During a panel discussion I participated in the other day, a member of the audience asked a version of question I get all the time: Why should we support active transportation if no one bikes in bad weather? I live in the Pacific Northwest, and the bike lane’s always empty when it rains — how is that “essential infrastructure”? I gave some variation on my usual two-minute answer — a lot of people do bike in the rain, even if they do so less, and we can do a lot more through policy and culture to increase those numbers. But there’s more to that answer. The truth is, the relationship betwee ..read more

The MTA will promote its Vice President of Paratransit Chris Pangilinan to oversee bus and subway operations at New York City Transit — where he hopes to use his experience as a rider, advocate and planner to end the scourge of rushing to catch a scheduled bus only for it to never show up. “I’ve seen vendors out there that have different approaches to the way they tackle transit data in real time, and make adjustments so that you minimize the occurrence of these so-called ‘ghost buses,'” Pangilinan told Streetsblog on Thursday. “I really want to dive into this and learn the number of reasons t ..read more

The days of the Landmarks Preservation Commission reviewing every proposed bus shelter in districts under its jurisdiction could soon be over — or at least greatly diminished. That’s according to new rules proposed by the LPC to waive the commission’s current requirement that its members vote to approve any new bus shelter at a bus stop, as long as the shelter’s design has approval from the city’s Public Design Commission. Members of the public have a chance to chime in on the proposed policy change at the LPC’s May 9 hearing, via email to nycrules@lpc.nyc.gov, on the city’s online rules porta ..read more

New York City will finally be able to lower its own speed limits for the first time in a decade, as state leaders are slated to pass the so-called Sammy’s Law in the upcoming budget on Friday, according to Gov. Hochul — but the hard-fought rule change will exempt some of the most dangerous roads in the outer boroughs. Sammy’s Law — named after 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was killed by a driver steps from his Brooklyn home in 2013 — will allow New York City to reduce its maximum speed limit from 25 to 20 miles per hour. “I cannot wait to hug Sammy’s family and we’ll do an official sig ..read more

Editor’s note: On Tuesday, Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff testified in favor of two City Council bills to limit noise from helicopter flights over New York City. But those city bills — Intro 26 and Intro 70 — are opposed by the Adams administration and may not pass. If they don’t, there’s another way to reduce some of the aural assault, he argues in this op-ed. Here’s a surefire way to curb helicopter noise over New York: tax it. Not the noise, per se, but the flights that generate it.  State bills by Sen. Kirsten Gonzalez and Assembly Member B ..read more

Believe it or not, our favorite story yesterday was this editorial in Scientific American that felt like it could have been written by Streetsblog. Under the headline, “We Need to Make Cities Less Car-Dependent,” the large-brained academics proceeded to check most of our boxes about the deleterious effect of cars on our society: The death toll from autos in the U.S. is widely out of scale with other Western democracies? Check. Better design can solve that? Check. We need to invest in transit to give people more safe and efficient options? Check. Land use policy plays a role in car-dependence ..read more

Long Island real estate tycoon, MTA board rep and congestion pricing foe David Mack drives over the transportation authority’s bridges and tunnels for free nearly every day thanks to a rare perk — but says his constant free rides have nothing to do with his opposition to congestion pricing. Mack is one of three board members grandfathered into a program that allows them free crossing on any of the MTA’s five bridges and two tunnels — something he claims is necessary to do “reconnaissance” in his “management” role as the chair of the board’s Bridges and Tunnels committee. “Every day I’m there ..read more

Congestion pricing is coming, and Upper West Siders are fretting about a supposed “parkmageddon” caused by drivers who want to avoid paying a toll to enter Manhattan’s Central Business District. But the parking crunch in residential parts of Manhattan long pre-dates the as-yet-unimplemented tolls. The real villain: Most curb parking is free. On the Upper West Side, that means that 222,000 residents competing for 12,300 free curb parking spaces — 18 residents per free parking spot (and that’s not even taking into account the nonresidents who want to park at the curb when they drive to the Upper ..read more

It’s Giuliani time! A New York Times scoop that Mayor Adams intends to put Randy Mastro — a former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani and notorious foe of bike lanes and congestion pricing — in charge of the city’s Law Department has quickly raised concerns of a pro-car, Republican, corporate voice in the core of Hizzoner’s inner circle. Mastro is well known to Streetsblog readers as the man who was so offended by the Prospect Park West bike lane that he worked pro bono to stop it. More recently, he has made his name as a corporate lawyer with such clients as Amazon and Verizon, leading then-Gov ..read more

Cops park their personal vehicles and squad cars on the sidewalk outside precinct station houses — and one Brooklyn community board can’t figure out what to do or say about it. At its monthly meeting last Thursday, Community Board 2’s Transportation and Public Safety Committee took up the scofflaw behavior of New York’s Finest at the 88th Precinct in Clinton Hill, yet couldn’t even find a way to decisively condemn the officers who dump their vehicles in hand-painted spots on the Classon Avenue sidewalk. Cop cars leave little room outside the 88th Precinct on Classon Avenue. The angle-parked ve ..read more