Today’s Headlines

It was an incredibly slow news day yesterday ... for the mainstream media, that is. We at Streetsblog were burning the (carbon-free) candle all day with stories about a woman run over by a reckless, uncharged driver, trouble for the 14th Street "busway," a great new speed camera bill from newly elected State Senator Andrew Gounardes and a story every other media outlet should pick up: How Mayor de Blasio's plan to build or buy parking for cops will fail on multiple levels.

Nothing gets tabloid blood racing more than hypocrisy by beloved politicians. So reporters at New York's tabloid of record, the New York Post, were right to go after Green New Dealer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her gas-guzzling transportation choices. Or were they? On Wednesday, Laura Bliss at City Lab took the longer, broader, more-intellectual view, concluding that it's a missed opportunity to focus on mocking our elected officials when they make the same missteps that we all make. Instead, we should all be working to make it easier for everyone to avoid the missteps in the first place.

We called it: Tuesday was Council Speaker's Corey Johnson's day. His "State of the City" address wasn't a broad overview of where we are as a metropolis: It was a stinging indictment of how Mayor de Blasio (and to a lesser extent Governor Cuomo) have handled transportation, the life blood of the city.

Council Speaker Corey Johnson will give a State of the City address (not to be confused with the State of the City address) this afternoon in Queens, but our own David Meyer spoiled some of the fun — so when Johnson mentions city control of the subway, click here for the primer. (NY1 also offered its own preview.)

So Mayor de Blasio gave all the public school kids a day off because of the snow, meaning that parents all over the city are scrambling to make alternate arrangements so they don't lose their jobs. We have to point out that this might not be happening if the mayor hadn't given free parking to 50,000 teachers, meaning they're far more likely to drive to work. No free parking means far less driving and far more safety for everyone, snow or no snow.

Wait a second: There's a kid's book about parking lots?

Wow, what a day. We got to watch the mayor get chauffeured from the Upper East Side to his Park Slope gym, then watch him walk two blocks to the subway (while someone else drove his car to City Hall), then watch him pitch his congestion pricing-MTA restructuring plan to straphangers, then be asked a softball question that only ended up revealing how rarely the mayor rides the subway, and then receive kudos from Streetsblog for finally getting on board with tolling drivers. Good times!

Yesterday was the much-loved busy news day, with the mayor begrudgingly admitting he supports congestion pricing, the governor unveiling an entirely new level of bureaucracy to run the MTA that he's run so poorly the last eight years, and Council Member Jumaane Williams finally earning his rising star status by winning the Public Advocate special election.

Vote today as if your life depended on it because, you never know, it may. Like, say your life depends on congestion pricing becoming a reality, you probably shouldn't vote for Eric Ulrich, who declined through a spokesperson to even fill out Streetsblog's candidate questionnaire ("Councilman Ulrich has been clear throughout this campaign that he is against congestion pricing because it would be a backdoor commuter tax on outer borough residents," the spokesperson said.)