Monday’s Headlines: Table Setting for Tuesday Edition
Tuesday is Streetsblog’s Super Bowl.
City Council Transportation Chair Shaun Abreu has summoned Department of Transportation officials to City Hall to testify on the city’s progress on its “Streets Master Plan.”
Streetsblog readers are well aware that that progress was not-so-good under former Mayor Eric Adams, at least when it came to bus lanes and protected bike lanes. Adams routinely underfunded DOT and failed to staff up its planning departments to meet the plan’s mandates of 150 new miles of bus lanes and 250 miles of new bike lanes over five years. Mayor Mamdani floated an additional $5 million for DOT staff in his proposed budget last month; on Tuesday, we hope to learn how the city plans to spend that money.
The folks at Transportation Alternatives have some ideas: On Friday, the group released a brief policy paper highlighting how 98 percent of New York City streets don’t have protected bike lanes, which NYPD stats show reduce traffic injuries for all road users.
The group wants DOT to implement 20 mile per hour zones around every city school, set new targets for pedestrian plaza expansion, set goals for reducing car-usage and pollution and “focus on a connected network of protected bike lanes.” For the last one, they provided this map of the major gaps in the city bike lane network:
Will DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn and his team heed the advice? And will the committee grill city officials about outdoor dining, which is also on the agenda? (Need more information? Check out Open Plans’s latest call to action.)
You’d better call in sick on Tuesday because you’ll need the day to read all our team coverage.
In other news:
- Sunnyside Yard is back on the menu for new housing construction. (City & State, Curbed, Gothamist, NY Times)
- Disability advocates who testified at Friday’s City Council hearing on snow removal had nothing but bad things to say about property owners who failed to shovel their sidewalks this winter. (The City)
- Brooklyn Community Board 10 opposes DOT’s plan to designate a truck route on Third Avenue. (Brooklyn Eagle)
- Politico covered Mayor Mamdani’s public tensions with the police commissioner.
- Seventy percent of Staten Island students missed school last Tuesday as the borough dealt with several more inches of snow than the rest of the city. (NY Post)
- An LIRR worker is suing the MTA after getting screwed by a real crappy job. (NY Post)
- A guy in Queens covered his neighbors’ car with snow and refused to stop when they asked him. (NY Post)
- Mums the word from City Hall about this summer’s World Cup. (City & State)
- Planters placed too close to fire hydrants are Queens Council Member Joann Ariola’s latest anti-DOT conspiracy theory. A better theory is that drivers are nudging the planters to illegally park. (NY Post)
- Ana Maria Archila is leaving the Working Families Party. (Hell Gate)
- The MTA defied its Cuomo-era precedent of shutting down above-ground subways during snowstorms last week. (Gothamist)
- Janno Lieber “walks a fine line” with the Trump administration. (City & State)
- Not a bike lane to be found: Nine car drivers were in a pile-up on the LIE that caused several injuries (PIX11). To get a full sense of the carnage, here’s a dash-cam video:
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