Bike zealot re-imagines "Fast Car"

 

Streetsblob 

 I headed over to Wegman's today on my $7,000 cargo bike to see if there were any Presidents Day sales on soy based meat. While browsing the aisles, Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" started playing on the supermarket sound system. I got so upset I almost put down the case of LaCroix I had in my arms and left. This song needs to stop being played in public. Why? Well, the car culture is waaay too strong in this one.

Let's set aside the fact that the song is literally encouraging reckless driving. I mean, it's called FAST CAR. And let's also set aside that the song is about heartbreak and keeping hope alive in the face of despair.

Let's get down to the real nitty gritty.

First stanza

"I want a ticket to anywhere."

If she lived in a 15 minute city, she wouldn't be clinging to a cager driving a death machine to get out.

Second stanza

"Won't have to drive too far, Just 'cross the border and into the city."

Hey lady, if it's not that far, you should be taking public transportation and saving the environment.

Fifth stanza

"So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car, Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk, City lights lay out before us"

That's how fast your loser boyfriend was driving around and you didn't bail? City lights mean there was probably a bus you could have taken home at least.

Sixth stanza

"You got a fast car, We go cruising, entertain ourselves"

OH. MY. GOD. Driving for entertainment? Burning fossil fuels to get your jollies?

"We'll move out of the shelter, Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs"

Now this is where it really goes off the rails. We amateur urbanists all know that poor people don't drive or own cars. And the writer has dreams of living in the suburbs, the worst possible place for anyone to live! You belong in an inner city housing project, honey.

I know Ms. Chapman is a respected folk singer and that it's black history month and we need to listen to black voices and all, but she gets my white transportation activist ire up. Tomorrow I am going to call the Master of Urban Planning Department at Hunter College and see if any of the students there would like to focus their thesis on how car culture in songs detroys cities.

Woman killed by e-bike rider

 

LIC Post

 A 54-year-old real estate agent named Kelly Killian was struck and killed by an e-bike in Astoria Friday night – around the corner from where she lived.

Police said they received a 911 call just after 8:30 p.m., and when emergency responders arrived at 31st Street and 21st Avenue, they found the injured woman lying in the road.

Killian had suffered severe trauma to her head. Medics brought her to Elmhurst Hospital, where she was initially listed in critical condition, the NYPD said.

She later died from her injuries, her family said.

An initial investigation by the NYPD Highway Unit’s Collision Investigation Squad found that a 26-year-old man on an e-bike had been headed east on 21st Avenue and struck Killian, who had been walking in the crosswalk.

Her brother, Chris Killian, said his sister had been en route to get dinner with a friend at the time.

The e-bike driver – who the NY Daily News reported was a delivery worker – stayed at the scene and had not been charged as of Tuesday, police said.

These ebikes are unsafe at any speed. And these app food delivery companies have to have their riders insured and all ebikes have to have plates and registration, including citibikes (since Revel actually has license plates)

And if anyone tells you different they have rocks in their head

When you get an e-bike you’re getting a terrific transportation tool that moves as fast as a car but doesn’t cause the injury, death, noise or pollution that a car causes https://t.co/girF5OrFH6

— Good Idea Dave (@DaveCoIon) June 2, 2021

Brad Lander writes scofflaw driving mea culpa on bike agitprop blog

 

 

Streetsblog

Accountability is hard. And it’s the only way we get better.

That’s what I want to help do for our city, as the next New York City Comptroller, our chief accountability officer. So I’d better be open to it for myself.

Over the past decade, I’ve been one of our city’s most outspoken advocates for safer streets, for road redesigns, and for more speed cameras. Our successful fight to expand the speed camera program has doubled the number of cameras and the hours they operate, leading to many more tickets. And the evidence is clear: speed cameras save lives.

I also passed the Reckless Driver Accountability Act to hold the city’s most reckless drivers accountable — those who get 15 speeding violations or five red-light violations in a year. They’ll get the opportunity to attend a driver accountability program, to help them change their driving before they injure or kill a neighbor. If they don’t attend, their car could be impounded. The program starts later this year at last, and we believe it will save many lives.

But I have some personal accounting to do. The New York Post recently looked at my driving (and parking) record, and I am not proud of it. So I’m making some specific commitments to change.

To be clear: I got eight speeding tickets over five years (most of them over the past 18 months, as the camera program has expanded). But that is enough to show a pattern — and it isn’t OK. I need to slow down and drive less.

