Wednesday’s Headlines: Mutiny on the Panel Edition

The big story lighting up our little neck of the woods yesterday was the “open letter” half the members of the city’s Surface Transportation Advisory Council sent to the mayor. The 24-member, pandemic-recovery panel had met over months to devise recommendations to mitigate the worst effects of a transit collapse and car-choked reopening — what Streetsblog calls the “carpocalypse” — and had come up with it thought was a pretty solid plan.

Mayor de Blasio, however, never valorized the recommendations with any formal response or document. The fact that mayor has acted on a few of them, for example, by opening streets, didn’t mollify the members.

The Post painted the story as one of failed expectations, while amNY wrapped it in with other news of the day. Streetsblog pointed out the real reason why many of the council’s recommendations don’t fly with our SUV-socialist mayor: They’d put him on on a collision course with the city’s entitled car-drivers.

In other news:

• The city is dropping the speed limit on nine major roads in order to limit the surge in traffic deaths from pandemic-era speeding (NYT, NYPost).
• MTA honcho Pat Foye and Transport Workers Union head John Samuelsen pleaded for aid in a New York Times op-ed.
• Subway lunatics (e.g.., the ones that shove people onto the tracks) have returned (NYPost)
• The Staten Island Advance (of course!) reports that the city’s speed-camera program is “the largest in the world” (SILive).
• Two City Council hopefuls, one on each end of the Triboro Bridge, joined the juggernaut for more pedestrian space on the span (Streesblog).
• Finally, here’s a tweet we can all get behind (StreetsPAC via Twitter).