Worst City Agency: Aching to build a huge parking deck but don't have enough cash? The NYC Economic Development Corporation is here to help. This quasi-public agency's predilection for financing suburban-style development was on full display in 2009. Two EDC specials held grand openings: The Gateway Center Mall on the South Bronx waterfront, with its 2,800 parking spots and atrocious walkways; and East River Plaza, a big-box retail complex with a 1,248-car garage hulking beside the FDR Drive in Harlem. These are utterly hostile environments for anyone who doesn't get around in a car, subsidized by taxpayers and located in neighborhoods with very high asthma rates. How does it all fit with PlaNYC and the vision of a more sustainable city? It doesn't. Not one bit.
Biggest Disappointment: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. When it comes to violent crime, Kelly's police department is still getting impressive results. The murder rate reached a historic low this year despite a force that's shrunk by 6,000 officers since 2001. Kelly has publicly resolved to do more with less and drive the murder rate down further. Out in the street, it's a totally different story. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are trending up, while reckless motorists remain free to speed, run lights, and endanger other people with near total impunity. But you never hear Kelly resolve to reduce the hundreds of traffic deaths in New York City each year.
Elected Official of the Year: If we based this award on good deeds, we'd give it to outgoing Brooklyn City Council Member David Yassky, who shepherded the Bicycle Access Bill through some tumultuous turns. But this award is really about who best embodied the legislative spirit of 2009. The undisputed champion: State Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada.
Biggest Legislative Fiasco: As last week's voting confirmed, The Fare Hike Four richly deserve this one. This troupe of State Senate Democrats from New York City -- Espada, Carl Kruger, Ruben Diaz, Sr., and Hiram Monserrate -- put on a clinic in legislative obstructionism back in the spring, blocking an MTA financing package because it set a price on car commuting over free bridges. A few months later, their band-aid has peeled away, leaving most of their constituents exposed to painful cuts in transit service -- again. This pair of images pretty much sums it up:
Urban Abomination of the Year: Well, people's choice voters, you chose to bestow this award on the deterioratingpublic space near Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. This seems a little premature to us. Forest City hasn't turned whole city blocks into oceans of surface parking plus a big ugly arena just yet, though transgressions like this certainly deserve to be shamed...
The Anthony Weiner Award (Formerly the "Most Opinions, Fewest Solutions" Award): Goes to State Senator Carl Kruger. This is a bit unfair. Kruger, chair of the powerful Finance Committee, actually had a lot of solutions for New York's transit funding crisis. They were just wildly irresponsible, batsh*t crazy, or both.
Most Schizophrenic Bloomberg Administration Moment: Fresh off his return jet flight from the Copenhagen climate summit, the mayor joins Ray Kelly at the groundbreaking for New York's next police academy. It's more than a mile away from the nearest subway station and will include a massive 3,000-car garage for future cadets. Somehow, that probably won't stop the city from getting the project certified LEED Silver by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Saddest Example of NYC Democratic Campaign Strategy:Bill Thompson and the entire Democratic citywide ticket spend a few minutes of valuable last-minute campaign time criticizing plans for rapid bus service on Nostrand Avenue at a sparse gathering of merchants, reporters and neighborhood cranks. A hundred feet away, a much bigger crowd of Brooklynites waits for a ride on the city's most unreliable bus, the B44.
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
Purely for political and self-serving purposes, Mayor Adams is attacking congestion pricing — and, in doing so, is undermining the implementation of a program that he has long claimed to be a "strong" supporter of.
Sherif Soliman, who was appointed to the board only last year, quietly resigned on Sept. 22, and the mayor won't get a new person on the panel until next year.