Monday’s Headlines: Summer Streets Post Mortem Edition

You know what Saturday was — the last "Summer Streets" of the year.

This year's edition — five Saturdays with a total of 400 blocks of car-free fun across narrow slices of all five boroughs — was the biggest and best ever. And here's the chaser: The Department of Transportation says the budget is just $3 million, which is pennies on the dollar for how much joy New Yorkers feel at being able to move around the city the way people in civilized places like Paris, Bogota and Pontevedra do.

It's just an awesome program that should be expanded to literally every Saturday in July and August (to start!) and include interconnected routes for longer explorations. Check out Ben Furnas's kid!

It's never too early to start planing next year's program, so why not take a moment to sign a petition, put out by Open Plans, to show your support for a bigger better summer streets next year? Here's the link. And here's an Insta post:

Warning: Our daily news digest below is one of the longest in months. And each entry is its own novel waiting to be written. So make sure you put aside a few minutes:

• The biggest talker of the weekend (well, definitely in the Streetsblog newsroom) was the Daily News editorial that broke news: RPA (aka Regional Plan Association) took money from Amtrak to push its vision for the Gateway project. Now, the Daily News has carried a very sharp ax for that project for years, but, still, this is a news development that's worth further scrutiny.
• Outrage: A cop drove over a man inside a park. Lots of details are missing in The Post's story, but it is not too much to ask that police officers — who should not be driving so much anyway — pay more attention to what's literally in front of their squad car ... in a park!
• Speaking of cops, what possible business could NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch have at a posh Hamptons restaurant. I mean, she's not Andrew Cuomo trolling for money and votes from the abandon-New York crowd ... is she? (NY Post)
• How was the future mayor's scavenger hunt? I would have been there, but for having to take my kid to college. Having your dad embarrass you on your freshman hallway — "And what will you be studying young man?" — is something that happens only once in a lifetime and I wasn't going to let him miss that! (NYDN)
• The Post's angle on virtually anything to do with the mayor's race is, "If Mamdani wins, we need centrists/Republicans/Trump to take over and make sure he's unsuccessful."
• The Paper of Wreckage — which is usually the lead singer in the "New York is not like other cities!" chorus — went all the way to Kansas City to claim Mamdani's transit plan won't work.
• The Times's Ginia Bellafante took all of Dave Colon's amazing reporting on the expansion of the Cross-Bronx and turned it into a column that should have mentioned Dave Colon's amazing reporting on the expansion of the Cross-Bronx.
• Sorry, but this light feature in Gothamist about "Rio Manhattan" didn't hit the mark. First, neither the NYPD nor FDNY responded to requests for comment about Alex Rolon's setup? We're sure both agencies would have a lot to say if someone flooded the roadway in front of a station house or firehouse. And the Department of Transportation referred questions to the NYPD when asked about the flooded bike lane that forces cyclists into traffic. I'm not saying the guy should be arrested or anything, but this story shouldn't have been treated as an afterthought.
• The Chelsea News (specifically Michael Oreskes) has been a must-read for Penn Station news.
• Paging Streetsblog Empire State! A bus crash killed five people upstate. (amNY, NY Post, Gothamist)
• A car thief struck and injured a cyclist in Manhattan. (Gothamist, NY Post)
• The Times and the Daily News got a third day story out of the Ingrid Lewis-Martin corruption charges, but Kevin Duggan's Streetsblog story is still the gold standard.
• Let's revisit those days when Gov. Hochul called in the National Guard to patrol New York City. (Gothamist)
• Speaking of Adams administration corruption, Zohran Mamdani had fun with it... (NYDN)
• ... so Mayor Adams tried to make fun of Mamdani for his inability to bench press 135 pounds (which is a lot!). But the diss kinda lost its punch because the mayor forgot how old he is. The City's Katie Honan pointed out the error, and the mayor promptly deleted his tweet, but here it is in all its screenshotted glory:

• Road-raging drivers fighting over a parking spot? That's so ... every day. (NYDN)
• Everyone covered the Adams administration's announcement that it would allow Waymo to test robot cars on the mean streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. What could possibly go wrong? Don't ask de Blasio! He's livid. (amNY, Gothamist, NY Post, Streetsblog)
• The Post continued its war on congestion pricing, this time with a sub-moronic angle that conveniently ignores that the toll money funds mega-billion capital improvements in tracks, switches, trains and buses — not the day-to-day operating budget.
• Whoa, is it time to rethink the one-way street? We've long been told they're safer in cities, but Next City questions that conventional wisdom.
• Lost and found isn't really working. (amNY)
• It's time for a hat tip to Gersh Kuntzman! Remember the Streetsblog headlines last Tuesday? No? Well, I wrote about the predictable backlash after the city DOT finally made good on its promise to swipe a few free parking spots near commercial strips for high-turnover, metered parking. And I wrote, "Our guess is that drivers will quickly get the ear of the New York Post (in three, two, one…) and this whole idea of charging drivers a tiny fee for the public space they seize for their cars will become a new cause célèbre, prompting the Adams administration to throw its own DOT under the bus again." Well, part one of my prediction has come true, in the form of the Post's hysterical (and late) take!