Thursday’s Headlines: The Last Gasp of the Bikelash Edition

New York City’s construction season has begun, and Mayor Mamdani’s DOT is taking full advantage of the warmer months to launch a growing and increasingly ambitious slate of street redesigns.

On Tuesday night, department staffers informed Manhattan’s Community Board 7 that it will revamp 72nd Street — on both sides of Central Park — with a bus boarding islands and a two-way bike lane. The redesign will eliminate two travel lanes on the major east-west arterial. The proposal lit up local media — ABC7, the Daily News, Our Town, Patch, among others — who offered either neutral or positive assessments of the plan.

The CB7 meeting represented a sea change in DOT policy. In years past, the department watered down or completely abandoned street redesigns after local cranks yelled at their staff about parking spots, fears of lost business and bad-faith safety concerns. CB7 was a particular culprit: The board spent several years going back and forth with DOT about the Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue bike lanes back in the 2010s. No more. As Sophia Lebowitz reported from the meeting itself, DOT simply told the assembled community members that it is moving forward with the redesign and will accept local feedback to make it perfect. That’s how it’s supposed to work!

Which brings us to DOT’s prior effort to install parking-protected bike lanes on a few blocks of 31st Street in Astoria. Last year, as the project was underway, local business owners and anti-bike activists persuaded a Queens judge to halt the project, leaving the entire project in limbo.

But as David Meyer reported last night, the department is restarting the redesign with a tremendously satisfying twist. DOT now plans to redesign the entirety of 31st Street, from the ConEd Plant on the East River to Northern Boulevard in Long Island City. The protected bike lanes will connect to existing ones on 20th Avenue, 31st Avenue, and Northern Boulevard. Again: That how it’s supposed to work!

In other news:

• Gov. Hochul’s plan for auto insurance is tearing Albany apart. (Gothamist)
• New Yorkers react to NJ Transit’s alleged plan to charge $100 for return trips from the World Cup at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford. They hate it! (NY1)
• Speaking of New Jersey, the ongoing lawsuit between the Garden State and New York over congestion pricing is likely headed toward closed-door mediation. (NJ.com)
• DOT repaved 13 blocks of Riverside Drive after Council Member Shaun Abreu sent a letter about the street’s “severely cracked and uneven” pavement. (West Side Rag)
• Abreu also introduced a bill that would make it easier to find and use public restrooms in the city during the summer’s World Cup. (City & State)
• The MTA will begin fining drivers who blocks bus lanes on the Q17 and Q27 routes in eastern Queens. (amNY)
• Nobody showed up to protest DOT’s presentation to Brooklyn Community Board 1 about finishing the long-delayed redesign of McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint. Progress! (Heidi Vanderlee)
• Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General has concerns about Amtrak’s management of its sprawling infrastructure. (Trains.com)
• Check out this detailed study about the potential implications of introducing an income-based congestion pricing scheme in San Francisco. (Nature)
• Yale professor Gautam Mukunda is upset that Waymo testing in Manhattan ended. (Bloomberg)
• Progressives are celebrating the installation of the delivery worker hub near City Hall. (The Nation)
• Daniel Trubman is skeptical of Mamdani’s proposal for free buses during the World Cup. (Washington Post)
• Someone spotted an unregistered Cozy Coupe illegally parked in the crosswalk on Astoria Boulevard. (Reddit)
• The MTA put a few trains on a boat. (Reddit)