Wednesday’s Headlines: Come On, Gale Edition

With Gale Brewer, the but starts here.

Readers of Streetsblog know we love the Upper West Side Council member, who has been in government in one office or another since 1975. She’s a pro. Her newsletter is a must-read, even if you live miles from her district. She respects reporters and the job we do. If every lawmaker was like Gale Brewer, our Republic would, you know, survive.

But readers also know we have loooong had issues with how she goes about governing, specifically the manner in which she appears to be on the right side of an issue, but then says the absolute nuttiest things to show that she’s not on the right side of said issue at all.

We saw it with daylighting, we saw it with the 96th Street bus lane, we saw it on e-bikes, and Komanoff saw it on congestion pricing. Consistently, the Democrat says she supports safe streets, but then also consistently defends free parking and other driver subsidies that make our city demonstrably worse.

On Tuesday, she did it again. At a Council oversight hearing on the city’s plan to containerize trash — which has the universally lauded goal of hindering rats and creating more space for pedestrians — Brewer claimed she supports the so-called Empire Bins.

Wait for the “but” …

“I do support the implementation, but only if the on-street containers are sited with the feedback of local leaders and community boards,” she said. “Parking is an issue! I know that you could say on the Upper West Side we have two lines of subways, we have buses. People still want their cars. I don’t have a car, but people want them for family member needs, medical needs, leisure.”

Then she reiterated a truly insane ask: “I support the placement of the Empire Bins, but only with local input.”

Imagine the sclerosis clogging our civic heart if government needed to come before the community board to debate every single location for a street trash bin, a single flower pot, a single pollinator garden, a single street seat or a single curb cut.

We already have the public safety molasses of the “Major Transportation Project” law, Gale. Do you really want to be the champion of the “minor” one?

In other news:

• Fare evasion continues to be a problem on the bus. But there’s another way of looking at it: The bus is an essential form of transportation for more and more New Yorkers. (Bloomberg)
• Could this upstart make Uber and Lyft “Throo” in the towel? (NY Times)
• Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal wants to hear your opinions about public space on the Upper West Side. Click here.
• Tell me you’re an Upper East Sider who hasn’t been to Harlem in more than a year without telling me. (Upper East Site)
• The Post got a second day from the ATV takeover on Long Island.
• Miser took a ride with Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn. (Reddit)
• The only time cops at the 44th Precinct in The Bronx clear the sidewalk of their illegally parked cars is … when they have a perp walk! (YouTube)
• Big changes are coming to weekend subway service on the West Side. (West Side Rag)
• If I were LeBron James, I would just live in Philadelphia instead of having to read all these hot takes about his alleged commute from New York City to the Sixth Borough for every home game. (Defector)
• Driving is really dangerous. (NY Post)
• Streetsblog really really really got scooped here. (NY Times)
• And, finally, we have spent a lot of time in these pages over the last few weeks debunking and pushing back on the New York Post’s revolting pro-car revanchism, so sometimes it’s nice to show that we’re not the only members of the media trying to keep Murdoch’s minions honest, though we don’t generally cover the paper’s reprehensible politicization of 9/11 pain: