It's Friday, so that means Mayor de Blasio's daily spotlighting of Vision Zero issues all this week ends today. It's sad because (at least until today), the mayor definitely used his megaphone to champion important issues, but our assessment was that most of his actual announcements — more bike lanes, more bus lanes, finishing Queens Boulevard (Streetsblog and amNY), reducing some speed limits, advocating for safer trucking — are items that the mayor had at least touched on many times before.
He just didn't get them all done in his seven-plus years in office.
Speaking of the mayor's long-awaited retirement, there was a mayoral debate last night — and our Christopher Robbins zoomed in ... and was sorely disappointed by the complete lack of questions from Errol Louis, Brian Lehrer and Josefa Velasquez about the real public health epidemic (the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are injured every year by car drivers), the real crime spree (that drivers have stolen virtually all of our public space for the movement and storage of their selfish vehicles), and the real moving issue of our time (transit!).
For coverage of the stuff that we don't care about, go to the Daily News, the Post, and the Times. For the stuff we care about, turn to Streetsblog.
In other news:
- Like Streetsblog, the Post covered the announced restart of a plan to bring four Metro-North stations to The Bronx. But David Meyer's piece didn't get at the central issue: the cost of a fare. Nor did amNY's Mark Hallum.
- Mayor de Blasio (Streets Week!) signed the council's open streets bill into law. (amNY)
- A man was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn. (NYDN)
- No, Gov. Cuomo, you don't get to redefine what sexual harassment is. (NY Post)
- And, finally, it's not the greatest cartoon strip of all time but Pearls before Swine nailed us all a bit too perfectly. (Pearls before Swine).
