Friday’s Headlines: You Deserve a Long Weekend Edition

What a busy news day Thursday was! With our old man editor flat on his back from his latest Covid booster, the Department of Transportation decided to start making announcements like Prince Charles on the day he finally gets the throne.

Let’s run it down:

• The city said its speed cameras will go to 24-7 mode on Aug. 1 to provide a month of warning to reckless drivers to get their act together. (DOT via Twitter, NYDN)
• The agency presented three options to fix McGuinness Boulevard to Community Board 1.
• And just as that meeting was on its fifth hour, the agency unveiled plans for a bike boulevard on Berry Street (we’ll have full coverage soon).
• Meanwhile, Dave Colon was covering a lengthy meeting about maybe making Flatbush Avenue suck less for bus riders. (Brooklyn Paper had it, too.)
• And we learned that DOT’s special Covid health worker parking placards have finally expired. So if you see one, grumble to yourself knowingly.

So we’re really looking forward to the holiday weekend. But first, in other news:

• It was another bloody day on New York City streets, with two e-bike riders killed in separate crashes. (NYDN)
• No wonder Friend of Streetsblog Doug Gordon wrote about banning cars for Jalopnik.
• After reading Julianne Cuba’s story on the coming carmageddon stemming from nights and weekend repairs of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Assembly Member Bobby Carroll fired off an angry letter to DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. (Carroll via Twitter)
• More lifeguards are on the way! (Gothamist, The City)
• Back in the theater, we used to say that satire opens on Friday and closes on Saturday. But that didn’t stop Hell Gate from satirizing Mayor Adams’s call for more exemptions to congestion pricing. Read the website’s funny list of everyone who should get exempted from the tolls.
• The U.S. Supreme Court really threw some gasoline on the planetary fire with that EPA ruling. (NY Times)
• Meanwhile, Gothamist and Streetsblog did local angles on the ruling.
• ICYMI, the LIC Post has details of the coming protected bike network for Long Island City.
• And, finally, the Daily News back page violated our old man editor’s rule when he was running the Brooklyn Paper of never referring to “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” in any headline or lede. But the news was just so devastating that we’re willing to allow it: