The big story on Monday was a bombshell audit by City Comptroller Scott Stringer that made a really big bang or a bit of a whimper depending on who was writing the headlines.
In short, Stringer reported that the MTA's main subway car maker, Bombardier, was so late with a delivery of brand new cars that the MTA had to spend $35 million to keep super old cars in service while it waited three years for the new ones.
But media tastemakers such as Guse at the Newsuh and Berger at the Journal also reported that the MTA ended up penalizing Bombardier for the delay, forcing it to provide 18 more new cars for free ... saving roughly the same amount (the Post chose to leave out that fact, for some reason).
Here's the rest of the news to get you going:
- Don't forget tonight's big parking hearing on the Upper West Side. Will CB7 finally outlaw free on-street car storage? (Streetsblog)
- The pedestrian zone around Rockefeller Center has gotten so successful that ... it's being invaded by the costumed characters who make Times Square so horrible. (NY Post)
- The NYPD suspended an officer who was accused of driving drunk and causing a fatal crash over the weekend in Brooklyn, but Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez isn't prosecuting ... yet (Brooklyn Eagle). The Post version of the story strongly suggested something fishy is going on.
- Some jerks in Brooklyn are robbing food delivery workers of their wages. (Who do they think are? Cops?) (NY Post)
- Lots of outlets covered the death of 3-year-old Bertin DeJesus in Harlem yesterday, but mainstream reporters (a quartet of vets at the Post, a trio at the News, a duo of poetry writers at the Times, a rookie at amNY) still consistently fail to run the plates on traffic assailants. The driver in this case has two speeding tickets since September, as Streetsblog reported. (Memo to the desk: It's so easy to look up plates, so please just go to How's My Driving and do it! We won't get reckless drivers off the road if the media won't report on just how many reckless drivers there are.)
- The latest coverage of the ongoing gender gap in cycling relies heavily on some interesting data gathered by Strava in Queens. (Quartz)
