Tuesday’s Headlines: Inspect Those Garages Edition

The Department of Buildings ramped up a social media campaign to shame owners of possibly crumbling parking garages (which is a real concern, given the increasing weight of today’s American cars):

That tweet really piqued our curiosity, what with memories of the Ann Street garage collapse not yet faded. So we reached out to our friend Jimmy Oddo’s agency with a murder of questions stemming from that tweet with the oddly decaying building on it. The agency gave us a comprehensive, detailed and exhilarating answer — the kind of juicy email that, frankly, we wish we got from other agencies.

First, we wondered: How many garages have submitted inspections?

Answer: There are 1,059 parking structure locations in Lower Manhattan, Midtown, and Upper West Side that were supposed to file an inspection report by Dec. 31, 2023. Only 655 reports have been received.

That didn’t sound good, considering that the garages that failed to submit the report were likely the crumbling ones, amirite?

So we asked, what’s the good news?

Answer: 120 garages were inspected and determined to be safe.

The bad news? Fifty-seven were classified as “safe with repairs or engineering monitoring,” 98 reports were incomplete and another 268 are classified were put into the “pending” file.

Oh, and 112 were classified as unsafe.

In other words, look out, below!

Also from yesterday:

• Like Streetsblog (which broke the story), Gothamist covered Comptroller Brad Lander’s finding that lots of speed camera tickets aren’t being written.
• News 12 followed our story on Brooklyn pols demanding daylighting.
• Ben Brachfeld at amNY did a deep and good dive on the main flaw of the IBX: The short above-ground portion in Queens that Council Member Bob Holden rightly thinks is a “deal-breaker.” Let’s get that portion underground, please!
• London is doing what we need to be doing! (Bloomberg)
• The Second Avenue Subway really is moving ahead (NYDN, The City, amNY, NY1) — and the Post saw a silver lining! Gothamist found a touch of gray.
• But the Tabloid of Wreckage didn’t see any upside to the MTA’s new subway platform barricades.
• Speaking of transit, the one-time “Bus Mayor” was being disingenuous again!

• Another cop has been injured by a hit-and-run driver. (NY Post)
• A senior was killed by a pickup truck driver in Brooklyn. (Brooklyn Paper)
• Meanwhile, the family of Xiaohong Chen, who was killed last week by a driver with the vanity plate NDRTAKER, has set up a GoFundMe page to help with costs and suffering stemming from her death.
• Oh my god, how many times have we been duped by the indoor wave pool story? (Gothamist)
• Finally, the Port Authority was so excited to announce that it has recovered $25 million from toll evaders that it even put out a video of a particularly egregious driver committing his own form of criminal mischief. The NY Post covered it, but we just had to run the video here (with a link to a video I made last year of a similar scofflaw):