In case you missed it, our friends at Transportation Alternatives are equally obsessed with what we've been calling "New York's 5 o'clock shadow": the mounds of big black plastic garbage bags that cover the sidewalk every afternoon.
The mayor has said he would address the problem, but his solution right now is a pilot program to containerize trash at like five buildings. Clearly, TA isn't impressed, if this funny video is any indication:
In other news:
- First, an appeal to our friends in the mainstream media: Every day, papers print stories about car drivers killing pedestrians — and almost every day, those newspapers know the license plate of the car involved in the crash. Yet for some reason, these papers fail to report the driving record associated with the car. Yesterday's example? The Daily News reported on an Acura driver whose recklessness on a residential street caused the death of a beloved husband and father. The paper ran a picture of the car in question, but didn't run the plate. Well, we did — eight camera-issued speeding tickets and two red-light tickets (four speeding tickets since March, by the way), evidence of consistent reckless driving over many months. And we think it's important to point this out to readers (including our local elected officials) so they can see, repeatedly, that our entire city is being regularly victimized by a small cohort of drivers who have no business being on the road.
- Speaking of incomplete reporting, the Daily News also covered the death of an 82-year-old Manhattan pedestrian who was killed by the driver of a school bus. We ran the plate on that one, too, and found more reckless driving: seven camera-issued speeding tickets and three red-light tickets (four speeding tickets since June, mind you). Even our school bus drivers are speeding in school zones!)
- Have you been missing Bill de Blasio? Apparently, the Post has been, so they tracked him down. The bigger story is that he still gets a security detail.
- The Five Boro Bike Tour was a huge success. (amNY)
- Mayor Adams met with the brass of all of the city's 77 precincts over the weekend to talk about crime. The Post covered the confab, but didn't report on whether the mayor discussed the crime of road violence with the brass. But here's a reminder: Through April 26 this year, there have been 30,853 reported crashes, according to city stats, injuring 13,540 people, including 978 cyclists, 2,694 pedestrians and 9,868 motorists, killing 63 total. By comparison, there have been 374 shootings over the same time period, injuring 441 people.
- Council Member Julie Menin wants the MTA to fix the escalators at the super deep Second Avenue subway station at 72nd Street. (NY Post)
- The driver of a police vehicle hit and injured a motorcyclist in the Bronx. (NY Post)
- Our friend Charles Komanoff had a piece in the Nation building off his earlier piece on nuclear power — this time on the need for a carbon tax. (You can read the unpaywalled version on Komanoff's Carbon Tax Center site.)
- Some driver (clearly) destroyed a Citi Bike station in Harlem. (amNY)
- Talk about a drop in the bucket: One public restroom per ZIP code is not enough. (Gothamist)
- The MTA showed off what a ride on the Interborough Express would be like (albeit not as fast). (Via Twitter)
- Finally, we appreciated this thread by David Zipper on prescient urbanist Lewis Mumford:
Correction: An earlier version of this story only offered statistics for Brooklyn's 77th Precinct, not all 77 city precincts.
