Well, here's one Arthur Schwartz legal battle we can get behind! Yesterday's edition of Schwartz's WBAI radio show — which was supposed to feature our editor slamming the fauxgressive for suing the city to block the 14th Street busway — was hastily scrubbed after the radio station's parent company, Pacifica Foundation, locked the doors citing "financial losses" (see statement below or the Times story).
It's bad news for WBAI and the city in general, but worse for our editor, who was ready to gloat rhapsodically about how great the busway has turned out — and how none of Schwartz's apocalyptic predictions have come true.
Instead of playing host, Schwartz rushed to court to see if he could get a judge to order the station reopened — or at least delay the closure. At presstime, the master of the time-freezing TRO seemed to have won a stay.
But until we know for sure, let's start the day with the news:
- Alec Baldwin and his family fell for the old "Statue of Liberty" ferry scam. (NYDN)
- Car carnage in Brooklyn. When are we going to ban this dangerous technology? (NY Post)
- Here's another reason to reform the private sanitation industry — it dumps more of its garbage in poor neighborhoods. (NYDN)
- We know! The mayor's ferry is heavily subsidized (NY Post) — but all forms of transit are subsidized!
- Vin Barone of the soon-to-be-gutted amNY covered the rally to improve transit by eliminating bus stops that are just too damn close to each other.
- BTW, the MTA's fiscal situation is still "dire." (amNY)
- Should we ban SUVs from cities? Why does that headline even have a question mark? (Guardian)
- Remember that plan the Port Authority announced a decade ago to rebuild the uptown bus station? Yeah, that's going to take a little longer ... (Politico)
- The Times finally got around to the MTA elevator budget story.
- Hey, kids! Bay Ridge/Bensonhurst State Sen. Andrew Gounardes is holding a "street safety" essay contest for elementary and middle school students. If you have an idea on "how to make streets safer for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists," the senator wants to hear from you. Send your entries via snail mail to Senator Gounardes, 8018 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11209 or via email to essaycontest@senatorgounardes.nyc.
- Just in time for our editor's big "Vision Zero in the media" panel at the TransAlt Vision Zero Cities conference on Friday, Bike Snob Eben Weiss went and stole all his good ideas ... and published them in Outside. (Sorry, no refunds!)
- And, finally, we are in love with whomever is reprograming city traffic message boards (contact us anonymously here!). We stopped by the latest hack site on Vanderbilt Avenue are hours later only to find that the city had restored the original messages (something about directions for drivers). The signs (covered by Patch) feature a locked control box, so the Honda-hating Houdini behind the reprogramming is a real whiz. Here are yesterday's examples:
