Wednesday’s Headlines: PATH Meets Pod Edition

PATH, meet “pod.”

Jersey PATH commuters who use bicycles for the “first and last mile” of their trips are getting a leg up on their New York counterparts — in the form of a new, secure bike-parking facility at Jersey City’s Journal Square Station.

The  13-by-15-foot bike-parking “pod” holds 20 bikes and is operated by start-up Oonee — the first such pod on a Port Authority of NY & NJ property and the only one currently in the region. The spaces rent for a nominee (and we mean nominal!) fee: The first two months are free, and cost $2 a month thereafter.

PATH General Director Clarelle DeGraffe called the pod part of a PA strategy for “reducing emissions and promoting sustainable modes of transportation.”

Oonee CEO (and friend of Streetsblog) Shabazz Stuart heralded the installation as “a major moment for cyclists,” which, if it succeeds, could lead to pods at PA sites “including the World Trade Center and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.”

A party/presser will inaugurate the pod at 3:30 p.m., if you want to eat, drink, and make merry on the tab of Governors Cuomo and Murphy.

And now, the news:

• AMNY’s Vincent Barone penned a safe-streets advocate’s dream, “Protected bike lanes could flourish if NYC vehicles were smaller, advocates say,” quoting Friend of Streetsblog Jon Orcutt on the need to shrink street sweepers and snowplows.
• Citi Biking through Manhattan is faster and cheaper than cabbing it, The Post reported. Who knew?
• MTA cleaners are sick of picking your earbuds off the tracks, the Tabloid of Record learned. (At least the MTA employees weren’t stealing the ear buds, a favorite Post trope.)
• Prosecutors indicted a Brooklyn man for manslaughter for allegedly running down a motorcyclist while drunk, then blaming his girl friend. (NYP, NYDN)
• In more bad driver news, 10 cops were  injured trying to nab a driver fleeing a traffic crash. (NYDN)
• Several outlets covered the presser honoring the LIRR conductor who returned 9,000 bucks he found on a train. (NYP, NYDN, Complex)
• Curbed wrote up the report on the nearly 250 schools near high-pollution highways. NYDN had the story over the weekend.
• Jump won’t pull its bikes from Staten Island just yet, despite its hurt feelings about the city’s full-throttle romance with rival Citi Bike. (SILive)
• Everyone, including Streetsblog, covered the murder/manslaughter charges against the Bushwick bicyclist’s alleged killer. (Gothamist, NYT, AMNY, among others)
• And, in the aftermath of that vehicle-inflicted homicide, safe-streets legend Noel “No Neck” Hidalgo found a motorist who “only wants to run [him] over” for riding in a shared bike/car lane: