Manhattan

 Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, will be in New York next week, with a number of events on Monday culminating in an evening appearance at Fordham University. Here's a rundown.

Penn Station concourse under West 33rd Street

A truck driver opened his door into the path of a 63-year-old cyclist this morning, sending him into traffic, where he was run over by another truck. Though the cyclist, who has yet to be identified, was conscious immediately following the collision, he was later pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

It looks like 5th Precinct Commanding Officer Gin Yee, the Sheriff of Chinatown, is laying down the law once again. A Streetsblog tipster spotted these tow trucks as they were removing government placard abusers from their illegal parking spots in Chinatown. While it's refreshing to see the police "towing their own," the tipster notes that as soon as the trucks pulled away a new group of placard abusing government employees swooped in to claim the empty parking spaces.

MTA Deputy Director of Media Relations, Jeremy Soffin, sends this along:

We're just catching up to this piece of good news in The Villager last week:

This scene was photographed by Flickr photographer BicyclesOnly on Saturday. Read his note below. Hopefully someone will ask members of Manhattan Community Board 8's transportation committee if this sort of car crash meets their rigorous aesthetic standards. Last January, CB8 rejected a proposal to physically protect Park Avenue's pedestrian refuge areas because they didn't think bollards, barriers or planters could be made to look pretty enough. Streetsblog readers will also remember CB8's transportation committee as the group that tried to kill DOT's crosstown bike route plan for the Upper East Side last summer. It looks like CB8 is still trying to kill it. The 91st Street bike lane is on the agenda of their December 10 meeting: 

Apparently parallel parking doesn't count for much in the NASCAR leader standings. Or maybe it does and that's why Elliott Sadler, the driver of car #19, angle-parked across the Sixth Avenue bike lane in Midtown this morning, is currently ranked 25th. (ADD: I just noticed that Elliott is also parked in front of a fire hydrant).