Forgive us for spending the entire day at yesterday's mammoth six-and-a-half-hour Vision Zero hearing at the City Council. We've fallen for the siren song of the "Council oversight" hearing before and we fell for it again. Indeed, the whole thing ended up being a bit underwhelming as our lawmakers questioned the NYPD and the Department of Transportation on narrow parochial issues — "They're abusing placards in Downtown Brooklyn!" etc. — rather than issuing a long-overdue "Incomplete" grade for Mayor de Blasio's signature initiative.
In the end, officials from both agencies were allowed to say they are confident they're doing everything they can to keep roads safe — fact check: they are not — and then leave before the public comment period (which we stuck around for and heard plenty of good ideas for reducing road deaths, which are the highest they've been under this mayor).
And our own Jesse Coburn followed up his deep dive into the NYPD's failure to respond to thousands of 311 calls of driver misconduct with a look at what the agency told the Council on Tuesday (not much).
To recap, approx 4 hours of the city council begging NYPD to do their jobs + 1 hour of citizens testifying about how poorly they’re treated by NYPD when asked to do their jobs and 15 minutes or so of NYPD taking a victory lap for reporting some random numbers that no one believes
— gconnelie (@GCONNELIE) October 27, 2021
Meanwhile, at The Post, David Meyer focused on a bit of news about the rise in motorcyclist deaths, which has been a trend for a while.
At amNY, Kevin Duggan played up an NYPD promise to at least look into the massive placard abuse that has crippled Downtown Brooklyn, long the bane of Council Member Steve Levin, but which also drew the attention of Council Member Bob Holden, who expressed shock at how chaotic the streets of his colleague's district are because of illegal parking by uniformed municipal employees, judges, teachers and others.
Neither Gothamist (surprisingly) nor the Times (not surprisingly) covered.
In other news from a very slow news day:
- The City reported that cops have at least stepped up their limited effort against fake paper license plates.
- Car carnage in Long Island. (NY Post)
- Dining sheds on Avenue C are apparently in the wrong place and a danger to cyclists, says Assembly Member Harvey Epstein (a cyclist!). (Village Sun)
- Plug time: Our friends at Reinvent Albany are psyched that Gov. Hochul has ordered the MTA to share more data publicly, but now are asking us to ask our readers the most important question, "So what data do you want?" Send us an email to tips@streetsblog.org and we'll pass along your desires to the right people.
