Tuesday’s Headlines: Doubly Disappointed Edition

Back in June, we reset our “Mamdani-O-Meter” — which counts the number of “days since the mayor disappointed the livable streets movement” — to zero, and pledged to keep it there until Mayor Mamdani fulfilled his campaign promise to restore the three blocks of protected bike lanes his predecessor removed from Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

Fifty-seven days later, the Bedford Avenue bike lane remains unprotected and the meter remains at zero — even as more disappointments pile up.

The latest? Mamdani’s apparent refusal to even engage with the idea of tearing down the city-owned portion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In a video posted on Monday, Hizzoner referenced Robert Moses’s “vision of building highways across New York City for a population that more and more wanted to drive their own cars” — before announcing his plans to shore up one of those highways for another 50 years. (Read the latest from Streetsblog on the subject here.)

But Monday’s disappointments didn’t stop there: After hit-and-run drivers killed three cyclists in three days last week, advocates called on Hizzoner to put out a “comprehensive plan” to reduce traffic fatalities and get the city back on track to its “Vision Zero” goal of eliminating them entirely. But when Streetsblog pressed the mayor on Monday for his next steps — and whether he still thought “zero” was achievable — he responded with rote talking points:

“I still support Vision Zero. I still support any initiative that we have to reduce the number of crashes across the city and to ensure that there is no longer a hierarchy of safety based on what mode of transit you’re using. Whether you’re a pedestrian, a cyclist, a driver, a public transit ride, you should be entitled to the same level of safety. And so one of the things that I’ve spoken [about] with my deputy mayor for operations, with our DOT commissioner, is how do we implement the changes to the streetscape that also understand the ways in which we are either incentivizing or disincentivizing safe choices made by New Yorkers? And so a lot of this is actually delivering on the protected bike lanes that we have seen forgotten over many years in our city, as well as delivering more bus lanes and busways, and bringing the first bus rapid transit corridor to Flatbush [Avenue] by 2030. These are all different steps that we’re taking to address this. However, as you said, it is something that is immensely concerning, because we’re talking about fatal consequences, and families whose lives are irrevocably changed.”

There’s a lot to like about the above comments — the mayor is right that every road user “should be entitled to the same level of safety.” And his commitment to improving bus service is unprecedented in the history of New York City mayors.

But the comments fell short of the asks of advocates who’ve planned “die-in” protest for Wednesday outside City Hall. Mamdani’s pledge to “deliver the protected bike lanes that we have seen forgotten over many years in our city” alluded to the failures of his predecessor — even as he upholds Eric Adams’s car-first decision on Bedford Avenue.

The mayor’s mention of bus lanes and busways, meanwhile, missed the point entirely: Transportation Alternatives has called for a “comprehensive all-of-government safety plan from City Hall.” Instead, the mayor riffed on what his administration has already planned for buses, treating safety as a associated benefit of his well-articulated transit agenda.

After a spate of cyclist deaths in 2019, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio released his “Green Wave” plan to dramatically expand safe cycling infrastructure. The plan had its own shortcomings, but still attempted to meet the moment. Amid continued carnage, Mamdani will have to come up with something better.

In other news:

• The Oculus turned 10 years old, but does anyone shop there? (Curbed)
• Sean Duffy’s U.S. DOT reality show is littered with ethically dubious sponsored content. (Politico)
• An NYPD tow lot contractor knowingly paved over a 19th century Black burial ground. (The City Reporter)
• An Upper East Side restaurant is getting sued for allegedly making the bike lane outside its storefront “slippery.” (Upper East Site)
• Don’t expect Brooklyn Heights neighborhood groups to get behind the mayor’s BQE plan (Gothamist)
• Mayor Mamdani launched a “renew crews” to address maintenance and other issues in city parks. (PIX11)
• Unlicensed vendors are back on the Brooklyn Bridge, The Post reports.
• Rodneyse Bichotte’s attempted Brooklyn Democratic Party coup is scheduled for tonight and even Chuck Schumer is against it. (The City Reporter)
• One of New Jersey’s most dangerous roads is getting safety fixes. (Gothamist)
• The Staten Island Advance used drones to make some very silly claims about bus lanes “pushing cars … across the double-yellow solid line.”