Jeff Coltin of Politico had a nice little scoop yesterday: Council Member Carlina Rivera of Manhattan will resign to take over the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, a non-profit.
She was term-limited anyway, but we're sad about Rivera's early departure if only because we so cherish her signature achievement: a 2018 bill that forces construction companies to build safe, protected, temporary detours whenever their work impinges upon an existing protected bike lane.
Untold numbers of cyclists have not gotten injured or killed thanks to this common-sense bill, which we obviously covered with great interest.
In fact, yesterday, we noticed a gorgeous example of Rivera's bill in action on Church Street near our posh Chinatown offices. Look at that temporary bike lane! It's a beaut!
In other news:
- The Wall Street Journal weighed in on street safety with very cursory, car-centric look at road violence. If the paper is saying that there are lots of new micro mobility devices out there and, as a result, there is confusion on the roads, of course we agree. But we find it funny how the mainstream press always focuses on the modes and not the roads. If we want our roads to be safe, we need to make them safe instead of merely demonizing two-wheeled transportation.
- The Forward covered the Jew vs. Jew angle on the Bedford Avenue bike lane.
- Congestion pricing works, part 499. (Gothamist)
- From the assignment desk: On Friday at 1:30 p.m., state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Council Member Alexa Avilés, Alan Mukamal (of Friends of Red Hook Pool), Mike Racioppo (of Community Board 6) and Karen Blondel (of the Red Hook West Resident Association) will celebrate the opening of the Red Hook Pool, shuttered over these last seven weeks due to a crumbling pipe that was only discovered days before the opening day. Streetsblog has been all over that story.
- Seth Meyers gave Streetsblog some love in his segment about President Trump's war on cities. We're about midway through Meyers's funny "A Closer Look."
- Our friends at The Bear Cave (the seminal Wall Street blog) followed up our investigation into Fly E-Bike and decided that its stock is part of a pump-and-dump scheme. No one who read Jesse Coburn's bombshell of a story would be surprised.
- Here's some nifty transit-oriented development uptown. (Patch)
- Two style icons were killed by a car driver in Italy ... (NY Times)
- ... And one was killed by a driver in Yorktown. (LoHud)
- We covered Council Speaker Adrienne Adams's promised override of Mayor Adams's veto of the Instacart minimum wage bill. So did the Daily News and Hell Gate. The Times was a day late.
- The DOT is barred from finishing the half-done 31st Street bike lane in Astoria until another hearing next month. (QNS)
- Speaking of Queens, we do love a good bike boulevard, and 31st Avenue has one. (Vin Barone on Bluesky)
- Pete Alonso's 254 home runs as a Met is a team record. I can think of a lot better ways to honor him than to give him a mega-Ford. (Instagram)
- Council Member Vickie Paladino wants to remove the bus and bike lane requirements from the Streets Master Plan, which would more or less render the Streets Master Plan useless (which, we gather, is her point). (Council website)
- And, finally, you go, Gale!
