Wednesday’s Headlines: Your Livable Streets Dance Card is Full Edition

It’s a busy night in the Streetsblog world tonight, what with dueling events. At 6 p.m., Friend of Streetsblog Charles Komanoff will participate in a panel discussion on congestion pricing with fellow FOS Jon Orcutt and Nicole Gelinas at the Center for Architecture. RSVP here.

Then, at 6:30 p.m. at the Powerhouse in Dumbo, urban planners with Street Plans will show off what they do best at a talk called “Tactical Urbanism.”

And now the news:

• Mayor de Blasio’s pedestrian safety announcement didn’t get much ink, though Streetsblog was there, highlighting the chauffeured mayor’s insistence that he is, indeed, a pedestrian. Other coverage by NY Post, amNY, ABC7, Metro, and Patch.
• But from the same substantive press conference came a bit of news that the mainstream press jumped all over: Mayor de Blasio once told his police drivers to pull over a woman that he saw texting while driving on the FDR. The Daily News and the NY Post covered it, yet none pointed out the obvious irony: de Blasio’s detail drives past FedEx trucks, taxis and other cars illegally parked in bike or bus lanes, but he never told us about how he ordered the cops to write summonses in those cases!
• And the mayor also defended his ticket crackdowns on cyclists in the days after a cyclist is killed. (NYDN)
• At the same time, other reporters were covering a hearing downtown at which MTA officials said congestion pricing couldn’t even start until 2021. (NY Post, WSJ) Meanwhile, far-seeing urbanist Vin Barone at amNY focused on the MTA’s claim that it could reform itself.
• Eyesore … or reminder of the horror of cars? (NY Post)
• Fresh from the Amazon fight, the next war could be against Uber, the Times’s Emma Fitzsimmons surmises.
• Hey, NY Post, what’s with all the animal stories? There was a kitten on a subway train and raccoons on a subway train. When you see de Blasio on a subway train, that’s news!
• Why is this film series called a “Drive-in”? Consider us offended. (amNY)
• And, finally, some personal, er, personnel, news.