Monday’s Headlines: Our Editor is in L.A. Edition

This week, I’ll be at the National Association of City Transportation Officials convention in sunny Los Angeles, to report on street design innovations, to hear from the bus lane experts, and, of course, to get you all that good gossip from the Peoria DOT that you crave. Check back all week for updates on my effort to spend four days in L.A. yet never use a car.

Here now, the news:

• The Times does a helicopter job on the important State Senate race between Democrat Andrew Gounardes vs. Republican and street safety pariah Marty Golden in Bay Ridge. Most telling part of the story? It offered nothing positive about Golden’s record except that voters “know him for his omnipresence at scholarship dinners and senior citizens’ birthday parties.” You know, we could hire a clown for that.
• I like public transit from airports, but I also like Flushing Bay, so I’m torn by the legendary Lisa Colangelo’s story in amNY about the pros and cons of the AirTrain plans from LaGuardia.
• Ben Fried and I knew this day was coming from the day the co-founder of Lyft told us off the record a month ago: Jay Walder is leaving Motivate, the parent company of Citi Bike. (Damn those off-the-record interviews!) (Crain’s)
• The weekend mayhem: Car crash kills one in the Bronx (NBC4 and NYDN); a hit-and-run driver kills another man in the Bronx (NYDN); and a drunk driver injures five in Long Island. (NY Post)
• Bike lanes need smooth pavement, too, you know! (QNS)
• Advocates ramping up demands to fix Northern Boulevard, which I wrote about two weeks ago. (TimesLedger)
• Death penalty will be sought for the terrorist who turned the Hudson River Greenway into a killing field last October. (Reuters)
• Tom Vanderbilt offered a deep dive on the Citi Bike “angels” for Outside magazine.
• And in the very thick “In Case You Missed It” file, CityLab traced the Dutch-Swiss origins of the scooter; two School of Visual Arts students put up fliers in the subway on Friday asking New Yorkers why they didn’t report sexual abuse against them, a timely and pithy takedown of our entire culture (Gothamist, amNY); and Mayor de Blasio, in Texas last week, said he might use his veto power on the MTA board to force it to fix the subway. (NY Post)