Obviously, Streetsblog is being read in City Hall!
We learned that — again! — when we sent legendary jersey model/transit reporter Dave Colon to the MTA board meetings on Tuesday, where he heard Mayor Adams's appointee to the board, Midori Valdivia Espino, directly confront New York City Transit President Richard Davey about his agency's failure to start the long-delayed all-door boarding pilot that Colon himself wrote about earlier that day.
Colon picks up the story via tweet:
MTA Board member from the great city of New York, @hellomidori, asked NYCT President Rich Davey about this. Per Davey, the MTA can't even do a pilot because OMNY use on the bus is still stuck at about 20 percent, where it was last year https://t.co/YMYImf5Zx3
— Good Idea Dave (@DaveCoIon) February 21, 2023
Davey's answer was pretty unimpressive: basically, the MTA, which long said it couldn't start all-door boarding until OMNY readers were in place, now says it's not the OMNY, but the fact that so few bus riders are using OMNY. Chicken, meet egg.
Bottom line: Colon was on the story from the start, through the middle and he'll be there until the end (unless the Times snaps him up).
In other news:
- Two "year-end" reports were issued on Tuesday by some pretty big name investigative units — the city's Department of Investigations and the MTA's Office of Inspector General. Just to cut to the chase, neither mentioned any investigations or disciplinary action against both the city and the MTA's serial placard abusers who have turned Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn and Jamaica into sclerotic parking zones. We asked DOI why there was no mention of placards, but the agency said, "This is an active and ongoing area for DOI and there are no public releases on it in 2022," and declined further comment. (The DOI's releases were in multiple caches, here, here, here, here, here and here.)
- Wider turnstiles are coming to accommodate people in wheelchairs. (amNY)
- You like the subway. You really like the subway. (amNY)
- Mets owner Steve Cohen got the answer he wanted after kinda leading the witness. (QNS)
- Car theft mayhem in Queens. (NYDN)
- Gov. Hochul is mum on the Zee. (NY Post)
- Meet the bike activists of upstate Kingston. (The River Newsroom)
- Nice to see the Economist push back on the New York Times's breathless and disgusting celebration of youth and cars.
- Check out commuting changes across the world in this slightly depressing Bloomberg video:
How has Covid changed your commute to work?
— Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab) February 22, 2023
We asked Bloomberg reporters in five cities to show us how their trip to the office has changed https://t.co/XCRhSPrWOu pic.twitter.com/nAdSUNpXZU
