Thursday’s Headlines: The Russians are Humming! The Russians are Humming!
A Moscow electric bus. Photo: The Russians
It's always a good day in the Streetsblog newsroom when the inbox chimes with a new press release from our bitter Cold War rivals friends at the Moscow Department of Transport and Road Infrastructure Development. On Wednesday, our tovarishi sent us news that it now has 800 electric buses running around the city of 12 million — roughly 66 electric buses for every 100,000 people.
New York, a city of 9 million, has just 20 electric buses ... or roughly two-tenths of an electric bus for every 100,000 people.
Well, it's a start. Or as the Russians would say, <<Vyi, rebyata, ploxo razbeeriates' v'avtoboosax>> (Wordpress doesn't let us use Cyrillic characters!)
In other news from a super-slow day:
- Hat tip to the Post for following our scoop on unpaid tickets by out-of-state drivers.
- Mayor de Blasio has finally booted the statue of Thomas Jefferson (slave owner, southerner, imperialist, anti-Federalist) from City Hall. (NY Post)
- The Times joined the party in covering the halting of the "wrong way" LaGuardia AirTrain.
- There's a new push for cheaper commuter rail tickets within the city. (amNY, Streetsblog)
- The driver who killed 6-year-old Tamy Hiromi in Dyker Heights in August was hit with 12 counts, including criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter. (Brooklyn Paper)
- In case you missed it, check out the visualizations of how our world will look when all our coastal cities are flooded due to rising sea levels. For Hoboken, that means say goodbye to all those awesome bike lanes. (CNN)
- Also in case you missed it (we did because it was in the business section!), the Times did a solid piece about the plight of the city's delivery workers, who are often preyed upon by thieves (something we looked at in June). The Times piece could have come down a bit harder on the predatory business practices of the tech giants, but that might simply be too much to ask of a business section piece.
- But it's apparently not too much to ask of Chuck Schumer, who rode in solidarity with deliveristas on Wednesday (The City):
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