While NYC mayor Bill de Blasio has been slow to initiate implementation of the agenda that won him a landslide victory last November, Big Bill is set to delight supporters of the city’s bike share program.
De Blasio has brokered a deal to expand bike share into upper Manhattan, inner Brooklyn and even out here in Queens. He’ll do it without tapping public money.
Given his contradictory publicly-stated feelings about bikes, bike lanes and pedestrian plazas since chiding Bloomberg’s progressive transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan in 2012, de Blasio has now essentially saved bike share from fade out with a deal to be announced this week (first reported by Matt Flegenheimer of the Times).
Personally, I believe allocation of public funds to insure growth and sound management of the city’s bike share network is warranted given the public good that comes out of it. But it seems to be a non-starter at City Hall – and so this new arrangement is job well done by de Blaz.
Gripes about bad bikes and buggy software on the racks are overstated. The expected increase in the annual fee is no sweat given what you get.
What prompted the Mayor’s big move on bike share? We don’t yet know too much about his transportation commissioner Polly Trottenberg but perhaps she helped convince him that bike share expansion meshed nicely with Vision Zero, a full press effort to eliminate vehicular recklessness. More bikes inevitably mean fewer motorists. It’s politically tricky to implement changes that put a squeeze on cars but other locales have proven that bike-friendly urban stretches can produce a tilt away from usage of the automobile. Whatever it takes. Bikes, bikes and more bikes.
-The 2014 Saratoga meet opened with word that New York Daily News thoroughbred racing writer Jerry Bossert had been told by his newspaper to stay home. Bossert was let go. Up until his termination, Bossert was the last full-time staff reporter covering daily racing cards for a New York City daily newspaper. The News still runs daily results in font so small you need reading glasses to make sense of them. Last Sunday’s Daily News used copy from the Associated Press to report on the outcome of the previous day’s running of the Jim Dandy. Only a handful of full-time journalists on the horse racing beat remain in this country. The best known among that small lot is probably Jennie Rees of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
-The great new White Fence LP reached my door via Chicago’s Drag City label this week. It’s quite a spin. The packaging is fantastic. You get all the lyrics – which is helpful – plus a collection of drawings on the back of the jacket. Most unique is what Tim Presley chose to do with the sticker on side 2 of the record. It’s a contrast-manipulated photo of White Fence drummer Nick Murray in stationary mode at his kit. It’s a really interesting image to put in that spot. My favorite song on the record is the wrap-up number Paranoid Bait. I hope to hear it exactly one week from today wearing “president’s jeans” under the redwoods.