Thursday’s Headlines: Lehrer’s Essential Blindness Edition

Brian Lehrer outdid himself on his broadcast yesterday with a biased, incomplete, embittered and intellectually dishonest segment that was purportedly about “Making Safer Streets Following Three E-Biker Deaths,” but turned into yet another Lehrer broadside against e-bike users.

The segment opened with Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas offering what we all know to be the solution to our ongoing road-safety problem: redesigning streets to limit the damage that car drivers do, slowing drivers down with reduced speed limits or speed governors, encouraging cycling and, yes, cracking down on illegally operated devices, whether on two or four wheels.

But then the segment went off the rails. When Furnas’s audio started crackling, Lehrer switched to taking calls, telling listeners, “You’re going to notice a pattern here.” The pattern? That people only want to talk about the danger of e-bikes.

Except, they didn’t. The very first caller made a point about street safety that didn’t exactly match Lehrer’s agenda, so the host cut him off to go to “the other nine lines” that were filled with callers on hold wanting to complain about e-bikes.

But the next caller didn’t really make a point about e-bikes either, so Lehrer cut him off, too, saying, “You’re starting to see the pattern, listeners,” before going to another caller who wanted to talk about the danger faced by cyclists not the danger caused by them. Frustrated, Lehrer said the thinking part out loud: “You wanted to make a point about e-bikes, you told our screener …?” But the caller didn’t really make the point, so Lehrer cut him off, too.

Furnas came back on and Lehrer told him, “It wasn’t as clear a bang, bang, bang point that I thought I was going to make, but here’s the point, Ben: We have 10 lines. They’re all full with people. We invited you because of the news that three e-bike riders were killed by hit-and-run car drivers, but all 10 of our lines are calling to say, ‘Oh my god, these e-bikes, they’re such a hazard.'”

Except, again, they weren’t! And Lehrer wasn’t happy! When a caller named Santiago said he rides a pedal-assist e-bike and that car drivers and illegal e-motos are the real danger, Lehrer stopped him and accused him of lying to the call screener. “You told my screener you thought e-bikes should be banned. Did you try to sneak your way in because you didn’t think we would take your call?”

He told Lehrer no — he’s scared of illegal high-speed motorized vehicles, but he’s most terrified of cars and trucks.

Lehrer also disgraced himself by reading points from the E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, an anti-cycling group that opposes efforts to rein in cars with street safety redesigns that have decades of proven success. To Lehrer in his rage about e-bikes, this is a safety group.

After the show, I asked Furnas whether Lehrer’s personal relationship with a pedestrian who was struck and injured by the rider of an e-bike has clouded his ability to see what is truly causing danger on our streets. Furnas didn’t want to demean Lehrer, a powerful media figure, but he was disappointed in the show.

“It’s sad and frustrating when we sort of lose sight that the number one reason why people don’t make it home at the end of the day is because of speeding, dangerous car and truck drivers all over the city, more than 60 [pedestrian deaths] so far this year,” Furnas told me. “That familiar, everyday tragedy fades into the background [because of] the new challenge of high-speed, illegal devices, and we get excessively focused on those things because they are new and different. … The fundamental danger is speeding cars and trucks, and we need to stay there.

Lehrer has had a long career at the pinnacle of New York media. It’s time for him to go out on top, like all the greats do.

The Lehrer show was particularly outrageous, given that it aired only a few hours before Transportation Alternatives held a “die-in” at City Hall Park to mourn the 18 cyclists who have been killed so far this year, the most since 2023. At the event, I ran into Harlem resident Carolyn Kelly, who said she was moved to attend her first die-in after reading Streetsblog’s coverage of the recent spate of killings. She commutes by bike from Central Harlem to Lower Manhattan on a mostly safe route that dumps her on Chambers Street for the last stretch.

She wanted the mayor to know how dangerous the streets feel.

“Every day, I wonder if this is going to be the day that I die on Chambers Street,” she told me.

I asked what she specifically wants from this mayor.

“Let’s take out the bike map and all that stuff in blue and purple — let’s make it all green,” she said, referring to painted bike lanes (blue on the map) and sharrows (purple lines). “If it ain’t green, it is worthless. Sharrows are a terrifying joke and painted bike lanes are worthless. Parking enforcement should be done by DOT because we can’t trust the police to protect cyclists. My life is worthless to them as soon as I’m on a bike. We should do this die-in at my local precinct.”

About 100 people attended the die-in, most lying down on City Hall Plaza as a bagpiper blew mournful tunes. Eighteen people volunteered to stand, each holding the name of one of the killed cyclists.

Unmentioned at the event — or, notably, on the Lehrer show — were the 2,885 cyclists injured this year (up 2.2 percent from last year), the 668 e-bike riders injured this year (up 28 percent) or the 982 stand-up scooter riders injured (up 32 percent). The vast majority of those people were injured by car drivers, just as all of the 58 pedestrians who have been killed this year were killed by car drivers (like 61-year-old Jing Wang, as QNS reported).

Meanwhile, you know there’s a Vision Zero crisis going on when a Staten Island Republican is calling for City Hall to undertake more safety initiatives, so let’s give a shout-out to Council Member Frank Morano, linking to an excellent Elizabeth Kim story in Gothamist:

I reached out to City Hall for comment and will update this story if I hear back.

In other news:

• Speaking of die-ins, let’s get ready for the next one: A judge has temporarily blocked the DOT’s construction of protected bike lanes on Brooklyn and Kingston avenues, one of many Adams-era projects that Mayor Mamdani has restarted and completed. Judges frequently issue temporary restraining orders until they can fully review a project, but they rarely end up overruling the DOT, which has broad control over street design. But this TRO is troubling because, as Crown Heights News reported, the judge is this case, Rachel Freier, “provides a meaningful sense of reassurance” because she “understands the [Hasidic] community’s way of life and the practical concerns facing its families.” Oy vey. (We reached out to DOT spokesperson Will Livingston, who said, “The redesign of Brooklyn and Kingston avenues will enhance safety for all road users, including students from more than 10 schools within one block of the project area. We stand by this safety project and will defend our work in court.”)
• With the Council’s Sept. 30 e-bike hearing looming, the mayor and Council Speaker Julie Menin are on a collision course over Citi Bike age verification, says amNY.
• Hell Gate’s analysis of the New York Times recent interview with Gov. Hochul is a key brick in the outlet’s nearly completed foundation wall documenting the Gray Lady’s vendetta against Mayor Mamdani.
• Hell Gate also revealed NYPD officers’ vendetta against the mayor.
• Former TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus reiterates in an amNY op-ed that the city must make sure that illegal e-motos are not operating on the streets. We liked his arguments (and if you read Streetsblog, they’ll sound awfully familiar to you).
• How do direct trains to Montauk sound? (Gothamist)
• Free this Midtown public plaza! (amNY)
• Carnage on the ever-dangerous Belt Parkway. (NY Post)
• State Sen. John Liu cut a ribbon on a loading zone — that’s how desperate this city is for streets clear of double-parked delivery trucks. (QNS)
• And, finally, at Streetsblog, we have long favored the use of cargo bikes instead of big delivery trucks because … obvs. But the efficiency and safety of these new delivery vehicles will eventually overwhelm the bike lanes, so DOT had better build more protected infrastructure for these slow, safe pedal-assist delivery vehicles. They’re much better than trucks: