Today’s Headlines

  • NYC’s Most Selfish NIMBYs Sue to Stop Busways, Bikeways During L Train Shutdown (AMNY, News, Post)
  • BQX Probably on Its Last Legs Unless Schumer Clan Wrangles Money From Trump (News)
  • Cuomo’s Cosmetic Station Fix-Up Program Turns Into Accessibility Program, $820 Million Too Late (WSJ)
  • If NYC Can’t Build 36 Apartments Without Parking by the 2/5 in the Bronx, We Are Screwed (BxTimes)
  • Alicia Glen Expects Dockless Bike-Share Services to Launch in NYC This Summer (AMNY, News)
  • More Coverage of DOT’s Rule Change for Pedal-Assist E-Bikes (Crain’s, Patch, NYBJ, Lo-Down)
  • De Blasio Foresees “Huge Fight” Over Speed Cams in Remaining Albany Session (Gotham Gazette)
  • Albany Budget Clears Path for NYC DOT to Reconstruct BQE By Downtown Brooklyn (Bklyn Paper)
  • Looks Like the IDC Won’t Last Until the Next Election (NYT)
  • Damned E-Bikes (Post)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Fool

    I wonder why Cuomo is stopping his IDC charade? I wonder what has changed.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “The suit alleges that the agencies failed to complete necessary environmental review work for a project that the plaintiffs claim would endanger residents’ health as well as the “the delicate infrastructure of our historic low-rise” neighborhoods. Attorney Arthur Schwartz…”
    There it is, kids. Your Generation Greed-era “environmentalists.”

    For those who are not aware, you just don’t have the level of segregation out there in most of the Red States that you do in places like metro NYC, were every community seeks to zone out anyone less well off than those already there. Using “the environment” as a excuse to send the next generation to “drive until they qualify.”

    And in their era, which continues, no one ever pays a price for being an a-hole. Since everyone is an a-hole, there is a sense of empathy with a-holes.

  • Vooch

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/db0f56c3e9aa9281c0aa2957c980461d3ac2671e1a65f89576304d98b964a11f.jpg Its amazing that even in the Village there lurks car centric obsessive-compulsives.

    It’s astounding to fathom the depths of their selfish deoravity. They are truely Generation Greed.

    To think that in the heart of Jane Jacobs neighborhood, are residents who still dream of paving over Washington Square Park is mind boggling.

    All these dinosaurs will need to die off before any progress can be made.

  • Jeff

    I feel like the $3 CitiBike single rides is a pretty big deal, no? Are we to consider this a pilot program, or a promotion?

  • Larry Littlefield

    But, if it were bikes and buses only…
    A more telling example is further south, in Soho. The reason more stuff happens in NYC than in California (the Granola Shotgun example above) is because of corruption and discriminatory enforcement.

    You had a rule that the lofts of Soho could only be used for manufacturing, but after manufacturing left landlords let “artists” move in to the cheap (due the rules) space as a result. They got legalized, grandfathered, rent stabilized in a “low density neighborhood” where the minimum housing unit size is large, as in the most exclusionary suburbs.

    You think that would have happened if those landlords had illegally rented to working class minorities? The areas would have been bulldozed for the Cross Manhattan Expressway for sure.

  • They’re calling it a promotion and when we asked yesterday if it might last longer than a month they didn’t indicate that would be the case.

  • Jeff

    I see, thanks for looking into it! In that case it is certainly not newsworthy.

  • Jeff

    I’m being optimistic and hoping that the new pedal-assist policy is being released in tandem with a return to the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy on throttle-controlled e-bikes, i.e. an end to the crackdown.

  • sbauman

    All the IDC members will have primary challengers. Many have had ugly constituent encounters, where they have been accused of aiding Trump. There’s a good chance that several would have lost in the primaries. Cuomo’s prospect is the Senate balance of power might have been in the hands of renegade Democrats that were to more progressive then him.

  • bolwerk

    Mainly? An election.

    But that’s against the backdrop of Cuomo having blown his ability to lie unifying Dems last time. Now he actually has to do it. I doubt Cuomo is in any danger of losing the election, barring something really ugly hitting the fan, but Teachout was enough to scare him last time.

    Four years after Techout the level of frustration with right-wing Democrats is much higher, and even staid de Blasio looks like an underdog reformist when compared to the IDC. To that point, blending them with the rest of the Democratic caucus probably buffers them from primary challenges while ensuring they can still scuttle legislation unfavorable to the GOP.

  • qrt145

    Despite the heavy promotion, the crackdown was mostly theater. Streetsblog reported yesterday that “Since the official “crackdown” began in January, the department has issued 238 summonses for e-bike operation and confiscated 48 bikes, “. That’s less than three summonses and less than one confiscation per day, which while still unjustified, is really a drop in the bucket of thousands of ebikes on the streets. I think the numbers are only marginally higher than last year, if I remember correctly.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Really, lets compare with some other kinds of enforcement.

