Noah Kazis

On Tuesday, we reported the state budget included a requirement for a forensic audit of the MTA. That information was incorrect. The document we took that information from was the State Senate's one-house version of the budget bill, not the final version approved by the full legislature. The budget bill that ultimately made its way to the governor's desk did not include any audit requirement.

Since 2009, Albany has stolen roughly $260 million dollars from dedicated transit funds in an attempt to plug the state government's enormous deficits. Those cuts have wreaked havoc upon the MTA's budget, precipitating major service cuts and fare hikes.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Last Thursday evening, Manhattan Community Board 2 voted down five of six approved pop-up cafés in their neighborhood, choosing parking spaces over public seating.

An SUV driver hit and injured a delivery cyclist at the intersection of Dean Street and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn at around 10 p.m. last night. Photos sent to us by reader Wayne Bailey, who came across the scene shortly after the collision, seem to show that the cyclist was on his way to deliver food when he was hit and thrown over the hood of the car with enough force to shatter the windshield.

Upper West Side residents want to make Central Park once again a welcoming place for recreational cyclists, based on the near-unanimous position of Community Board 7's parks and transportation committees at a joint meeting last night. But with the NYPD intransigently committed to its ticketing blitz and DOT unwilling to pay for changes to the traffic signals in the park, it's not clear how to move forward. Some bright news is on the horizon for cyclists hoping to use Central Park for transportation, however: Two east-west routes through the northern end of the park should open this summer.

The first court date for the Prospect Park West lawsuit has been pushed back two months. Though Brooklyn Civil Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan was originally scheduled to begin hearing the case tomorrow, the case is now scheduled for May 18, according to the court system's online information.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The MTA will not lose another $170 million in budget negotiations, according to the office of Jim Brennan, who chairs the Assembly's authorities committee.

DOT presented plans for two Long Island City street redesigns to Queens Community Board 2's transportation committee last night. One, a standard road diet, would calm traffic on 44th Drive by replacing one moving lane in each direction with a painted median and left turn bays [PDF]. The other, a novel design for a single block of 48th Avenue, manages to make four of six lanes into on-street parking [PDF].