Adriano Espaillat

I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw that Adriano Espaillat had signed on in support of the Inwood slow zone application.

We wondered a few months back why Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, a supporter of congestion pricing, would side with the usual suspects in opposing Ravitch-backed East and Harlem River bridge tolls. At the time, Espaillat told Streetsblog readers that new tolls would place an unfair burden on his district, and blamed MTA financial woes on "contemptible bookkeeping and abject failure to control spending."

It was a little surprising to see Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, one of the few state electeds to support congestion pricing without reservation, come out so strongly against the Ravitch MTA rescue plan, and the tolling of East and Harlem River bridges in particular. Now we have this recent post from an e-mail list for Inwood parents:

Some residents of Inwood aren't happy with Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat's vocal opposition to bridge tolls on East and Harlem River bridges. On the neighborhood blog Inwoodite (maintained by yours truly), Espaillat constituents sounded off last week, with one pointing out the assemblyman's illegal parking habit -- as illustrated by the photo above, snapped last December by another Inwood blogger.

Last March, Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat stood with Mayor Bloomberg in Fordham Plaza, celebrating the announcement of the city's inaugural Select Bus Service line. In the thick of the battle over congestion pricing, its fate to be determined within days, Espaillat was one of few state pols to vocally support the mayor's proposal. Flanked by Bloomberg, Elliot Sander, Janette Sadik-Khan and other pricing advocates, the Northern Manhattan rep did not mince words.

Here's a dispatch from one of New York's little-known pedestrian-only streets. Residents of Inwood may see a decade of lobbying pay off over the next year, as the city last week announced the upcoming rehabilitation of the hazardous 215th Step-Street, a block-long staircase connecting Broadway to residential blocks at the northern tip of the neighborhood, along with Isham Park and Inwood Hill Park.