Today’s Headlines

  • Jeffries, Meeks, and Goldfeder Seeking Sandy Recovery Funds to Study Rockaway Beach Rail (DNA)
  • The Times Runs an Image Rehab Piece on Deadly Speeder Julio Acevedo
  • Too Many Parents Are Driving Their Kids to PS 63 in Ozone Park (QChron)
  • Stop Signs Safer Than Traffic Lights for Boerum Hill Streets? (Bklyn Paper)
  • Hit-and-Run Driver Strikes Man in Jackson Heights Crosswalk (Post)
  • Ditmas Park Still Waiting for Mathieu Eugene to Help Tame Dangerous Coney Island Ave (DP Corner)
  • After Police Use Cruiser With Deadly Force to Stop Man on Dirt Bike, Victim’s Mother Sues NYPD (AP)
  • Meet the Surveyor Who Laid Out the Manhattan Grid (Leonard Lopate)
  • People’s Bank United Knows: Bikes Sell (Bklyn Spoke)
  • Cousin Matthew Loves the Subway (Gothamist)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Mr. Acevedo’s past is extraordinary and newsworthy in its own right, I don’t question the Times’ decision to report it. We as a society ought to be more interested in the history and motivations of those accused and convicted of crimes if we want to reduce crime.

    But as for the apologia, many people have suffered unfairness at the hands of law enforcement. That can’t provide a basis for justifying flight from the scene of a crash. Acevedo’s lawyer claims that the past unfairness “goes to [Acevedo’s] state of mind,” but the only state of mind requirement for leaving the scene of the crash is knowledge, or reason to have knowledge, that a person has been injured by a collision in which the accused was involved. There is no way for Acevedo to negate that he had the requisite knowledge.

  • Bolwerk

    Hopefully QueensWay is stopped. Wanting to rob the entire city of a cheap yet key transportation link for the sake of a less-than-useable park is the height of selfishness.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli.

    I don’t think Queen’s Way and Commuter Rail from Rockaways should be mutually exclusive. Many railroads in Europe have bike paths beside them with no problems what so ever. I do know that NYC is not Europe. But the Rockaway Branch once connected Nassau and Queens and should do so again. The reverse commute being denied Queens and Brooklyn by the NIMBY resistance to LIRR Main Line 3rd track is another way the MTA is forced to under serve the city and devalue the enormously expensive LIRR East Side Access project.

  • Joe R.

    I totally agree. In fact, NYC has dozens of miles of grade-separated railroads, highways, and els which could easily be leveraged at nominal cost to make a huge grade-separated network of cycling superhighways. I think such a network would be a major factor in greatly increasing bicycle mode share, especially in the outer boroughs. I know I might consider riding from Flushing into Manhattan instead of taking the train provided there was safe bike parking, and I could make the ~10 mile trip in maybe 30 minutes. On local streets with congestion and traffic lights the trip now could easily take an hour. The only practical way to speed it up is to put bikes where they don’t encounter red lights or stop signs. We can do that for a lot less than we think if we had the political will to do so.