Credit where due: Rising amNY star Liam Quigley did the public a huge service with his story on Thursday about rogue sanitation drivers (the ones Mayor de Blasio once said he knew nothing about, despite living in the city for decades).
Quigley got the license plates of all the private sanitation trucks operating in the city — and found that 43 percent of them had a least one serious moving violation. And the 100 worst offenders had been caught speeding almost 700 times since 2014.
It's a reminder of Streetsblog's own S-cop-laws series, which revealed that NYPD employees have similarly horrific records when driving their personal vehicles (the ones that de Blasio allows them to park for free at their stationhouses, despite the danger).
No one in government seems in much of a rush to fix the problem. Then again, they mayor hasn't regularly appeared in public (well, at least in New York City) in months.
Here's the rest of the news (and have a great weekend — and if you stay out of a car, you will!):
- People are starting to realize that Streetsblog reporter Julianne Cuba was 100 percent right to question Gov. Cuomo about whether his new $900M Kosciuszko Bridge was valuable infrastructure or a monument to induced demand. Cuomo rejected Cuba's suggestion that the bridge wouldn't solve traffic, but merely add to it — but at least on the first day of car traffic, she was right and he was wrong (Greg Rice of 1010Wins, via Twitter). Meanwhile, Scott Stringer has jumped on our bandwagon that cyclists need safe access to and from the new Kosciuszko Bridge (amNY).
- David Brand, who has been killing it with the Queens Eagle, explores the placard abuse of Flushing Council Member and street safety pariah Ron Kim. (Hat tip to @placardabuse.)
- Two pedestrians were killed trying to cross highways. The Daily News first draft didn't include one footnote: One of the drivers was actually arrested for leaving the scene and for failing to exercise due care. Yet the hit-and-run truck driver who killed Aurilla Lawrence earlier this year wasn't charged.
- Kings County Politics ran a gossip item that some people in Bay Ridge want street safety pariah Marty Golden to run against Andrew Gounardes, who beat the incumbent last year. So our friends at Bay Ridge Drivers reminded everyone what Golden has been doing since he left office: getting two more speeding tickets and one more red light ticket. That's on top of the SIXTEEN serious moving violations he racked up between December 2014 and May 2018.
- Left hand, meet right hand: So, the mayor set up a great ferry service in Soundview, but never got the MTA to extend the Bx37 all the way to the dock. Now car owners who live near the ferry terminal are barking to the enablers journalists at News 12 the Bronx that they need more parking. No, ferry riders need more transit so they don't drive to the ferry (reducing car trips is one of City Hall's main goal with the ferries, after all!). Nota bene: Streetsblog, which has reported on the poor transit options to the ferry, will go to war if the Parks Department converts some parkland into parking.
- And, finally, sorry to be that ne'er-do-well uncle with his hand out, but we realized a few weeks ago that our PayPal account had been compromised, so we set up a new donation account in case you want to (um) toss over a few bucks (er) as a donation to, you know, let us keep doing the work we're doing? Whaddya say?
