We called it: Tuesday was Council Speaker's Corey Johnson's day. His "State of the City" address wasn't a broad overview of where we are as a metropolis: It was a stinging indictment of how Mayor de Blasio (and to a lesser extent Governor Cuomo) have handled transportation, the life blood of the city.
As such, the speech, and accompanying 100-page blueprint, "Let's Go," generated substantial ink and pixels for the future mayor. Let's recap those first:
- Not to abuse the home field advantage, but Streetsblog was all over every burp and spit, covering Johnson's street safety vision, his call for a new plan for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, his pinpoint attack on de Blasio's Vision Zero shortcomings, and, of course, his plan for the city to take over the subway and bus system. We also tweeted all day like Tiger Beat editors. #BreakTheCarCulture
- Gothamist was also all over the story, focusing mostly on the car-free zones.
- Like Streetsblog, City & State looked at five takeaways from the speech (though reporter Jeff Coltin took away different takes).
- Aaron Gordon made his debut at the car site Jalopnik and provided a broad, if a bit too car-centric, overview. Best line: "Unfortunately, the only New Yorker who seems to have not realized [the benefit of car-free zones] happens to be Mayor Bill de Blasio."
- The Daily News's Clayton Guse focused on the biggest fish — Johnson's call for the city to take over the subway and buses — in what his headline writer called a "massive transit manifesto." The Post had the same angle, albeit without the Marxist side-eye (though rewrite man Max Jaeger said Johnson "raged against New York's car culture." We prefer to say he "championed safety in a city where car drivers cause more than 200,000 crashes last year").
- The Times did one of its classic far-too-frequent, "It is the ..." ledes, emblematic of a longer feature story, but Emma Fitzsimmons thankfully got to the point quick enough.
- The Wall Street Journal's story featured just the perfect picture of subway decay (and played up the mayor's dismissal of the transit takeover proposal — which also matched the picture!).
- Dry-powdered deadeye Vin Barone's write-thru at amNY had a nice double-barrel approach. This isn't only about the subways — this is about breaking the car culture.
In other news:
- Double-duty Guse had a mini-scoop that the NYPD would launch a major enforcement blitz on Northern Boulevard, the "New Boulevard of Death" this week. (NYDN)
- The Post covered the NYPD's "flag football" scandal, featuring a terrible sound-bite from Commissioner O'Neill about all the legally parked cars that were towed away so cops could flash their placard privileges: “This is a special event. This was the flag football championship. There were cars that — they were relocated. Nobody was towed. Nobody got a ticket.”
- The Fair Fare programs is finally growing. (Curbed)
- A driver who killed a popular radio persoonality DJ Jinx in a 2016 hit-and-run won't go to jail thanks to a plea deal. (NY Post)
- And finally, Wired ran funny drawings of people trying to remember what bikes look like. The artist's web page offers more.