And I’ve gotten a lot of parking tickets over the past decade, too. Many of those are expired meters, but some are alternate-side violations that prevented street cleaning, or blocking a hydrant. They aren’t OK either.

A New York Post stakeout and exposé is no fun. It stings. And I feel especially embarrassed to face the great group of street safety advocates who are supporting me for comptroller.  

But being held accountable is really important.

So rather than cancel my Post subscription (actually, I don’t have a Post subscription), I’ll thank the New York Post for serving as my own personal driver accountability warning — as an opportunity to take accountability more seriously. To use data to get better.

Because what we ultimately want from holding each other accountable is not shame, or Twitter dunking, or virtue signaling. It’s taking action to do better.

So here’s what I’m committing to:

• First, every month going forward, I’ll make public how many parking or moving violations I get. Knowing that I’ll have to do it will make me slow down and follow parking rules.
• Second, I will sign on as a co-sponsor to Council Member Steve Levin’s bill to allow citizen parking enforcement. I’ve hesitated to do so, anxious that it could lead to conflicts on our streets (but maybe there was some self-protection there, too). (Yeah, just maybe Brad Pander-JQ LLC) With this bill, the next time that Post reporters stake out my car, they could use a citizen reporting app to get me a ticket (and then I’d have to include it in the monthly list, too).
• Third, I’ll make a serious effort to drive less — planning my schedule better so that I can use Citi Bike and public transit more often and leave the car behind (properly parked).
• And finally, since privileges often encourage worse behavior, I will stop using my City Council parking placard altogether. I’ve racked up plenty of parking violations even with it, and the best way to change my patterns would be to get rid of the expanding parking opportunities that it provides.

Poor Gersh, Bikeblog and all the bike zealots and hipster gentries from Brooklyn, it must be so devastating to have your fauxgressive heroes disappoint you. 

Suckers.

 

Amazon puts a stop to open streets

  

Streetsblog

 Another day, another easily avoidable setback for the city’s open streets program.

In the latest evidence that a tiny minority of increasingly aggressive opponents is seeking to stop the widely popular open space program, North Brooklyn volunteers announced that they are “suspending” their efforts to prop up the city program on Driggs Avenue and Russell Street in Greenpoint after all of the city-owned barricades were stolen by a man with an Amazon-branded van on Monday night.

A video of the apparent Amazon worker stealing the barricades was posted on Nextdoor, a neighborhood-focused website, and downloaded by Streetsblog into a handy video (which we shared with Amazon, which has not responded to our request for comment)

 The open streets suspension — announced in a tweet on Tuesday morning — came on the heels of an earlier two-day suspension after a North Brooklyn volunteer being assaulted, two Department of Transportation workers being berated at a meeting, and equipment was vandalized

 Streetsblog has reached out to the DOT for comment and for an explanation of what comes next for the beleaguered open streets initiative. The program brought miles of recreation space to COVID-stricken neighborhoods during the height of the pandemic, but has lost steam as the mayor has promised that it would be a “permanent” fixture of the cityscape, yet has not announced any plan beyond relying on volunteers.

Transportation Alternatives condemned the theft but said it was easily avoided — if the DOT stepped up its game.

“Open Streets require infrastructure that can’t be stolen, can’t be destroyed, and can’t be tossed aside by entitled motorists,” said Erwin Figueroa, the director of organizing for the safe streets group, which has previously urged the mayor to do better. “Permanent infrastructure is what the Open Streets Coalition has been demanding from City Hall. We need Mayor de Blasio to move with much greater urgency, especially after the violence and vandalism over the past week, to implement the permanent solutions that will secure the success of the program. Any delay will cause these unacceptable incidents to escalate and for an extraordinarily popular program to be jeopardized.”

 If Bikeblog and the bike zealots really want this to stop, they should delete their Amazon accounts. And maybe reach out to the tower people near them and demand they delete theirs too. 

Update: 

Gersh Kuntzmen of Streetsblog deleted all my comments and marked a lot of them as spam for some reason. Even though my comment was visible for about 2 days. Just like with twitter, this sniveling coward and editorialist and even their puny readership will fabricate accusations against anyone having a dissenting opinion to their stories or even to respond to others. Truly sickening times we are living in.

Although Gertz apparently thinks that the comments saying that the guy who removed the barricades was NYPD has unquestionable credibility. My response to this hysterical theory was memory holed because I blamed Amazon.

Pussy.