Michael Bloomberg

As we reported this morning, Mayor Bloomberg is in California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a major policy announcement on a major, long-term, environmental sustainability initiative. The key components of the Mayor's plan include:

In California With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Today's Times Select, a subscriber-only web site, has published a lengthy manifesto on New York City traffic and transportation by Carolyn Curiel. It urges Mayor Bloomberg to listen to the ideas being generated by the Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief, and suggests that his legacy depends on it. Increasingly, one gets the sense that the groundwork is being laid for the Mayor to come out with a major announcement on this issue. We've re-published the article in-full and below are some choice excerpts:

As reported in today's Observer a team working under Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has, for the last year or so, been secretly developing a sweeping, new urban planning vision for New York City. In its scope and ambition, the Observer compares the plan to the 1811 layout of Manhattan's street grid system and the 1929 Regional Plan that gave us many of today's highways and parks.

Matthew Scheuerman in today's New York Observer runs a meaty cover story about secret efforts underway in City Hall to build a foundation for a more livable city. This is a big story and there is a lot more that has yet to come out. Stay tuned:

A Broken Street: Broadway north of Houston St. on an August Friday. New Yorkers want the Mayor to fix it.

The Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg made his first public statements about U.S. oil dependency on his radio show last week:

Mayor Bloomberg offered a depressing-yet-enlightening dose of complacency about the city's traffic crunch this morning. Speaking at Museum of the City of New York's construction kickoff, Bloomberg explained that he'd arrived late because he'd been "huddled with Con Ed" to monitor power usage during the heatwave. After carping a bit about residents turning up their air conditioners at night, he turned to traffic. Normally he blames traffic for his tardiness, he noted, adding:

In today's New York Sun Bradley Hope scoops up the first follow-up interview with former DOT Bicycle Program Director Andrew Vesselenovitch after his controversial resignation letter. Vesselenovitch has a big story to tell and I have a feeling that this isn't the last we've heard of it: