Wednesday’s Headlines: Big Game Edition
Before he can make buses fast and free, Mayor Mamdani first needed one to throw the Adams administration under.
Attending the Super Bowl Tuesday oversight hearing by the Council Transportation Committee, officials from the Department of Transportation repeatedly blamed limited staffing “capacity” and misplaced “priorities” for the Adams administration’s failure to hit the bus and bike lane mile benchmarks legally required by the 2019 law that created the Streets Master Plan. (Gothamist, City & State, The City and amNY noticed that, too.)
Council Transportation Committee Chairman Shaun Abreu reminded Mamdani’s new DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn that the benchmarks required in the first Streets Master Plan are legal requirements, not optional, and he gave the prior administration “a big fat ‘F'” for its efforts. (That Mr. Abreu. He was always a tough-but-fair grader!)
And what were those efforts? According to the master plan update released just before the hearing (it was late, by the way), the DOT built 18.2 miles of protected bike lanes (far short of the 50-mile requirement) and 20.8 miles of protected bus lanes (far short of the 30-mile requirement).
On those bus lanes, of course, there was some tricky math: The DOT itself rolled out the red-paint carpet along far fewer miles of roadway, but the number was inflated because the MTA added cameras to many routes last year to catch bus lane blockers (those lane miles count under the Streets Master Plan law).
So you can thank those cameras — a partnership of the MTA and DOT — for helping the city get at least respectably close to the bus lane benchmark.
That was just one of the stories that came out of what Streetsblog called Super Bowl Tuesday — an epic six-hour Transportation Committee hearing. You know how the Big Game often ends up being disappointing after all the buildup, the hype, the artificial “shortage” of chicken wings? Well, Streetsblog’s Super Bowl Tuesday was anything but anti-climactic (it even started with Abreu using the term!):
- Dave Colon reports on DOT’s efforts to craft the next Streets Master Plan … with a twist. (Hell Gate had that angle, too.)
- And I threw up a story about how the Mamdani DOT is continuing the Adams-era view on daylighting. (It’s for that reason, by the way, that we reset our Mamdani-O-Meter yesterday.)
- We posted a story about Council Member Lincoln Restler’s frustration with the FDNY.
That’s championship-level coverage.
In other news
- The biggest non Super Bowl Tuesday story was the MTA’s court victory over the Trump administation, saving congestion pricing. (NY Times, Streetsblog, NY Post)
- Welcome to the bikelash, Erik Bottcher. We hardly knew ye. (West Side Rag)
- Council Member Vickie Paladino was charged by the Ethics Committee for calling to expel Muslims and similar Islamophobic comments. (City & State)
- Clergy members oppose Gov. Hochul’s effort to cut car insurance premiums. (City & State)
- Check out Amtrak’s fast new trains. (NY Post)
- Cops are hunting the lowlifes who set a man on fire in Penn Station (amNY), but Our Town says one suspect has been caught.
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