Today’s Headlines

  • After Fare Hike and Service Cuts, MTA Capital Plan Crisis Looms (NYT)
  • Transit, Green Infrastructure Obama’s ‘First Order of Business’ in January (Grist)
  • How Stimulus Spending Gets Divvied Up Among Transpo Projects (Gotham Gazette)
  • Lexington Ave Subways and Stations Filled to Bursting (City Room, News)
  • M8, Three Express Bus Routes Getting Axed; 22 Queens and Brooklyn Lines Face Cuts (News, Post)
  • Terrific Headlines Follow Yesterday’s Release of Cyclist Behavior Study (Post, NY1)
  • China’s Carmakers Want a Bailout Too (NYT)
  • LA City Council Considers Bike-Share, Cyclists’ Bill of Rights (Streetsblog LA)
  • Get This: Dog Puts Idling Car in Drive, Crashes Into Coffee Shop (News)
  • Next Month on IFC: The Atlantic Yards Story (TRE)
  • Larry Littlefield

    RE: 8th Street. The orignal urban mass transit, the horsecar, made its last stand nearby on Bleeker Street.

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E02E6DE103BE03ABC4F51DFB166838C609EDE

    Once the bus is gone, how about 8th Street as a no traffic (or low traffic) two-way east-west corridor for bikes and pedestrians? It could be the main one in the city for people traveling both uptown/downtown and across town during their commutes.

    It might draw some business away from Soho — the city could offer to get rid of the bike lane on Price and replace it with SUV parking as part of the deal. 8th Street has had a bit of a downturn lately. Make the street a places for bikes and pedestrians first could turn it around.

    If there are parking garages accessed from 8th Street, then the “bicycle boulevard” solution might work, using bollards to prevent through traffic from motor vehicles but not bicycles, and maintaining local access.

    The through motor vehicle traffic could be directed down to Prince.

  • Jeffrey Hymen

    I was wrong, but I fully expecting to see a link in “Today’s Headlines” to this article about demand pricing for parking:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/us/20park.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

  • J. Mork

    You mean “terrific” in the original sense of the word, right? As in the holiday classic, “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays”: “Gee, the traffic is terrific!”.

  • Jeffrey — that’s a good one and we’ll give it some solo attention.

    J. Mork — precisely.

  • Larry Littlefield

    By the way, those who believe the current MTA proposals are the doomsday scenario are going to be very disappointed when doomsday arrives.

    If they raise the fare high enough and close some stations, the subway can cover its operating costs and some other costs as well. That’s the transit system I’m sure we will have, minus lines that close as the signals systems fail.

    Not so buses, express buses, and commuter rail lines where everyone retires early on disability. The replacement for the B75 and M8 bus is a bicycle. That’s the other transit system I’m sure we’ll have.

  • ddartley

    Let this “first order of business” Obama story not be too good to be true.

    I’m no economist, but I find very appealing the idea of a WPA-like effort to start building green transportation, one that would, unlike the WPA, *preempt* mass unemployment, rather than be a scramble to recover from it, which the WPA was more like.

  • While I disagree with their view, I’ve gotta hand it to the Post – “Outlaw Bikers” is a funny title.

    It’s a little disturbing that the tone of the article about the dog switching the van into drive and putting it through a storefront is “awww, doggies are cuuuute!”

  • “Manifesto of the ‘Reckless’ Traffic Outlaws,” translated from the French

  • Larry Littlefield

    “While I disagree with their view, I’ve gotta hand it to the Post – ‘Outlaw Bikers’ is a funny title.”

    Was it a description of cyclists in a news article, or a recommendation for transportation policy in an editorial?

  • Heh.

    “Outlaw” was used there as an adjective but nice catch on the possible use as a verb.

  • MIndy

    I like these headlines. Almost daily I see cyclists running red lights at full speed and going the wrong way on one-way streets endangering pedestrians. Sorry but bad streets and nasty cars don’t give one an excuse to almost rundown pedestrians trying to cross the street.

  • You’re a hack editor’s dream, MIndy. What other tiresome negative stereotypes would you like to have validated in your daily ‘news’ reading? Or are you a single-issue crank?

  • gecko

    May be the greatest myth of all times that a car industry is good for the economic well-being of any modern developed country: “China’s Carmakers Want a Bailout Too (NYT)”

  • MIndy

    Doc # 12…I’d like balanced news coverage…which doesn’t mean never mentioning anything negative about cycling. Of course if they’d cover “Car Drivers Behaving Badly” it would take up 5 or 10 pages of the newspaper every day. I could write a book about “Bad Pedestrians’. I constantly see people walking against the light in front of moving buses with ipods on (of course.)

  • gecko

    re: Terrific Headlines Follow Yesterday’s Release of Cyclist Behavior Study (Post, NY1)

    Regrettably, they’ve failed to mention that maybe one person every three years is killed by a bicycle and it’s likely that pretty much no one is ever killed by errant pedestrians, while about 300 people (nearly a person a day) are killed by cars in this city every year.

  • gecko

    Can’t wait for the Onion headline: “Outlaw Pedestrians!”

  • gecko

    . . . better yet: “Outlaw Pigeons!”