Media Watch

A senior was killed by a motorist in Bensonhurst this weekend, and a Prospect Heights pedestrian who was struck by an alleged drunk driver earlier this month has died from her injuries.

It seems like the local press has run through so many permutations of the Citi Bike story that now it's time to recycle Citi Bike stories from a year ago.

Who can resist this tasty New York Times linkbait? Not us. The paper wants responses to this preposterous rant from reader Gary Taustine. Mr. Taustine sees Amsterdam, with its 32 percent bike mode-share and minuscule pedestrian death rate, as a cautionary tale for NYC, with its 1 percent bike mode-share and 150+ pedestrian deaths per year:

With New Yorkers lining up for Citi Bikes, the New York Times today unveiled a map asking for readers' wisdom on the city's best and worst bike routes. The map went live with advice from names Streetsblog readers might recognize, including our editor Ben Fried, transport economist Charles Komanoff, Brooklyn Spoke's Doug Gordon, writer Tom Vanderbilt, and advocate Hilda Cohen.

Again we have to hand it to the Wall Street Journal: They know link bait when they see it.

The Wall Street Journal schooled the world on how to generate pageviews with this instant classic of anti-bike insanity starring editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz. Approximately 3.4 million websites embedded this video before Streetsblog got around to it, and "Dorothy Rabinowitz" is still rocketing up the Twitter trend chart. Meanwhile, the Daily News posted an addled anti-bike conspiracy theory last night by someone named Jack Brown, and hardly anyone noticed.

Update: The Post and DNAinfo have identified the victims as Ariel Russo, 4, and her grandmother, Katia Gutierrez. The driver has been named as Franklin Reyes, 17. Correcting information released earlier today, NYPD now says Reyes has a record of one arrest, and it was not for robbery, according to the Post.

For the second time in less than a year, a cyclist has been killed by a motorist at the intersection of E. 108th Street and Park Avenue, in East Harlem.

I think I've figured out why, when it comes to allocating space on New York streets, the Daily News opinion team tends to take a position that's completely at odds with making the city a better place. The problem is that the Daily News opinion team doesn't understand how city streets function.