter is Shot in the Chest While Biking Home (Peter McKay)
  • Congestion Pricing is Facing an Uphill Battle in San Francisco… (SF Examiner)
  • …Road Pricing Is Best When Revenues Go Towards More Roads (SF Chronicle) 
  • Study Links Daylight Savings Shift to Pedestrian Fatality Increase (AP)
  • "Cinematic Splendor" of Brooklyn-Queens Expressway: The Symphony (NYT)
  • Larry Littlefield

    Not $600 million more. $3.5 billion more — $600 million to save the fare, and $2.5 biillion to prevent the MTA from going deeper and deeper into debt, guaranteeing an eventual collapse like that happening at the Housing Authority.

    Plus nearly that much to prevent growing debt from destroying the road system.

  • Pre-Streetsblog, I would see car-culture-glorifying articles like yesterday’s “Grand Switch Auto” and gnash my teeth.

    Nowadays … well, I still gnash my teeth, but a bit less permanently, knowing that S’blog will put those same articles in trenchant perspective soon enough — as it just did with its headline, “Paying an $8 Congestion Charge Is the Least This Little Sociopath Can Do.”

    Amen. Thanks, S’blog.

  • lee

    Charles, I could be wrong, but that photo looks a lot like the parking garage on Mercer St. just south of Houston. If so, take a little solace in the fact that this kid is paying $44 a day to park there.

  • Davis

    Someone needs to send a copy of that article to the kid’s local precinct and the NYPD Traffic Enforcement division in Midtown. This kid needs to be taken off the streets and made an example of.

  • Jonathan

    I’ll be contrarian here, but damn! hearing that engine roar makes me want to drive that car, preferably on a nice-looking empty highway like the Taconic in Northern Westchester.

    Guilty pleasure, I guess.

  • Vroomfondel

    I’ve got a hunch that the “little sociopath” might actually be one of the better drivers out there. After all, he drives a smallish, responsive car, and he probably has a good understanding of the physics of driving, unlike the clueless masses in their SUVs.

    That said, I do hope that the police will see this article and take his car off the road.

  • Dave

    The “roar” of thast engine is a quality of life issue in the city…he should be ticketed every time he exceeds sound measurements.

    Bloomberg made noise an issue and says the city is trying to limit it. What I don’t understand then is why motorcycles that make a ton of noise and set off car alarms as they roar by are not ticketed on a regular basis and impoiunded if they are not made compliant.

    Go to a biker’s bar with a sound meter and ticket them as they roar off…and we’ve have a quieter city for it.

  • Brooklyn

    Vroomfondel’s right — let’s not totally let the prudes take over this site.

    The car’s not my style, but the article shows that he’s taken the care and time to learn how to drive it properly. He’ll avoid more accidents than he’ll ever get into, which is more than you can say for most drivers, who have chosen to be — or are by nature — ignorant, twitchy and overwhelmed.

  • Eric

    I’m sure he’s a good driver, but the catalytic-converter bypass switch is illegal, and, by the way, spews more harmful exhaust (illegally) into the air than it would otherwise. Given that we already have the nation’s worst asthma rates, I’m not inclined to give him brownie points for knowing how to handle his car. Especially ’cause I’m guessing he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the posted speed limit.

  • ddartley

    Folks, the “little sociopath” is NOT a good driver. I’m sick of the b.s. LIE that young, aggressive, engine-gunners are people who “know how to handle a car” and good drivers. They’re not. They are speeders. You see them all the time, they are aggressive little punks, and just because there aren’t open stretches for them to speed on for a long time, they are still aggressive speeders, and killers.