Our favorite story of the day was summed up by this Crain's headline: "Working from home means more sleep, less work: study." Study? We don't need a study to see what's going on all over the city (and on the 60-percent capacity subway every weekday): People like working from home because they feel more productive, don't lose anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes each way on a commute, and can use that extra time to sleep in or just turn off Slack and ... slack off.
That said, we would be remiss if we didn't remind the academic eggheads that millions of New Yorkers don't have the luxury of lazily working at home, so let's take some of this research with a grain of salt (and say a prayer that some people work hard every day).
Plus, we're not sure we agree with the study's main takeaway: that people working from home aren't working as much as they do in the office. On those days when we work from home, we feel like we work all day and then, just for fun, pop on a virtual community board meeting and then cover that, too.
Like last night, when we dropped in on the Manhattan Community Board 8 meeting to watch the full board overwhelmingly approve the Department of Transportation's Third Avenue redesign, which, despite being basically the same thing the agency has been doing since 2010, still garnered some of truly egregious, selfish, psychotic, pro-car bike lash comments from board members who seem to forget that they represent a district where 72 percent of the households do not have access to a car.
We'll have full coverage later today. Until then, here's some other news:
- We're accustomed to seeing petitions against charter schools (hey, we're New Yorkers!), but it was nice to see the latest "Stop the Charter" petition in Washington Heights address the elephant in the room of schools: Private and charter schools cause disproportionate car traffic on local streets because their parents drive their kids to class more than public school parents. (Patch)
- Like Streetsblog, the Daily News also covered the death of a Manhattan man, six weeks after he was hit by a car driver in Queens, but New York's Hometown Paper didn't dig as deep as we did on the high rate of crashes near Citi Field during the baseball season.
- A hit-and-run driver slammed into a guy loading a U-Haul on Ocean Avenue, critically injuring him. Then the driver and his passenger fled, leaving their Mercedes behind. Hmm. (NYDN)
- The Drive (of all places) raises a crucial question: Should there be special driver's licenses for the drivers of super-high-performance death machines?
- Speaking of crucial questions, The Atlantic looked at whether "community input" is a crock.
- Case in point? The city's first "community input" session over what should be done with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. (Brooklyn Eagle)
- Or the battle of progressives over a housing development in Astoria. (QNS)
- The Commercial Observer reminds us that one of the biggest problems with having everyone return to the office is the pollution they generate getting there. Less in New York City, but still!
- Arch Daily is the latest outlet to cover the battle to shave New York's 5 o'clock shadow of trash.
- The University of Washington (of all places!) has given us a great gift: A live map of how inaccessible New York's subway and rail systems are. (Unlocked Maps)
- And, finally, you gotta see Casey Neistat's video in support of Council Member Lincoln Restler's "civilian reporting" bill:
Great to see @Casey is back doing what he does best: Exposing how incredibly difficult it is to get stuff done in NYC because of drivers. @LincolnRestler has a bill that could help: https://t.co/EPccxJHzXu
— Streetsblog New York (@StreetsblogNYC) October 19, 2022
