Thursday’s Headlines: Celebrate What’s Good About Our City Edition

Walk, don’t run!

It’s now less than one week til the annual “Public Space Awards” hosted by our friends at Open Plans on Thursday, Feb. 29 (leap day!). So if you haven’t done so, it really is time to click on these blue words and get your tickets to the best party of the winter.

Admit it, you want to honor this year’s winners and help raise money for more awesome projects next year and party with your favorite Streetsblog editors (who are really just glomming on).

First, the winners:

• Most Innovative Model for Public Space Management: Corona Plaza
• Neighborhood Champion Award: Flatbush Nostrand Junction BID
• Citywide Transformation Award: Department of Transportation’s Summer Streets (which expanded to all the boroughs last year!)
• Most Inspiring Neighborhood Vision: North Brooklyn Safe Streets Organizers & North Brooklyn Parks Alliance

Just as important, click here to vote for the audience-selected fifth honoree, which this year is dedicated to public space activization. And the nominees are: Kuki Go for his tape (yes, tape) art; Misha Tyutyunik for his newly extended Kensington Plaza; and the Skate Everything School for holding skateboarding “classes” on open streets all over town.

It’ll be a blast (especially towards the end, when some of those aforementioned editors start singing old labor union songs about bike lanes). The fun starts at 7 p.m. in Lower Manhattan.

In other news from a busy Wednesday:

• The biggest story yesterday was that Hornblower, which operates the NYC Ferry system, had declared bankruptcy, which is exactly why public transit shouldn’t be run by private companies. Gothamist and the Wall Street Journal covered it. We reached out to the city Economic Development Corporation and to Hornblower, and were told there’s nothing to worry about. But we are, indeed, worried.
• Only 32 percent of the city’s taxis are accessible, and that’s not enough. (NYDN, NY Times)
• We really enjoyed this feature story on the city’s hard-working deliveristas, including some never-before-reported details of the life of worker organizer Gustavo Ajche. (Bicycling magazine)
• Only the Post could find fault with the plan to make the subway brighter with energy-efficient bulbs.
• March is going to be the cruelest month for Queens subway riders. (amNY)
• Here’s another casino bid attempting to paper over a financially troubled development. (Crain’s)
• We mocked Mayor Adams’s perception of time.
• Self-proclaimed street safety advocate Andrew Fine had an out-of control op-ed in Upper East Site that started out great, “New Yorkers are outraged at the growing chaos on the streets…” but then veered immediately to saying that chaos has been entirely “…caused by e-bikes.” And his second paragraph was flat-out erroneous: “We’ve all been there — brushed or crushed by an e-bike on our streets and sidewalks,” he wrote. “They are wanton, flagrant and frankly don’t give a damn. There is zero accountability.” (Point 1: We haven’t “all” been there. And point 2: There is some accountability. See this tweet and many more like it.) More important, as we have pointed out repeatedly, riders of electric bike are responsible for only a tiny portion of the supposed “chaos,” and an even tinier portion of the carnage. Car drivers injured more than 40,000 people last year. If anything, the main micro-mobility issue right now is illegal mopeds, though the number of crashes caused by their riders is also small. Here’s a chart that Fine and others might find interesting:

• And, finally, you may recall that we won a Sigma Award for data journalism last year for Jesse Coburn’s aforementioned story on the failure of the city to keep kids safe around schools. Well, Coburn has again received good news from the Sigmas: His Polk Award-winning series, “Ghost Tags,” has been shortlisted for a 2024 Sigma — which would not only be a great honor, but could earn Coburn a trip to Perugia.