It was an incredibly slow news day as New York dug out from the weekend storm. Or, correct that: pedestrians, cyclists, bus riders and the disabled dug out from the storm and car drivers went about their merry way.
We spent most of the day tracking the myriad outrages to non-drivers:
- The Brooklyn Greenway wasn't plowed until late in the day (according to the Parks Department via Streetsblog's Twitter) or not at all (according to the Greenway).
- The Jay Street bike lane was still a mess midday (Streetsblog via Twitter)
- And multiple people tweeted about the horrible conditions on the Manhattan Bridge.
- Bus riders were consistently dumped into snow piles because Sanitation plow operators just push the snow out of car drivers' way into bus stops. (Lacunalingua_3 via Twitter)
But the worst example of the city's ongoing discrimination against pedestrians and the disabled was to be found in this single one-minute video from the Bowery (below the photo):
In just one minute, you hear an enforcement officer not caring about the woman in the wheelchair ("I don't have a shovel...I can't get my feet wet"), you watch the woman need the help of a Good Samaritan, and then you watch helplessly as she is forced to weave through traffic just to cross a street. Meanwhile, every single driver is speeding.
In other news:
- 15 minutes of shame: The fast-grocery company Jokr is in talks to sell its New York operation. What a surprise. (The Information)
- The snow was worst on Long Island and, as a result, Long Island Rail Road service was iffy on Monday. It is expected to return in full on Tuesday, the Daily News reported.
- Mayor Adams shuffled the deck in hopes of fighting climate change and environmental injustice. (amNY)
- As we predicted, Council Member Erik Bottcher would be pushing the Adams administration to do better on garbage. (Gothamist)
- Check out the wacky new Congressional districts, including the "Jerry"-mander for Rep. Nadler and the Staten-Island-to-Park-Slope district created to get Max Rose re-elected to his old seat (but our old man editor is deriding as the "Thin Blue Line-Green New Deal" district because it puts conservative Rock Dems in the same district as the Park Slope Food Coop). (Gothamist, The City)
- The Times did an explainer on the push to finish the Harlem segment of the Second Avenue Subway.
- The New Yorker took a ride with the two guys competing to use every single Citi Bike station.
- And, finally, the folks at Superpedestrian, the micro mobility company, told us they just raised tens of millions of dollars to scale up a product they call "Pedestrian Defense" that keeps their vehicles off the damn sidewalk (The Boston Globe covered it). They even sent over an impressive GIF to show how well it works:
