Friday’s Headlines: Lexington Avenue Edition
On Friday, the Department of Transportation will begin installing bus lane upgrades on Lexington Avenue from E. 60th Street to E. 52nd Street, the Mamdani administration will announce later today, Streetsblog has learned.
Those eight blocks of existing curbside bus lanes will shift and become an “offset” bus lane under DOT’s redesign plan, which was unveiled under the previous mayor last year.
“Offset bus lanes work because they keep lanes clear and buses moving. This is exactly the kind of small-but-mighty-fix that makes life better for working people across our city,” the mayor said in a statement.
The corridor carries 71,000 bus trips per day, including local buses and express bus routes from the Bronx and Staten Island.
DOT made similar changed on Lexington Avenue from E. 96th Street to E. 60th Street back in 2019. The changes sped up buses by 26 percent and cut pedestrian injuries by 35 percent, the agency said.
In other news:
- The clock tolls at midnight for the potential LIRR strike — and everyone from Montauk to Brooklyn is worried. (The City, NY1, News 12 Brooklyn, ABC7NY)
- What does Mayor Mamdani’s mass engagement team mean for City Hall’s relationship with community boards? (Politico)
- An FDNY driver struck and injured a cyclist at Myrtle and Franklin avenues in Brooklyn. (Williamsburg 365)
- There’s lots of fun stuff happening at the Brooklyn Army Terminal this summer. (Brooklyn Paper)
- The New Jersey man who drove a car into Chabad headquarters faces jail time after pleading guilty to damaging religious property. (Brooklyn Eagle)
- Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su is Mamdani’s liaison to big business. (City & State)
- City traffic enforcement agents want peace officer status so anyone who assaults them faces stiffer legal penalties. (amNY)
- A fire under the East River snarled Amtrak and LIRR service out of Penn Station. (Gothamist, Daily News)
- Parks wants your feedback on potential upgrades to the Tompkins Square Park playground. (EV Grieve)
- An MTA rent-a-guard tasked with stopping fare evasion got caught selling swipes for cash at the subway emergency gates. (NY Post)
- Everyone’s asking: will the mayor stand up to NYPD? (City & State, The Drift)
- See it: American TV reporters’ disregard for parking rules met Chinese parking enforcement when Bret Baier’s Fox News crew got a ticket for illegal parking “for just two minutes” in Beijing:
- What the Hech? And, finally, if you’re keeping score at home, Streetsblog lost at last night’s Deadline Club award show, where Jesse Coburn’s “Moped King” investigation, and subsequent follow-ups by Sophia Lebowitz and yours truly, was a finalist for reporting by independent digital media. And the winner was: The Hechinger Report for “How Trump Transformed Federal Enforcement of Students’ Civil Rights” by Meredith Kolodner, Sarah Butrymowicz and Neal Morton. (Ah well, we’ll always have the New York Press Club.)
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