Monday’s Headlines: Feeding the Beast Edition

We’ve long had a love-distrust relationship with Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Nicole Gelinas because she does her part to champion many of the livable streets policies that our readers hold dear. But we also disagree with her plenty of times.

The latest disagreement came in her latest anti-e-bike screed in the New York Post, a story that was flawed from the very premise: “Why does the city accept the proliferation of illegal motorized electronic ‘devices’ like the 53-mph scooter whose driver killed himself and a bicyclist Thursday on the Queensboro Bridge?” (The headline was also awful: “How many must die before NYC gets real on policing e-bikes?” None of the devices in Thursday’s crash were e-bikes.)

But Gelinas’s premise is a straw man: no one accepts these illegal devices (perhaps Gelinas missed our story on the subject which included voices from the livable streets movement saying, clearly, that they don’t accept chaos on the streets). But many people in the backlash — or, occasional fellow travelers like Gelinas — see crashes like last week’s doubly-fatal tragedy as evidence that legal e-bikes need to be licensed.

As we’ve shown over and over, that’s not going to make roadways safer. What makes roadways safer, over time, are the famous three “E”s of Vision Zero: Engineering (designing streets with protected bike lanes so they are safer for all users), education (reminding consumers that devices like the illegal scooter that was implicated in last week’s crash are, indeed, illegal) and enforcement (which means taking away such scooters whenever they are found).

There’s vast common ground there, but it doesn’t include demonizing parents who choose an electric bike instead of a car so they can schlep their kids to school or soccer practice.

In other news:

• Speaking of that horrific Queens Boulevard crash, the Post’s news pages had some new details.
• Penn Station fires are a really bad look as we get close to the World Cup. (NY Times, Gothamist)
• Mayor Mamdani took a bike ride on Sunday, but the Post can’t believe that people can do that a helmet or wearing a suit (hypocrisy alert: the Post will be the first to call out Mamdani for not wearing a suit to some event).
• The Post covered Council Member Lincoln Restler’s protest against judges who park inside a Brooklyn park.
• Streetsblog and Business Insider looked at Mamdani’s housing plan.
• The Atlantic asked the question we were all asking during the three-day LIRR union strike. The answer? This is not a union that progressives need to support (and it’s just as well, perhaps, as those union members vote GOP, as the Post reported)
• Brass is the new gold in Prospect Park. (Gothamist)
• Council Speaker Julie Menin wants the Mamdani administration to spend more to protect workers. (amNY)
• The Times got around to covering the new Penn Station design.
• Uber invented the bus. (NY Times)
• Politicians can always seem to find more money for more cops … and the Post is always a cheerleader.
• The mayor and former state Sen. Daniel Squadron will discuss state legislatures at the New York Public Library next Monday night. Details here.
• Wow, DUMBO really sounds over-run. (Curbed)
• Well, they always said we’ve have flying cars by now. (NY Times)
• I was on the “Not In My Backyard” live show last week with Betsy Plum, Ben Furnas and hosts Cody Lindquist and Charlie Todd, so if you missed it (or just want to relive the majesty of Furnas’s “bike curious” lifestyle), here’s the podcast link.
• And Managing Editor David Meyer made a cameo in Miser’s latest video, a joyful look at the new 31st Street bike lane in Queens: