Wednesday’s Headlines: Almost Heaven Edition

Our old man editor is getting on the Amtrak Cardinal at 6:45 a.m. today to go to the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia again (here’s a story about why he does that), so if you want to reach the Streetsblog newsroom with your tips, story ideas and placard abuse photos, click here to do that.

In the meantime, here’s the news from Tuesday:

• The Times reminded us again that New York City has too much cement to ward off the worst affects of the kind of flooding that is going to happen more often. We also wrote about that … three weeks ago.
• The Daily News got a second-day story out of the inspector general report about an MTA supervisor who used a license-plate cover to cheat toll booth cameras.
• The pictures from this car crash show just how fast some drivers go … and the horrific ramifications of it. (NYDN)
• Hat tip to increasingly heroic Kevin Duggan of amNY for highlighting something we mentioned in the headlines a few weeks ago: how the MTA truncates bus routes if there’s too much traffic, which is just (think about it) wrong on so many levels.
• Kudos to Curtis Sliwa for fighting for the rights of animals — but he simply must stop talking about converting horse carriages to electric carriages! That’s just another way of reintroducing cars in our parks, which no one wants, except, apparently, the NY Post.

• Did you hear the one about the garbage truck and the outdoor dining customer? It’s no joke. (Village Sun)
• State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli is worried about MTA finances (NY Post). We and the Daily News angled our stories on MTA cuts that actually hurt service.
• And, finally, it’s still a bad year on the streets of New York City but you gotta hand it to Hank Gutman for saying the right things on the new DOT video that we’ve embedded below the grisly stats: