Like death and taxes, one of the great certainties of life is that the New York Times will downplay the deleterious effects of the automobile.
In a single century, the Times has gone from its classic, "Nation Roused Against Motor Killings" on Nov. 24, 1924 amid a rise in car drivers killing vulnerable road users ...
... to its new classic, "Death of Cyclist in Paris Lays Bare Divide in Mayor’s War Against Cars," published on Nov. 29, 2024 after a road-raging SUV driver intentionally killed a French bike rider. ("Death of..."?)
Before my inevitable rant against the state of the Times editing desk, first consider the opening paragraphs of each story:
1924: "The horrors of war appear to be less appalling than the horrors of peace. The automobile looms up as a far more destructive piece of mechanism than the machine gun. The reckless motorist deals more death than the artilleryman. The man in the street seems less safe than the man in the trench."
2024: "It sent a shock through Paris, a city striving to transform itself into one of the great cycling metropolises in the world: a bicycle rider, crushed under the wheels of an SUV in a bike lane just a few yards from La Madeleine, the landmark neoclassical church, in what prosecutors suspect was a deliberate act of road rage."
Certainly, times (and The Times) change. Perhaps there was no way for the Gray Lady to maintain such a righteous anger for 100 years, given decades of work by car manufacturers to invent victim-blaming ("jaywalking"), encourage government-funded sprawl (looking at you, Bob Moses and Dwight Eisenhower), and externalize virtually all of the societal costs of automobile dependency — but is it too much to ask that reporters and editors at the Times use their critical thinking to see through all that when reporting on the murder of a cyclist?
Apparently so. In an effort to see both sides of this horrific crime (both sides?!), the Times centers drivers who play the victim as they say that violence is what you get when you allow public officials to wage a "war" on cars.
After quickly mentioning the intentional killing of cyclist Paul Varry, the Times gets to its real point: that the killing "has also underscored the frustrations that motorists increasingly feel in a place that has chosen to limit the movement, speed and parking options of cars."
To the Times, a driver not finding a free spot to store his vehicle near La Madeleine or not having access to all three lanes of Rue de Rivoli to combust fuel is more than just frustrating: it's a war on drivers by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo that can be met with violence.
"Ratcheting up tensions [ratcheting up the tensions?!] this month is a new policy banning motorists from driving through the four arrondissements in the heart of the city, rekindling the argument that Ms. Hidalgo’s anti-car stance is impractical, bad for business, and caters mostly to wealthy liberals who can afford to live in the city center. 'She is putting a garrote around Paris,' Patrick Aboukrat, a boutique owner in the fashionable Marais neighborhood, said this week, placing his hands on his neck for effect."
The Times also falls victim to classic car culture framing — forgetting that in a city as old as Paris, cars are the brash newcomers that ruined Paris.
"Ms. Hidalgo’s experiment ... is unfolding in a city that has long harbored an innate tension between the big-city need for speed and the more languorous pleasures of 'la belle vie,'" the paper wrote. The "need for speed"? Were those words plagiarized from a Dodge Charger ad? No resident of a city with a subway system as good as Paris "needs" a personal speed machine.
And that brings us to a commonality between this hateful "news" account and the current specific debate over congestion pricing and the general one over car dependence: it is not a "war on cars" to ask people who live outside a city pay a small fee or suffer some minor inconvenience in order to congest said city's roads and endanger its citizens. It's a simple battle for equity.
One cannot choose the lifestyle of the suburbs and then complain when city residents seek to live their lives in bliss now that you're gone. Unless, of course, you work for the Times:
"Yves Carra, a spokesman for the group Mobilité Club France, until recently known as L’Automobile Club Association, said he is frustrated that the Paris government, which represents about two million people within the boundaries of the city, is making decisions that affect the 12 million-plus people who live in the metropolitan area. The car, he said, was a valid technological response to Paris’s suburban sprawl; Ms. Hidalgo’s policies, he said, was detrimental to “the people who need these cars to be able to move around and live.”
It's the same "we need our cars" whining that turned a simple $15 toll to enter the most transit-rich part of Manhattan (a toll that more or less parallels the commuter rail fare) into a culture war waged from the Long Island suburbs to the White House — a war that resulted in a 40-percent toll discount for drivers yet no such discount for people using public transit.
So forgive us if we once again demand more from the New York Times, the vaunted paper with the suburban worldview.
In other news from a busy Thanksgiving weekend:
- Speaking of the suburban worldview, reckless drivers are now free to speed in Suffolk County because officials there don't want to hold them accountable. (Newsday)
- We all knew that New York City drivers are terrible, but reporter Liam Quigley shows why: they can barely pass a driving test. (Gothamist)
- Speaking of terrible drivers, a drunk one slammed into an FDNY truck. (NYDN)
- And a Jeep driver killed a pedestrian in the Bronx. (NYDN)
- Another reckless driver killed a different pedestrian, also in the Bronx. (amNY)
- And a third hit and badly injured a motorcyclist. (News12)
- Meanwhile, a moped rider injured a young girl. (NY Post)
- Here's an interesting tale of the unicyclist and the Holland Tunnel. (NY Post)
- In addition to Gov. Hochul's failure on congestion pricing, there's also her failure on the state's lofty climate goals. (NY Times)
- Delays ahead for the MTA's East Bronx rail project. (Mass Transit)
- Enjoy these photos of the nostalgia train. (NY Post)
- After Streetsblog put it on the front page, amNY also covered the city's car-free block of Broadway in Midtown.
- Sounds like the city needs to widen the sidewalk at Apollo Bagels ... not blame the bakery for its success. (NY Times)
- From the Assignment Desk: Riders Alliance is hosting a transportation forum with six mayoral candidates tonight at 7 p.m. Watch the Youtube here or attend in person at the BRIC studios at 647 Fulton St. in Brooklyn.
- Momentum magazine played Doug Ford's revanchism perfectly, outlining why unfettered car use is flat out bad. Perhaps the New York Times should read it.
- Actress Lucy Liu loves bikes, which the Times art section was allowed to play up.
- And, finally, let us herald a weekend's worth of donors to our annual December Donation Drive, all of whom gave with the same vigor and lust with which I devoured all my brother's liquor (it's vegan!): Thanks, Paul! Thanks, Grace! Thanks, Bob! Thanks, Ryan! Thanks, Paula! Thanks, Brent! Thanks, Brian! Thanks, Travis (and let's go, Mets)! Thanks, Dan! Thanks, Thomas! Thanks, Ted! And if anyone wants to join this esteemed list, just click below:
