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Monday’s Headlines: Martin Luther King Day Edition

12:02 AM EST on January 17, 2022

Dr. King on a bus.

The staff of Streetsblog will use Martin Luther King Day today to reflect upon the ongoing shortcomings of equity in a city where the safest streets remain in the richest neighborhoods and where people of color are disproportionately victims of road violence.

When we return on Tuesday, we will renew our efforts to make our city safe for all residents, not just those with connections.

Until then, we worked on Sunday to collect the weekend headlines, so here they are:

    • Our favorite story of the weekend was in the New York Post, where Mayor Adams used his house organ to announce he was serious about trimming the overall city fleet, including (most important) the 2,000-plus "take-home" cars that way too many city officials have. Next up? Scores of thousands of city-issued placards? We can hope, right?
    • We like long-term vision, too, but we're not sure The New York Times opinion page is limiting itself to just CBD gummies with its proposal to use landfill to build out Manhattan virtually to Staten Island (and turning Governors Island into a new park surrounded by the extended grid). But we do like new subway stops in Red Hook.
    • Curbed is liking the pro-housing AOC.
    • Milan wants to be Paris and we can't even be London. (Bloomberg)
    • Our friends at Curb Jumping NYC had a busy weekend chronicling car crashes all over, including on Church Avenue, on New York Avenue and on 10th Avenue in Manhattan.
    • We were happy to see the New York Post finally report on the problem of having east and westbound cyclists and pedestrians share a single lane on the Queensboro Bridge — and, for once, the Cuozzo-influenced tabloid rightly blamed illegal mopeds. For some reason, though, the paper failed to point out that the city will convert the South Outer Roadway to a dedicated pedestrian path later this year.
    • Rest In Peace: Ed Kirkland, a longtime Chelsea neighborhood leader, has died. (NY Times)
    • Need another primer on the QueensLink proposal? Patch has you covered (though you'll probably need our primer to understand it).
    • Carjackings continue to rise (NY Post) — and car-kicking can be deadly (NYDN).
    • It's official: Buzz-a-Rama, the last slot-car joint in the city (and a venue for many of our old man's Saturday afternoon with his kids) has closed. (Gothamist)
    • And, finally, over the weekend was the 29th anniversary of the famous Simpsons "Monorail" episode:

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