U.S. DOT Secretary Sean Duffy really ramped up the rhetoric — and the expletives — about the New York City subway system on Friday ... ironically during a visit to a highway sinkhole in New Jersey.
Here's what he said, as reported by NJ.com:
Here it is on Instagram:
Riders Alliance quickly condemned Duffy's propaganda campaign: "The secretary's job is more than cutting videos, filling potholes, and feuding with governors. Millions of public transit riders in New York, New Jersey and across America count on him to help deliver the safe, affordable, reliable, accessible buses and trains we deserve. ... Scaring people on (or off of) public transit or leading them to arm themselves before getting on board makes all of us much less safe."
The shithole comment came after a fairly extraordinary week of craziness from the Secretary. First, on Thursday, he tweeted inaccuracies about congestion pricing as he announced a 30-day reprieve from a federal demand that Gov. Hochul shut off the toll cameras.
"Your refusal to end cordon pricing and your open disrespect towards the federal government is unacceptable," he said, apparently forgetting that the U.S. DOT approved congestion pricing last year, so his reversal of that approval is, technically, the open disrespect.
Then on Friday, he gave an unhinged interview to World Over, a conservative show, and tweeted it out with this message: "Wouldn’t it be nice if your tax dollars actually went to making your life better? It’s common sense, but cities like New York aren’t doing it with their subway system. It’s dirty and dangerous, and people are afraid to ride them to get where they need to go. That’s unacceptable, so we’re going to cut federal funding unless they make their subways clean and safe."
Never mind the extensive reports that subway crime is down, not up, but we fail to see how cutting federal funding will help make subways cleaner and safer. We'll have more on this story this week.
Moving on from denunciatin' Duffy, the big story today will be second-day coverage of the horrifying death of a man after being hit by the rider of an electric bike. Horrifying and very preventable — but not in the way that anti-bike zealots would have you believe.
First, the facts: According to the initial report as well as the Daily News, Luis Cruz, 49, was crossing Franklin Street midblock — "approximately 60 feet south of India Street," cops said — when an electric bike rider struck him. Cruz fell to the pavement and suffered a fatal head injury. The e-bike rider, whose name was not released, remained on the scene. (It's worth noting that if the electric bike was registered as some anti-bike pols want, nothing in this story would be different.)
But an updated report from Gothamist revealed that Cruz had doubled-parked his car and ran directly into the path of a delivery cyclist. A witness alleged that the electric bike rider blew a stop sign, but he was not charged with such a crime by the police.
As cyclists who bike that stretch a lot, we know that it is exceptionally dangerous — for cyclists and motorists. A single double-parked car (as you see in the picture below) means that cyclists, who doesn't even have the benefit of a bike lane, would be forced further into the roadway, where drivers and mid-block-crossing pedestrians, wouldn't expect them to be.
So the anti-cyclist crowd will howl that e-bikes are dangerous (no matter how rare such deaths are), but this maddening fatality could have been prevented with a better designed street that doesn't allow for double-parking or, indeed, fast-moving electric bikes.
In other news:
- Speaking of unsafe streets, a hit-and-run car driver slammed into another driver on the Major Deegan Expressway, killing him, before fleeing, the Daily News reported.
- The NY Times sent surveys to the seemingly 50 candidates for New Jersey governor, yet didn't ask about congestion pricing at all (huh?). But the best answer out of all the would-be governors came from Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulup, who said he would cancel Phil Murphy's $11-billion turnpike widening in favor of transit. Make sure you check out Josh Gottheimer's answer on transit — the anti-congestion pricing crusader has suddenly decided that funding transit is a good thing.
- Also, we'd like to offer a hat-tip to the Times for citing Streetsblog's earlier exclusive in its coverage of the city's last-minute decision to scrub the ribbon-cutting on the Queensboro Bridge pedestrian walkway.
- We'd like to know more about the $186 million that the MTA is spending on outside consultants to finish the Second Avenue Subway. (Gothamist)
- The Post continued its tradition of calling stories "exclusives" even though we've been covering the topic for years. In this case, it was "jaywalking." Read our extensive coverage of "jaywalking" here.
- Cops arrested a cop for driving with a fake plate. Is the NYPD turning over a new leaf (it's hard to say, given that we asked some questions about it and only heard crickets, but the Daily News published the bare bones).
- How dry we are: The use of road salt upstate is making New York City's water supply too salty to drink. (LoHud)
- It looks like Council Transportation Committee Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers has endorsed Andrew Cuomo for mayor. Clearly, she doesn't read our coverage. (Politico, NY Post)
