Trucks

Melanie Canon, a doctor based in East Harlem, was the first person to aid 6-year-old Amar Diarrassouba after he has fatally struck by a tractor-trailer driver Thursday morning. The New York Times' City Room blog published her wrenching account today.

A 7-year-old boy was killed by a truck driver this morning while walking to school in East Harlem. While no charges were filed against the driver, police and media are focused on the actions of a crossing guard, who was reportedly on a break when the crash occurred.

Gothamist reports that a private dump truck driver ran over and killed a woman this afternoon in Manhattan:

The cyclist killed Tuesday by a truck driver on Bedford Avenue has been identified by NYPD as Emma Blumstein, 24.

An informal survey conducted by the Daily News suggests that many trucking companies and truck drivers are ignoring the state's four-month-old crossover mirror law, and that police are not enforcing the safety measure.

Federal safety officials missed their own deadline Friday for making new rules about dangerous trucks.

Speaking at the Municipal Art Society's annual summit this afternoon, outgoing Port Authority chief Chris Ward said he wouldn't be sending any parting shots at the New York region's leaders, but he didn't hold back from proposing some big and bold ideas. With only a few weeks left at the Port Authority, Ward issued a call for the construction of a cross-harbor freight tunnel and a rail freight distribution system for the city, as well as the abandonment of container shipping at the Red Hook terminal in Brooklyn.

Streetsblog has been gathering responses to yesterday's release of PlaNYC 2.0. This is the second installment. Read the first part here.

The fight for scarce street space is always fierce in New York City, and as DOT's efforts to install bike and bus lanes across the city have revealed, the most contested zone of all is probably the curbside. On commercial streets, drivers can't get enough of the underpriced on-street parking while businesses want curbside access to load and unload deliveries. The result is rampant double-parking, cruising, and ultimately congestion -- slowing down buses and creating more dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. In some cases, local displeasure about curbside dysfunction manifests itself as opposition to seemingly unrelated livable streets improvements, like the Fifth Avenue bike lane in Park Slope.