Monday’s Headlines: Expert Advice Edition

The big story last week was that the mayor’s commission to reform the city charter, the Commission on Government Efficiency, released its five proposed ballot questions. Lots of outlets, such as The City Reporter covered it, but Streetsblog narrowly focused on Ballot Question 3, which would speed up street safety projects by curtailing months of debate and inter-agency paperwork.

Our coverage was straightforward. The main point of the reform, of course, is to allow Department of Transportation experts to devise the safest ways to design and redesign our streets, after more-than-enough consultation with other agencies whose work may be affected by streetscape alterations.

Nothing in the ballot proposal eliminates consultation. But the question that will be on the ballot in November asks voters if they want to speed up the process, given that time is money. The more time that DOT spends consulting with every single member of every community board and seeking approval from every little block association or every single firehouse for every single three-block bike lane is less time the DOT has to actually implement such changes.

Which, of course, is what opponents of bike and bus lanes want. Immediately after the COGE ballot questions went live, a panoply of revanchists raised their voices to defend … the current failed system of delays and danger. I’ve rounded up the best comments so you know what the livable streets movement and DOT is dealing with. First, here’s Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella:

Problem is, Fossella is simply wrong: The proposal does not eliminate agency collaboration. In fact, it still requires it. It simply allows DOT to confer with top agency officials rather than … every junior firefighter in every firehouse in town. The FDNY will still provide input, but from the top.

Next up was Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson:

Sorry, Beep, but the notion that randos on a community board are more informed about road design than the experts at DOT may be a comforting thought to you, but how does it sound when it comes to fighting fires? Or picking up trash? Or investigating homicides? Or ensuring that building designs are certified by engineers?

Oh, suddenly your vision of a city run by community board laymen doesn’t sound so good anymore, does it? And if it still does, then let’s mandate community board involvement in policing (and punishing rogue cops). Oh, not interested in that? I thought so.

Gibson’s tirade was seconded by Council Member Joann Ariola, the Queens Republican and firefighting expert, who is so bent out of shape by the proposals that she actually believes that “Metro Tech” (aka, the FDNY brass) has been seized by the bike lobby:

It is to laugh: If the FDNY actually gave a tinker’s cuss about bike lanes and bus lanes, they’d be championing Streetsblog’s call for smaller fire trucks (to get through our traffic-clogged streets better) and for boosting protected bike lanes (which become an emergency lane for EMTs and firefighters). But FDNY doesn’t support either, so frankly, I have no way of know what she’s talking about.

And, finally, some Assembly Member from Queens (there are so many of them, forgive me for not having ever heard this guy’s name before) offered a prescription for breaking New York City up into little walled medieval fiefdoms:

Imagine the city of Assembly Member Sam Berger’s dream: his neighborhood could decide to not allow cyclists to use any roads, while my neighbors in Windsor Terrace could decide we’re sick of car drivers speeding through our neighborhoods. After all, no one ever asked us back in the 1930s if we wanted car drivers to have access to every inch of our neighborhood. No one asked us if we wanted the 15-block scar of the Prospect Expressway to be cut through our neighborhood to create a car sewer that spills its metal effluvia onto Ocean Parkway, turning a once-beautiful boulevard into a deathtrap (268 people injured last year and four killed). Would Sam Berger let me and my neighbors shut it down? Didn’t think so.

In other news:

• More road rage, first in Fort Greene (NYDN) and on the Belt Parkway (NY Post).
• Here’s a reminder from New Jersey that licensing and registering electric bikes is both confusing and doesn’t do anything for safety. (NJ.com)
• My trick ankle says the weather people are over-reacting, but be ready for some rain on Tuesday. (WPIX11)
• Greenpoint businesses are still upset about necessary track work on the G. (Greenpointers)
• The Times looks at rivals to Uber and Lyft. Our favorite, the subway, wasn’t mentioned at all.
• There was a illegal dirt bike takeover in Long Island, but we’re sure somehow legal e-bikes will be blamed. (Gothamist)
• The Daily News offered an update on the Central Park jogger who was recently struck by a cyclist that had the predictable “ban bikes” agenda, but also included a really nice quote from a cyclist: “What I don’t want is this sort of NIMBY backlash. Suddenly the whole city gets their super-environmentally friendly and efficient form of transport gone because of a few NIMBYs. An overreaction like that would be really a mistake,” Julian Kates-Harbeck said as he hopped on an e-bike.
• Curbed followed our World Cup angle.
• It turns out that President Trump really did slash federal grants to Democrat-controlled states. (NY Times)
• Prospect Heights drivers get a reprieve from moving their cars for street cleaning. What could possibly go wrong. (Gothamist)
• Fast bus lessons for Mayor Mamdani from DC. (The 51st)
• A cyclist was run down and critically injured by a driver on the bridge to City Island. (NYDN)
• Here’s a really disgusting story about people whose cars are housed with more dignity than most Americans. (NY Times)
• Our colleague Clarence Eckerson Jr. enjoyed the first of five Summer Streets Saturdays, this one in Queens. Here is his report:

• And, finally, someone needs to buy the Daily News or just put it out of our misery: