Thursday’s Headlines — Slow News Day Edition
No major announcements (or even tiny news like yesterday from the Department of Transportation) from the city's press corps this morning, but plenty of must-reads:
6:28 AM EDT on August 23, 2018
No major announcements (or even tiny news like yesterday from the Department of Transportation) from the city’s press corps this morning, but plenty of must-reads:
- Surprise, surprise: It’s really hard to find one of the 200 electric Citi Bikes among the company’s 12,000 two-wheelers. Here’s one man’s — well, Lucas Riccardi’s — quest. (CityLab)
- One day after Streetsblog reported on a cop who doesn’t know basic vehicular law, Gothamist finds another!
- Mayhem of the day: Two unlicensed drivers crash and send a garbage can flying into a pedestrian. Both drivers were arrested (too bad for them that the pedestrian didn’t die — then they’d have been let off for sure). One quibble from an old tabloid guy: the lede suggests that it was just two men who collided and not their cars, but still… . (NYDN)
- NY1 cherrypicked a quiet time to count how many cyclists are using the crucial Queens Boulevard bike lane in Rego Park — 12:30 in the afternoon — and was unimpressed. The station’s slapdash report doesn’t even bother to quote a cyclist. (NY1)
- Just when you thought it was bad enough for Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, now he has to sell his taxi medallions at a huge loss. (NYDN)
- Fortune magazine gives us today’s hate-read about Uber. (Fortune)
- The Brooklyn Eagle senses that something’s about to happen to the BQE — and reports, “A boring machine digs out a cylindrical bore of material below the surface.” (Brooklyn Eagle)
- Gothamist asks the question that we have been asking a lot: “Why Are E-Bikes Legal For Citi Bike Users And Not Immigrant Delivery Workers?” (Gothamist)
- Cars are finally being towed out of the new protected bike lanes in Sunnyside (H/T to Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Clarence Eckerson)
- Reminder: the United States Postal Service does not pay parking tickets. And here’s how that plays out on the street (H/T to Twitter user @tipchette). Then again, UPS does pay partial fees on its tickets — and the company’s brown trucks are always caught blocking bike lanes. (H/T to Twitter user @jarekFA)
- And finally, Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman once got slammed (albeit on Twitter) for complaining about dangerous cobblestone streets in DUMBO, but now local TV reporter John Dias shows how the city is making changes. (CBS2)
And, one more thing, if something’s really bothering you out there, why not drop us a line and tell us what it is?
Tabloid legend Gersh Kuntzman has been with New York newspapers since 1989, including stints at the New York Daily News, the Post, the Brooklyn Paper and even a cup of coffee with the Times. He's also the writer and producer of "Murder at the Food Coop," which was a hit at the NYC Fringe Festival in 2016, and “SUV: The Musical” in 2007. He also writes the Cycle of Rage column, which is archived here.
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