Michael Bloomberg

Potential residential parking permit stickers, curbside regulations, and David Yassky.

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler (in back), Mayor Bloomberg, Boerum Hill Association President Sue Wolfe and Council Member David Yassky.

With less than four weeks remaining for the city to meet the $354 million federal deadline, lawmakers are positioning themselves on one side of the other of the congestion pricing debate, as state and city prime movers quietly ready for "negotiations."

The Daily Politics reports that Congressman Anthony Weiner is ramping up for an imminent mayoral bid by crediting Michael Bloomberg with "put[ting] the last nail in the coffin to the notion that New York City is ungovernable." But at the same time, during an appearance at Kingsborough Community College today, Weiner tried to score points off congestion pricing by framing it as a plan that an experienced politician like himself would steer clear of.

On Tuesday the Bloomberg administration announced record low traffic deaths from 2000 to 2007, and claimed, if not in so many words, that city streets are safer than ever. But the numbers, included on a chart that accompanied this media release, also indicated that 23 cyclists died in 2007. That would make last year -- according to the data released Tuesday, at least -- the deadliest for riders in the eight year period shown.

 Traffic fatalities in 2007 were at their lowest level since the city began keeping records almost 100 years ago, according to data released today by the Bloomberg administration. However, while the number of pedestrian fatalities last year dropped sharply percentage-wise from 2006, down to roughly one death every two-and-a-half days, cyclist fatalities were up, and pedestrian and cyclist deaths combined accounted for 58.6 percent of the 271 total traffic deaths, the highest such percentage in the past eight years.

Move over, Ted Kheel. On the eve of the Congestion Mitigation Commission deadline to sign off on some form of congestion pricing, Lew Fidler tells the Observer he will introduce his own 9 CARAT STONE plan to his colleagues on the City Council tomorrow.

With Michael Bloomberg expressing doubts about an apparently favored proposal to move the congestion pricing boundary south to 60th Street, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican challenged the mayor yesterday to get behind the Kheel free transit plan.

The following was contributed by Samuel I. Schwartz, AKA Gridlock Sam.