What's with all these lawyers who sued the city over the now 14-year-old Prospect Park West protected bike lane and want to get into city government?
First it was Randy Mastro, Mayor Adams's ill-fated summer nominee to be the city's top lawyer. Now it's Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor and Mastro defender who wants to be your next mayor.
Hell Gate spoke to Walden for its ongoing series of interviews with 2025 mayoral candidates. While the "politically connected" barrister lacks the name recognition of his more publicly established opponents, he's got personal wealth and a New York Times write-up that likely means at least some subset of the city's voting public will take him seriously.
One issue: In 2011, the politically connected attorney represented the politically connected opponents of the then-nascent Prospect Park West bike lane — at no cost.
The bike lane was installed in mid-2010, but Walden and his clients pushed for years to get a judge to rip it up. As Streetsblog reported at the time, Walden's pro bono representation of the likes of ex-DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and ex-Deputy Mayor Norm Steisel flew in the face of the New York Bar's "pro bono principles" that free legal labor go to the less fortunate. Worse yet, Walden cynically accused DOT of lying about safety data — a well-worn anti-bike trope that he continues to defend to this day, including in his interview with Hell Gate.
Here are the facts: DOT followed established practices and compared the bike lane's crash data to the three-year average. Walden cherry-picked data from the previous year to claim the bike lane increased crashes. He and his clients took that argument to the New York Post to accuse DOT of a "massive effort to distort the facts and force community support."
Of course, the popularity of the bike lane ultimately "forced" community support. Walden's clients only accepted defeat and withdrew their suit five years later, in 2016. Yet Walden stands by his work forcing the city to waste a half-decade of taxpayer-funded lawyers to defend something he now calls "terrific."
"At that moment, you know, this was a very new project, people were very nervous about it," he told Hell Gate, revising history. "I don't regret that case one bit, not one bit, because agencies should not be manipulating data to try to achieve policy objectives."
Good luck with that, Jim. As Streetsblog wrote in 2016, Walden's "core tactic was to identify vacuums in public knowledge and shamelessly exploit them." DOT was simply doing its job, while Walden muddied the waters as bike lane opponents often do.
The wannabe Hizzoner told Hell Gate the bike lane has "evolved over time," but its design remains identical to the one DOT installed in 2010. He'd be better off admitting he was wrong then relitigating failed legal arguments against a project that's saved lives and served as a model for the rest of the city.
In other news:
- Hell Gate spoke to the researchers behind a new study of the NYPD's refusal to respond to parking-related 311 calls, which Streetsblog wrote about earlier this week.
- The Red Hook waterfront is just begging to be turned into new housing. Buyer beware — there's no subway or even a direct bus to Manhattan. (NY Times)
- Streetsblog spoke to Gothamist for this story about DOT's plans to create a public meeting "code of conduct" after Council Member Vickie Paladino's greenway workshop shenanigans.
- We've covered the Council's "jaywalking legalization" bill for months, but it went viral this week after officially going into effect over the weekend. (NY Times, Associated Press)
- A driver struck an NYPD officer during a vehicular chase in East New York. (Daily News, NY Post)
- And finally, the city's Conflicts of Interest Board tackled parking placards a video on its Instagram:
