Fresh out of the hospital, President Trump just pulled the plug on our transit system.
The big news yesterday was the 'roid-raging Donald's decision to stop negotiating with Nancy Pelosi about another round of COVID-19 federal relief funding.
Everyone covered it: The Daily News, the NY Post, The NY Times, especially. Pat Foye sent us a statement slamming the president: "This decision is an insulting slap in the face to our heroic transit workers who continue to show up during this once-in-a-hundred year pandemic to keep the economy moving. We urge the President to return to the negotiating table and deliver relief for the country.”
And, seriously, Pelosi questioned whether it was Trump's meds that turned him away from helping the American people less than a month before an election (NYDN). Meanwhile, Riders Alliance will be in Bronxville for a rally with local suburban pols to beg President Trump for some emergency funds.
In other news:
Only the Daily News covered the mournful vigil for NYU Langone–Brooklyn nurse Clara Kang, the hero in our headline today, who was killed on Third Avenue as she bicycled home to Queens from the overnight shift — but New York's supposed "hometown paper" went for standard tabloid hearts and flowers, ignoring the fact that activists have been gathering on Third Avenue pretty much four times a year to mourn people whose lives could easily have been saved by more aggressive city action. We were also on hand (see slideshow above), and want to put Brooklyn Community Board 7 Chairman Cesar Zuniga's comments front and center:
"I’m outraged. Last time we did this I had a question, 'How many more people have to die before action is taken on Third Avenue?' And I will keep having to ask this question. This is a racial justice question. This is not about reinventing some wheel. This is about implementing best practices. So you have to ask yourself why this community has to beg for something that’s absolutely doable. So I will continue to ask our elected officials to step up and do something so basic as pedestrian safety and traffic calming." (We asked DOT to respond, but the agency declined.)
In related stories: More race car carnage in Queens (NYDN, NY Post) and in Brooklyn (NYDN, NY Post). And the inevitable Post "wacky" video of a drunk driver losing control of her car — and miraculously not killing anyone. Oh, those drunk drivers! They just crack us up!
And a New Jersey man was killed by his own car. (NY Post)
Riders Alliance member Matthew Lam championed the stalled Flushing busway in a Daily News op-ed.
The graffiti artists of 5Pointz sealed their victory over the developer who destroyed their murals. (NY Times)
Several outlets covered the arrest of a Forest Hills teen for allegedly intentionally driving his SUV into a crowd of cyclists on Saturday. (Streetsblog, NYDN, NY Post, amNY, Gothamist)
And while we're on the subject of yesterday, we had such a busy day on the ol' S'blog that we want to give you a simple, "in case you missed it" section for all our other stories):
Eve Kessler wrote up that Harvard study that shows how important it is for us to clean the air.
Ed Ravin gave Polly Trottenberg even more work, with his piece about how easy it would be to create a new upper Manhattan bike path.
Editor Gersh Kuntzman wrote about the (not-at-all secret) meeting between politicians and Trottenberg about getting more pedestrian space on the Queensboro Bridge.
And Ida Sawyer of Human Rights Watch wrote an op-ed about the NYPD brutal behavior at a June protest. (Which came just in time for another bizarre outburst by NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, as reported in Gothamist.)
And, finally, Nate Silver, who spends his days underestimating the inevitability of a Trump re-election in November, unfairly maligned electric Citi Bikes on Twitter:
The electronically-assisted citibikes kind of make you feel like Lance Armstrong.
