Today’s Headlines

  • As Rent Regulations Expire, De Blasio’s Given Up on MTA Funding This Session (Capital)
  • WCBS, Ben Kallos, and NYPD Go After the True Menace on Our Streets
  • Enforcement Will Ensure Cyclists on UES Avenues Aren’t Going Above 25 MPH (AMNY)
  • Mary Grace Belfi’s Condition Worsens as NYPD Continues Search for Cyclist (Post) [Updated]
  • Queens CB 7 Member Goes After TA for Suggesting CB Appointments Shouldn’t Be for Life (TL)
  • Cop Avoids Jail and Community Service in Bronx Ticket-Fixing Plea (News, DNA)
  • Sandy Johnston: Troubles at DC Metro Hold Lesson for Albany’s MTA Paralysis (Gotham Gazette)
  • Queens HS Student Designs “Vision Zero” App to Report Potholes (Q Chron)
  • Broken MetroCard Machine at Astoria Blvd SBS Stop Fixed After Months of Disrepair (WPIX)
  • Times: “It Is Long Past Time for New Jersey Motorists to Pay More at the Pump”

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • WalkingNPR

    In other news, I guess you can recklessly wield a gun like people recklessly wield cars and get the “oopsie” defense.

    http://nypost.com/2015/06/16/guest-who-fired-gun-at-waldorf-wedding-has-klutzy-history/

    Can we eliminate the word “accident’ from our vocabulary yet?

  • Bobberooni

    Article on NJ gas tax is true, but it’s not useful for the NEW YORK Times to be saying “THEY need to raise the gas tax.” This stuff needs to be penned from a West-of-the-Hudson point of view.

  • roguebagel

    Exactly. Reads like crusty New Yorkers complaining about the cost of an NJ Transit ticket going up.

  • Jesse

    “Especially when it’s raining, Upper East Siders like to order in,” Kallos said. “Each of those [bikers] should be wearing a vest.”

    Read: bikes should only be used on the UES to deliver food but only when I order it and delivery cyclists should always obey the letter of the law but if they take too long to get here they’ll have to subsist on their $4/hr wage because they sure as hell aren’t getting a tip from me.
    Can we bulldoze the UES please?

  • Mathew Smithburger

    If New York City voters, many of whom are pedestrians most of the time, are incapable of directing their governing elected officials to meet dangerous and life threatening conditions appropriately then we are doomed as a city. In New York City roughly 170 pedestrians and cyclists are killed each year on our streets by people driving cars. Often these drivers are speeding, running red lights and have had their licences suspended multiple times. That is there is a clear pattern of an actual real danger. No outrage, not enough to fight for proven solutions of red light cameras, speeding cameras and taking bad drivers off our streets permanently. Instead we go after the bad bicycles.

  • WalkingNPR

    Also: I want my food delivered to me quickly and conveniently, but I don’t want to deal with the consequences of everyone else wanting the same. (Hmm…sounds like drivers complaining about traffic…)

  • Maggie

    Did the New York Post cover the hit-and-run by a truck driver that left Wendy Ruther hospitalized with broken bones after she was in the crosswalk with her 4-year-old son? I was looking for their coverage, to compare and contrast, and I couldn’t find anything. To my understanding, NYPD 20 completely blew off the idea of doing any investigation or search for the hit-and-run driver. Horrifying dereliction of duty. Shameful to treat that UWS crime as not actionable.

    I feel terrible for Mary Grace Belfi and hope her recovery goes well. It’s clear that she stepped off the curb into the bike lane, midblock, in front of an oncoming cyclist, without looking, and while its not clear that the cyclist actually struck her, it appears that human reaction time didn’t give him the chance to avoid startling her when she did look up. I hope she gets well soon.

  • BBnet3000

    I think that education rather than just ticketing cyclists who get caught breaking the rules is a good thing. Of course, as usual 99% of this will be aimed at jaybikers rather than people actually cycling recklessly.

    The “will enforce 25mph” part just goes to show you how poorly most people judge the speed of people on bicycles, sadly even our own city government understands this form of transportation very little.

  • Maggie

    I don’t mean to sound callous, either. I just look at the streetview and see this is getting left out of the reporting. It brings up abstract questions for me on whether we have the right mix of education, enforcement, and engineering in the approach to making our city streets safer.

  • Alexander Vucelic

    I ride that section of the First Avenue Protected Bike lane often. It is my observation that locals generally understand the interaction between riders and walkers on the path.

    Visitors simply do not have a clue that the green path is anything other than some weird NYC sidewalk. They blissfully step into the green lane without the slightest glance. They seem completly baffled when they notice riders. Invariably, they are going to a parked car from outside the neighborhood. The poor women in the hospital was visiting from LI.

    it isn’t their fault, how in the world can anyone expect a suburanite from Suffolk county to grasp the green land carries as much traffic as a car lane ?

    the locals have learned how to safely interact with each other. Now the next step will be to cleverly design some way to signal suburbanites that those oddball green lanes carry 10+ riders a minute

  • AnoNYC

    Culturally acceptable.

  • AnoNYC

    Why paint them green. Maybe we should leave them black with similar markings to the typical road. Black with yellow/white markings is already culturally assumed road = danger for pedestrians.

  • AnoNYC

    Cyclists are the ultimate scapegoat in NYC regarding our dysfunctional acceptability of dangerous traffic habits and excess allocation of road space to automobiles.

  • Bolwerk

    New York City’s government is an occupation-mandated control council designed to defend the interests of people who do not like New York City. When the occupiers retire they go to Florida, and have New York City taxpayers continue pay their bills.

  • D’BlahZero

    Then you would have (more) people driving in them.

  • AnoNYC

    Single narrow bollard at either end in the center would solve that problem.

  • Matthias

    I think that would make it more dangerous; pedestrians already block the lanes effectively enough without a steel rod as an additional barrier to dodge.