    My father in law is very sick, and has moved to a nursing home. Our car died off while my wife was visiting him, so she decided to drive his car back to Brooklyn. With him ending up in the hospital and a nursing home, he hadn’t put the new registration sticker on. (It is in his apartment in Schenectady.) We got a ticket for expired registration THE FIRST DAY in Brooklyn.

    So I brought the car back to Schenectady when I visited, and left it there. Then he had another health issue a month later, and my wife was freaked out it took her so long to get a train, as AMTRAK is selling out. She once again decided to drive the car back to Brooklyn so she could run up there more quickly. She put the car on a street where alternate side wasn’t, elsewhere in the neighborhood. But she still got another ticket THE FIRST DAY in Brooklyn.

    Now THAT is a crackdown.

  • Vooch

    Marty Golden
    Dorothy Bruns

  • Larry Littlefield

    Well, one could argue we should have known better. It’s not like we innocently “accidently” killed someone or something.

    Another visit, a stop at the apartment, and I’ll get the new registration on tonight. Hopefully they won’t get me again first.

    Next up — since the tickets were in the rain, trashed and illegible, and the person paying them (me) is different than the owner of the car, credit isn’t given, they tow it, and charge us $500 to get it back. Or better yet, don’t give it back because we don’t own it, and auction it off.

  • bolwerk

    Blows, but at least if you show up in administrative court with the registration you’ll probably be let off.

    Of course, it might waste less of your time to just pay up.

  • Larry Littlefield

    With all that’s going on, I can’t spare days off.

    I did find out the insurance got paid, and my wife did get it inspected. I thought when we dumped our car we were done with all this sort of thing. Waste of time indeed.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “We must do everything we can to ensure that while we’re rebuilding the BQE, we aren’t destroying our neighborhoods in the process,” he said. “Design-build ensures trucks are kept off local roads and stay on highways, where they belong.”

    So, replace one deck at a time while limiting the other one to two-way commercial traffic only? If more people use the tunnel, that would help “fund the MTA.”

  • JarekFA

    . I doubt Cuomo is in any danger of losing the election, barring something really ugly hitting the fan

    What would it possibly take? He said Jewish people can’t dance and he’s totally full of shit whenever he opens his mouth and talks transit. And he’s still likely to cruise to victory even if, in my opinion so far, Cynthia Nixon continues to do and say all the right things. He’s got all the unions in his pocket.

  • Eli

    This is a fantastic and depressing article about the cause for which Simcha Felder is blocking school safety cameras — to ensure NY ultra-orthodox Jewish children remind deprived of a secular education and stay functionally illiterate dependent on government handouts:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/opinion/yeshivas-literacy-new-york.html

    Oh the irony of Simcha’s first name (it’s hebrew for ‘joy’).

  • Urbanely

    My friend rented a car from enterprise in NYC and drove it to PA for a week-long visit with family. She came back to Brooklyn and went to pick something up at someone’s house. 10 minutes later, despite being parked in a legal, non-metered spot, she returned to find that she had a ticket for expired registration. It’s messed up that Enterprise would rent out a car with expired/expiring registration but also…amazing that she would get a ticket in 10 minutes, while people with placards park with impunity for days at a time. It would be nice if other infractions were enforced with such zeal.

  • Andrew

    If the car had been ticketed twice within a few minutes, then that’s either bad luck or a crackdown. But within a day? I would hope that invalid registration and inspection stickers are ticketed within a day.

    Just curious, if you had a new registration sticker, why didn’t you put it on after the first ticket?

    I once had a delay in getting my new registration sticker – some sort of confusion over the state of my insurance policy – and I paid to park the car off-street until it was resolved.

  • Joe R.

    If that was typical of his education, at least it explains his ignorance. And for a while I thought “he” was a “she” because I was told by a Jewish friend that Simcha is usually a girl’s name.

    I would also like to know why NYC and NYS are supporting what amounts to a baby factory. The purpose of a safety net is, in theory, to help people temporarily down on their luck. It’s not to provide for people who have lots of children and no marketable skills to support them. I went ballistic reading that article thinking some of my tax money is going for this.

  • Flakker

    Interesting, was it NY plates though? Out of state plates seem totally unpoliced as far as registration, much less emissions inspection

  • Larry Littlefield

    “If you had a new registration sticker, why didn’t you put it on after the first ticket?”

    Sticker at his apartment in Schenectady. Father in law in hospital in Schenectady. Car in Brooklyn.

    My daughters diverted to the apartment, got the sticker, and I put it on yesterday.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Yes, NY plates.

  • Andrew

    A friend of mine who lives in Ohio and drove into New York for two days got a ticket for missing New York State registration. (His Ohio registration was perfectly valid.)

  • Andrew
  • Urbanely

    Yep, NY plates. I agree that the out of state plates seem to get a pass on registration. This makes me wonder if anyone really knows how many NY households have cars. If we are counting by NY state registration, I think we’re undercounting, particularly in lower income areas. In my parents’ neighborhood, easily half the cars are registered out of state to full time NY residents.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Some people flout the laws routinely and get away with it, others dare not ever fail to abide by the rules.

    The former, generally people working the system in finance and government, want more rules that apply to others and not to them.