Today’s Headlines

  • Gas Tax Holiday Goes Nowhere in Congress (AP)
  • Transit Ridership Up in 75 Percent of U.S. Cities (Climate Atlas)
  • Hit-and-Run Driver Leaves Brooklyn Girl in Coma, Curses at Her Before Speeding Away (News)
  • Street Racing Driver Kills 11-Year-Old Brooklyn Boy (News)
  • Polish City Condones, Organizes Drag Racing Events (NYT)
  • News: MTA Bigs Must Press Albany for Funds to Avoid Fare Hike
  • Paterson Pleased With Sander’s Performance as MTA Chief (News)
  • Are Albany Incumbents in Deep Trouble This Election? (Times Union)
  • More Cops Walking Their Beats to Save Gas (NYT)
  • Forbes Traveler Rates ‘North America’s Most Bike-Friendly Cities’

  • I was overjoyed to read the story about cops getting out of their cars and walking a beat — until I got to the end and realized there wasn’t a graf about it happening here in NYC. Anecdotally, I rarely see foot patrolmen in the UWS except in my bank.

    It wasn’t always that way. David Dinkins, keeping a campaign promise, hired a whole bunch of new guys and made them walk a beat. The difference was dramatic. I’d see them on the streets of my neighborhood many times a day. It amazed me — I didn’t know policemen had legs!

    The PBA hated this and made common cause with Giuliani. A year after he replaced Dinkins, the new patrolmen disappeared and we were back to the legless status quo. They even patrol Riverside Park by driving police cars down the ped/bike paths.

  • Larry Littlefield

    I humbly suggest that this Room 8 post is worthy of discussion.

    http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/oil_sugar_and_35_wasted_years.html

    It really bothers me to ponder that it has been 35 years since the 1973 oil embargo. What have the generation now in charge done? Pander to those who wanted things cheap and easy in the short run, and left us with a bankrupt country locked into an environmentally destructive lifestyle and dependent for a necessity on possibly hostile nations.

    Thirty-five years of failure, with the only debate whether the leaders or the people — the people now age 50 to 70 or so — are to blame. And there they are, still comprising just about every member of the Congress and State Legislature, and still destroying the future they don’t care about.

    Thirty prior generations of Americans must be rolling over in their graves.

  • How NYC beat Chicago and Minneapolis is beyond reason. I think all future “best bike Cities” lists should be a reporter trying to ride their bike in each city. That would be more telling for sure.

  • brent

    “Street Racing Driver Kills 11-Year-Old Brooklyn Boy”- charged ONLY with leaving the scene of an accident?!? What about a charge for using our streets as a race course? Unbelievable.

  • d

    Boston, even with its reputation for terrible drivers, is a much better bike city than NYC, partially due to the thousands of students who ride bikes and its relatively compact size. Mayor Menino is trying to do for Boston what Daley is doing for Chicago: add bike lanes, promote cycling, and otherwise make it easier to bike. I’m surprised it didn’t make the list.

    I think NYC made the list for what it could be rather than what it is. When you see that shot of a cyclist riding over the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s easy for the romance of biking in the city and the promise of the future to trump the reality of the present.

  • On the Forbes Top Ten story, if anyone is interested I wrote a little rant about how San Diego placed #3 on the list at http://www.oldbikeblog.blogspot.com. I live in San Diego, and just last week there was a spirited discussion at one of the local news sites, which I link to, about how the city is pathologically bike-unfriendly and how to make it better. I’m glad for the good press, I suppose, but worry that ranking San Diego so high sets the bar a bit low. We even beat Davis, CA, for goodness sake! how is that right?

  • Larry Littlefield

    This just in: San Francisco’s Weiner/Silver equivalents seek to stop Summer Streets there.

  • Larry Littlefield
  • ddartley

    I’m losing my mind seeing people speeding all around town, and hearing about the little kids many of them kill, and hearing how IF they get caught, they only get charged with peripheral shit like leaving the scene of an accident. How about CAUSING the accident in the first place? And how about charging people just for driving dangerously?

    Hello, cops and DAs, do you want to effing do something about these people? No? I didn’t think so.

    If you frequently screech your tires as you drive around town, you are asking to be a murderer, and I wish you would die, because otherwise you’re just going to kill someone else.