Today’s Headlines

  • James O’Neill to Albany: Expand Speed Cameras Now (AMNY, News)
  • PS 124 Principal Annabell Burrell Dreads Losing More Children to Reckless Drivers (Post)
  • Weekday Subway Ridership Down Nearly 100,000 Trips Compared to Last Year (News)
  • NYC Hasn’t Figured Out How to Get Uber to Work Well in the City (Bloomberg)
  • MTA Hires First Head of Accessibility for NYC Transit (News, AMNY)
  • Cuomo to Appoint Retread D’Amato Pal David Mack to MTA Board (Post)
  • Skinhead Hits and Critically Injures Delivery Cyclist With U-Haul Van; No Charges (Post)
  • Cyclist Dies After Falling and Hitting Head on Manhattan Bridge (Gothamist, News)
  • What Bus Drivers Want: All-Door Boarding, Better Bus Lanes, Realistic Schedules (CityLab)
  • Subway Delays Are the Talk of the Town (AMNY)
  • Somewhere Buried in Here You’ll Find a Point About Poor Design of Greenway Security Barriers (NYT)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • dave “paco” abraham

    Terrible to hear about that cyclists tap on the bridge. And important follow-up question to ask me how quickly did emergency personnel get to him. I’ve seen crashes on that bridge before and called 911 only to have ambulances and EMS on sure how to get to the bike path.

  • redbike
  • Larry Littlefield

    I guess there are 100,000 fewer losers in the city. (Or 50,000, assuming the trips are two-way).

    The powers that be in New York treated New Yorkers worse and worse and worse. Higher rents. Higher taxes (in part due to higher rents). Worse public services. More special deals for exemptions, favors, placards.

    Just gone from the subway? We’ll see.

    Time to cut maintenance, raise fares, and laugh all the way to Florida at those left behind. This isn’t failure. It’s success. If you simply rob people in the moment, there might be a reaction. But if you steal there future, there seems to have been no limits and no shame.

  • qrt145

    I once called 911 about a situation on one of bridges and it took several minutes to drill into the phone operator’s skull the idea that their question about “which intersection” made no sense. This was in the middle of the fucking bridge! Who cares what borough it is, the zip code, the nearest intersection and all that crap. I guess they were just slavishly following a computer script.

  • Mike

    As somebody who crashed on the Brooklyn Bridge bad enough to break my shoulder (thanks to a pedestrian making a sudden 90 degree turn into my handlebars), I can tell you that an ambulance parked at one end of the bridge and emergency responders walked to me. They didn’t bring anything to carry me or wheel me back down to the ambulance, so I had to stumble on foot for a few hundred yards down to the ambulance trying to hold my shattered shoulder in place. It was not pleasant.

  • Jeff

    YES! I had the same exact experience calling 911 from the Williamsburg Bridge! In fact I was barely able to get past the “which borough” question–it is literally between two boroughs, by definition!

  • Komanoff

    Great pic, Redbike! Tell us more? How many of these bikes are there in London? Where are they based and deployed? How many missions do they conduct? Would TA be interested in arranging a two-way cultural exchange — our EMS goes to London to observe; London sends a few of its personnel (with bikes)?

  • redbike

    Good questions, Charlie, and generally good suggestions. To most of your questions, I can only shrug my shoulders: I was going one way, and these dudes (after their break) were going another. The good news for me is that I didn’t need their services. Concerning a cultural exchange, there is the well-known language barrier, but an amenity I found common in Blighty — they’re called “pubs” — smooths that over.

  • sbauman

    Jamaica Hospital has EMT’s on bicycles. They are deployed on the Five Boro Bike Tour.

  • Maggie

    I was just about to question the Skinhead label in the headlines there, till I clicked that link and saw the driver’s face tattoos that literally read neo Nazi serial killer. Wow. Wow.

    No charges for this driver, NYPD? Really???? WTF.

  • AMH

    “Accident”! At least the Post mentioned the questionable nature of that characterization.

  • MWaring

    As a former (Volunteer) EMT who knows a few people on the job, That’s 100% against standard operating procedures for them to not bring the stretcher or the “Stair Chair” and you should file a complaint if you still can.

  • Mike

    It’s been a few years, and the hospital (SUNY-LICH) has since failed and sold itself to NYU. Also, once I was in the ambulance, they wouldn’t start driving me to the hospital until I had used my one functional arm to fish around in a pocket, open my wallet, and get my insurance info. Later, the hospital blew the diagnosis by missing that the shoulder was not only broken but dislocated, leading to a much slower recovery time. Man, I was happy to see SUNY-LICH go out of business.

