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Monday’s Headlines: Gelacio Reyes Memorial Edition
We want to start by thanking volunteers and Transportation Alternatives for Sunday's memorial ride to mark the second anniversary of the death of Gelacio Reyes, the father of three and delivery worker who was killed on then-unprotected 43rd Avenue in Queens in 2017. Reyes's death remains an open wound for his friends and family, but it did leave a lasting legacy: the roadway now features a protected bike lane — the result of activism in the face of a Sunnyside community board that preferred on-street car storage to safety for residents who chose to get around by bike. Kudos to the mayor and the DOT for overruling the board and bringing sanity to that little slice of heaven in Queens.
April 8, 2019
Friday’s Headlines: A Newsy Flushing Avenue Update Edition
To paraphrase the Ramones, "DDC did a job on me." Yes, it's time for our latest Flushing Avenue update. As we reported in September, the transformation of Flushing Avenue from a terribly unsafe place for cyclists into an oasis with a two-way, fully protected bike lane, was supposed to be done by this month.
April 5, 2019
Thursday’s Headlines: De Blasio’s Big Dig Edition
The big news yesterday was broken by Dana Rubinstein at Politico: Mayor de Blasio had thrown out his own Department of Transportation's plan for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in favor of creating a panel of experts to come up with something better. We likened it to what Gov. Cuomo did with his own experts' plan for the L train fix. For a split second, we worried if we'd gone too far. And then the Twittersphere confirmed that maybe we didn't go far enough!
April 4, 2019
Wednesday’s Headlines: For Whom the Toll Tolls Edition
That was fast. Roughly one day after New York State made history by setting up a congestion pricing cordon around Manhattan's central business district, the backlash began. We mentioned it in our story about the coming carveout crisis, but the Daily News's Clayton Guse devoted a whole story to a new Quinnipiac poll showing New Yorkers don't have much confidence that the tolls will work.
April 3, 2019
Tuesday’s Headlines: That Was Not a Demolition Derby Edition
Our favorite story yesterday was the video of that cop using his squad car as a battering ram in Flushing. The Daily News also covered the story, adding nice details, including one person whose truck ended up bashed in what New York's Hometown Paper definitively declared road rage (the NYPD said the cop become "disoriented." Sure, whatever).
April 2, 2019
Monday’s Headlines: Completely Real News Edition
A lot of outlets treat April 1 like it's a day to completely upend the basic tenet of journalism and instead run a bunch of stories that simply aren't true. But here at Streetsblog, we're dead serious about the truth, so we would obviously never stoop to printing fake stories on so-called April Fool's Day — no matter how perfectly they satirize the current road safety stasis from the de Blasio administration and the NYPD.
March 31, 2019
Friday’s Headlines: Yes, It’s Finally Spring Edition
The big news yesterday was that the Mets are clearly going all the way. The Yanks won, too.
March 29, 2019
Thursday’s Headlines: Calling It Like We See It Edition
Our reporters don't wear kid gloves and they don't pull punches. So we were very happy to see some positive results yesterday from some aggressive reporting earlier in the week. First, we learned that congestion pricing opponent Rodneyse Bichotte had flipped and is now a supporter of tolling drivers to enter central Manhattan. Then we learned that the MTA had backed away from the ledge of asking the NYPD to crack down on fare beaters — a trial balloon that we criticized as "bus and frisk" because of the Police Department's infamous legacy of stopping hundreds of thousands of people in minority communities even though they had done nothing wrong.
March 28, 2019
Wednesday’s Headlines: The Big News Today Really is Big
We kid you not: Today at City Hall, Council Member Robert Cornegy Jr. will be presented with a Guinness Book certificate for being the world's tallest male politician (NY Post and, wait, the Times did it too?). Cornegy, who played his college ball at St. John's, is certainly tall at 6-foot-10. But the tallest in the world? Streetsblog will ask the tough questions at the noon ceremony (or, more likely, we won't, as David Meyer will be covering a far more important hearing on placards at roughly the same time, and Julianne Cuba will be chasing a killer driver).
March 27, 2019
Tuesday’s Headlines: Sorry, Rodneyse, But Congestion Pricing is Passing Edition
The story of the day was Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's announcement that he had lined up enough votes to pass Gov. Cuomo's congestion pricing plan to raise billions for the subway system (sorry, Assenbly Member Bichotte). Streetsblog played it straight, as did NY1, the NY Post, the NY Daily News and amNY. Meanwhile, the Times put a broadly historic spin on it (hey, we used "historic" in the lede, too!). And the Wall Street Journal looked at the broader economic impact congestion pricing might have.
March 26, 2019