We went to bed last night safe in the knowledge that the Adams administration really does intend to make cyclists less safe on Bedford Avenue.
Shortly after 10 p.m., city and city-contracted tow truck drivers moved cars of residents who failed to move their vehicles before the anointed hour when the city intended to start the process of scraping away part of a decades-in-the-making protected bike lane that city officials admit has made the roadway safer for all users.
You don't need me to recap the whole drama. Our engagement editor Emily Lipstein does that a whole lot better in her new explainer:
No major work was done to erase the lane, but the process is underway. Meanwhile, activists posted fake/not fake warning signs declaring, "Unsafe Streets Ahead" and blaming Mayor Adams for his election year about-face.
"It's terrible," said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas. "It shows the gross indifference to people who are trying to get around by bike. The mayor and the Department of Transportation know they are making the roadway less safe, but don't care."
And he reminded cyclists that there is legal precedent that the city is liable should anyone be injured on a roadway whose danger is known to local officials. There are plenty of lawyers who specialize in this kind of thing if you need one.
The demolition work is expected to take only a few days and, voila, cyclists will be back in the roadway in an unprotected painted lane that, as we all know, is really more of a double-parking lane for the neighborhood's scofflaws.
We'll keep you posted.
Before all that went down, the top stories yesterday came out of the MTA's monthly board meeting, where the regional transit authority did a lot of stuff:
- It formally approved the scheduled fare hike for January. Get ready for the $3 ride. (Gothamist)
- It awarded the first design contract on the Interborough Express. (Bloomberg)
- It approved a developer for a transit-oriented development at the Beacon Metro-North station. (Gov. Hochul)
- And the agency announced it would offer fare-capping on express buses. (amNY)
The coming demise of the MetroCard also means that seven- and 30-day unlimited passes will also go the way of human existence on this planet. Some wags on the internet spun this as a backdoor fare hike because heavy duty riders with unlimited cards benefitted slightly more than riders who hit the weekly 12-trip fare cap. But, post-Covid, there are very few people who ride the buses and subways so often make an unlimited card worthwhile. Plus, a "pay-in-advance" $132 card simply wasn't as good a deal for the working person as simply capping the fare once a customer hit 12 trips in a seven-day period.
Obviously, our own Dave Colon asked MTA CEO Janno Lieber about this, and this is what the bossman had to say:
I think that the percentage of people who are buying monthlies has dwindled dramatically because they're getting an advantage of the fare cap. Remember, Dave, you often speak about issues of transit equity. There's something inequitable to saying to somebody, "You need to walk up to the MetroCard vending machine, and have $100 plus in your pocket, and then calculate in your head how many times you're going to ride the train and roll the dice on that." A huge percentage of people who are using that fare-payment option were getting ripped off unintentionally before cap-and-go. There was $200 million of wasted customer dollars left on those prepaid cards. We're eliminating what I think of as pretty inequitable situation."
OK, in other news:
- Let's get ready to crummmmbllllle: Wrestling titan Vince McMahon is not just a heel, but he's a lead foot on the roads. (NYDN)
- Why can't we achieve the zero of Vision Zero if Helsinki can? (YLE)
- We missed this one (mea culpa), but the city is going to spend tens of millions to fix a Bronx intersection that it initially considered fixing 17 years ago. (The City)
- Lt. Gov. Anthony Delgado’s Declaration of Independence from Gov. Hochul sounds Mamdan-esque. (NY Times)
- Beer ads to return to the subway? (Gothamist)
- CNN did a nice job on this roundup on how the city abandoned the successful all-year outdoor dining program in favor of a truncated seasonal program — which reminds me that our parent company, Open Plans, has a matching grant program for donations to its campaign to get outdoor dining to be restored to a year-round program.
- Meet the Fort Knox of battery storage systems. (SI Advance)
- Everyone agrees that more housing is needed, so we're not sure why the West Side Rag thinks this particular library site is an "unlikely" one, given that a new library will be built on the same spot.
- The push for universal daylighting continues. (City and State)
- And, finally, former Council Member, former Manhattan Borough President and current Council Member Gale Brewer is an Upper West Side legend. So we were flattered that she re-reported our Summer Specialist Jonah Schwarz's equally legendary story on the rogue ice-cream varmints of the Upper West Side. The only difference? Gale's team bought her an ice cream from one of the vendors, while I just barked orders at Schwarz on one of the hottest days of the year and told him to find a water fountain if he was thirsty.