  • A smart car can fit on the bike path. I saw a smart car police car drive onto the bike path as I was trying to get onto it onto the bridge on Sunday. The path was already closed; and I guess the cop was going to stay there to make sure that no bicyclists went under the yellow tape.

  • An interesting fact is that the border between Manhattan and Brooklyn (and between Manhattan and Queens) is not in the middle of the East River; it is in fact right at the Brooklyn (or Queens) shoreline. So the entire river is in Manhattan.

    I am not sure, but I think that this border arrangement was part of the reason that the old City of Brooklyn could not survive on its own, as the ships landing at any of its docks were outside of that city’s jurisdiction.

  • vnm

    Same thing happened to me when I tried to report a motorist had collided with a light post and inside Central Park, wrecked the front of his car, and passed out. The conversation started with: “I’m on the Central Park Drive.” “Central Park West and what intersection?” “No, IN Central Park. The Loop Drive.” “What’s the nearest intersection?” “I have no idea. I can’t even see a road from here.” Various iterations of that didn’t really improve the clarity. I since read in Time Out New York how to orient yourself inside Central Park using numerical codes on the light posts like the one the guy’s car was wrapped around, but I didn’t know it at the time. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/seven-secrets-of-central-park-that-you-dont-know-about-101216

  • Joe R.

    Anyone who walks around like that should be taken behind the chemical shed and summarily executed. UGH!

  • Joe R.

    So if you didn’t have insurance they wouldn’t have taken you to the hospital? Unbelievable. I know they’re concerned about not getting paid, but seriously the procedure should be treat now, figure out how to get paid later.

  • J. Geoff Rove

    Re: Uber in Bloomberg:
    “The problem isn’t just too many total cabs; it’s so many circling
    Manhattan’s central business district looking for fares, de Blasio said.
    About a third remain empty on average weekdays in Manhattan’s midtown,
    where traffic creeps at less than 7 miles per hour, 23 percent slower
    than in 2010, according to an analysis of Taxi & Limousine Commission data by Bruce Schaller, a former deputy commissioner of the city Transportation Department….
    “Companies like Uber, they’re constantly trying to increase the number
    of drivers even when there isn’t an increase in business to go with it,”
    de Blasio said at a June 5 news conference. “We have more and more
    drivers going around without a customer, and a lot of the drivers are
    not doing so well economically on top of that.”

    Just cap the stupid FHV number… simple enuff.

  • AnoNYC

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e712c740d93c3036dff52624e1980d6cdcdd62834e6e3a95c214c6e52b867c91.jpg

    FDNY Gator Utility Vehicle Conversion.

    Could respond with bicycles/motorcycles and if someone needs to be transported this could maybe do the job on the bridge.

  • AnoNYC
  • William Lawson

    One time I called 911 to report a series of near crashes on the West Side Highway when the traffic lights at the intersection of Chambers St were malfunctioning. She asked for the address so I said West SIde Highway and Chambers. She then said “You gotta give me a third street.” I was like “what do you mean, there is no third street, it’s an intersection. What?” And she goes “That’s what it’s saying. I need a third street. I cannot go forward without the third street.”

    I literally said “what the fuck,” hung up, called 911 again and this time got someone who took my location with none of this third street shit. To this day I have no idea what the first lady was on. Probaby crack.

  • Although the answer would be very simple, for boroughs have defined edges and while I’m not from there it would appear that the boundary on the map I found indicates the transition point from Manhattan to Brooklyn is not the center of the East River as one might assume, but rather it’s basically the eastern bank of the East River, so the answer would be that you’re in Manhattan until you get across to the point you’re over land on the east end of the bridge, then you’re in Brooklyn as you cross from river to land there. One would think there would be a sign indicating the point of transition for anyone not intelligent enough to figure it out for themselves. I generally pay attention to signs that say “entering” or “leaving” some politically constructed entity such as a city, county, borough, parish or township, to name a few.

  • Apparently her computer was programmed to demand a third street at that point, probably due to a programming error, before she could proceed to the next screen. Plus she’s a product of public schools, no doubt.

  • The path was already closed

    and

    I was trying to get onto it

    Let me guess… you vote Democrat.

  • You guess wrong.

    And your bizarre citation of bits from my comment seems to imply that you think I was trying to circumvent that bridge closure. Whereas, any reasonable person would have taken my meaning that I was approaching the bridge with the intent of crossing, but then saw that the bridge was closed.