How is this bad faith? He was elected during a crime wave
Mayor Eric Adams: King of NY Official Thread
- Thread starter HoldThisL
- Start date
And oh look, what a surprise, our resident DNC propaganda spewer is pushing that exact same propaganda in lockstep with their establishment centrists.
Just like "Bernie can't win" from our last conversation and "Cornell West is going to get Trump elected!" from before that, it's crazy how closely the mainstream Democrat narrative, media narrative, and Napoleon narrative follow each other sometimes.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
the crime and shooting situation was always a red herring and everyone knew that
I think certain posters are just making things up, blaming ranked choice voting because in this case they can't blame their other favorite punching bag, the progressives.
Funny thing is that Eric Adams is the candidate they always wanted. A brash, faux blue-collar conservative in Democrat clothing, a mini Cuomo. Adams ran on the DNC and The Coli centrist approved crime wave, fund the police campaign. And now that they got what they wanted it has to be someone else's fault.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
storyteller
Superstar
Look at this piece and the quotes from Dem Insiders and strategists. They pumped Adams up as a star.
Is Eric Adams the Democrats’ Next National Star?
Spurned by prominent progressives during the campaign, the incoming mayor of New York City is a centrist who could have national appeal.
www.thebulwark.com
tremonthustler1
aka bx_representer
Adams out here trollin putting migrants in all the white areas of Brooklyn and Queens and the whole Staten Island.
They wouldn't want those people there even if they were born here.
They wouldn't want those people there even if they were born here.
Wargames
One Of The Last Real Ones To Do It
You actually have a point I don’t see them on Flatbush or bedstuy….
shyt should we let Adam cook?
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
You actually have a point I don’t see them on Flatbush or bedstuy….
shyt should we let Adam cook?
the armory is full immigrants many of whom are black
I wouldn't confuse availability of space with Adams trying inconvenience and troll cacs either
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
‘Let Them Work’: N.Y. Governor Pushes Biden to Speed Up Migrant Permits
In a shift in tone, Gov. Kathy Hochul criticized the White House for failing to help the state deal with the continuing influx of migrants into New York.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
New York man on motorbike dies after officer throws picnic cooler at head
Erik Duran suspended over death of Eric Duprey, who was driving motorcycle on Bronx sidewalk towards group including Duran
www.theguardian.com
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
The N.Y.C. Neighborhood That’s Getting Even Thinner on Ozempic
Prescriptions for a new class of medications used for diabetes and weight loss are concentrated in the city’s wealthier, whiter and healthier neighborhoods.
Motor Scooters Are Taking Over New York City’s Bike Lanes
Electric and gasoline-powered scooters are changing the vibes in the Big Apple’s soaring network of bicycle lanes. And columnist Eben Weiss isn’t happy bout it.
www.outsideonline.com
Motorized Scooters Are Taking Over New York City’s Bike Lanes
Electric and gasoline-powered scooters are changing the vibes in the Big Apple’s soaring network of bicycle lanes. And columnist Eben Weiss isn’t happy bout it.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
https://www.outsideonline.com/byline/eben-weiss/
Eben Weiss
Aug 25, 2023
In 2007, on 9th Avenue in Manhattan, New York City debuted its first-ever protected bike lane–”protected” meaning that it featured physical barriers for bicyclists from motor vehicle traffic, in this case via a row of parked cars. There’s no such thing as an unoccupied parking space in Manhattan, so a row of parked cars is tantamount to a wall.
In the ensuing years, as the city’s bike lane network expanded (we’re at over 600 miles of protected bike lanes now), there has been no shortage of threats to destroy it. Some of those threats were mostly idle, such as now disgraced politician Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign promise in 2011 to “have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your fukking bike lanes.” Others have been more real, such as the city’s lack of enforcement when it comes to the many motorists who park in them. Recently, a new threat to the network has emerged, and it’s perhaps the most insidious yet: People who ride motor scooters in bike lanes.
Now, when I say “motor scooters,” I’m not referring to those stand-up electric things that look like pogo sticks on wheels. I mean yes, there are lots of people riding those in the bike lanes too, but that’s old news. No, what I mean is actual gasoline-burning motorized scooters—the ones many Americans collectively refer to as “Vespas,” even though they’re almost never Vespas, or sometimes “mopeds,” which makes even less sense since the “-ped” part of “moped” means “pedal” and these things don’t have them. Whatever you call them, basically they’re motorcycles with leg shields that you don’t have to shift. While people using motor scooters in New York City is nothing new, they were always relatively few and far between. Now, they’re everywhere you look.
Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with motor scooters. In fact, motor scooters are people’s main form of transportation in many parts of the world, and if you’ve traveled you’ve probably seen entire families on them. They’re relatively cheap, they’re efficient, they’re practical, they’re easy to ride, and they take up a hell of a lot less space on the road than a typical SUV. On the surface, more of them in traffic-clogged New York sounds like a good thing.
Unfortunately, these motor scooters aren’t replacing SUVs at all. Car traffic here is just as bad as its ever been—so bad in fact that we’re about to try congestion pricing. Instead, these scooters are merely adding to all the cars, and trucks, and micromobility e-thingies, and all the rest of it. And increasingly, instead of using the streets, their riders are simply using the bike lanes. One informal sampling recently suggested that as much as 25 percent of traffic on the Manhattan Bridge bike path now consists of some sort of motor scooter, either gas-powered or electric. Motorists in the bike lanes have always been an unfortunate fact of life here, but you could at least count on certain bridge and park paths being car-free, since even the most determined drivers couldn’t get their vehicles onto them.
Alas, this is not a problem for the motor scooter riders, who can simply slip in between the bollards, and with a twist of the throttle race right through the park or across the span. The presence of motor scooters on these narrow paths that were once sanctuaries for bicyclists is irritating, vexing, jarring, infuriating, and potentially dangerous. As a bonus, their machines are typically unregistered, and it’s fairly safe to assume someone riding an unregistered motorcycle on a bike path is also unlicensed and uninsured, raising the question of what happens if one of them hits you. Unfortunately, some bicyclists are now finding out the hard way.
So how did this happen? Well, one reason is that food delivery people are increasingly turning to them because their e-bikes are inconvenient to charge and occasionally burst into flames. I suspect another reason is that, as e-contraptions that defy categorization continue to proliferate, they’ve outstripped the state’s capacity to register and account for them, and so the very idea of doing so has mostly gone out the window. Therefore, at a certain point, even if they weren’t involved in the business of delivering food, people probably looked around at all these high-speed e-things whizzing around and realized, “fukk it, I’ll just ride around on an unregistered motor scooter.” (Or some enterprising vendors realized, “fukk it, I’ll just start selling unregistered motor scooters.”) And all of this is happening against a backdrop of driver lawlessness, as well as advocates and policymakers pushing the idea that the police shouldn’t be making traffic stops.
Bike advocates have long pushed for bicycle infrastructure on the basis that, in order to increase ridership, people need to feel safe. Moreover, a robust bike network “makes cycling more accessible, and gives even more New Yorkers, including children, seniors, and families, safe access to this joyful and healthful transportation.” But how safe are children, seniors, and families supposed to feel when their path is full of people flying by on motor scooters? Thanks to drivers, the streets are inhospitable enough, so if the bike lanes are also full of motorized traffic then that’s nothing less than an existential threat to the network’s ostensible purpose. Anti-bike lane op-eds are mostly just sound and fury signifying nothing, but a bicycle lane full of motor scooters immediately ceases to be a bike lane at all.
Nevertheless, advocates and urbanists seem loath to call out this very real threat. Instead they keep remind us that cars are worse (duh), and suggest that the motor scooter riders only use the bike lanes because they feel unsafe too. (Though the number of motor scooter riders I see popping wheelies and running red lights would seem to indicate the contrary.) We don’t need enforcement, they say; all of this can simply be solved with more space. More recently, they’ve acknowledged there’s a “crisis,” though it’s been framed as a justice for workers issue, rather than another case of motorized anarchy plaguing New York City. In my opinion, this feels both deflective and reductive, given that unregistered motor scooter use is by no means limited to people engaged in food delivery.
There’s no question that New York City yields a disproportionately large amount of public space to the automobile. At the same time, this would not be the case had we not surrendered so much of that space in the first place. So as New York City’s nascent bike lane network experiences an unprecedented incursion of motorized traffic, it’s at least worth discussing whether or not we should take more focused and decisive action now, rather than relying on making “more space for all modes,” which is the sort of change it takes decades to effect. Hey, maybe New York City’s bike lanes becoming “any motor vehicle that’s not a car lanes” is inevitable. But what if enforcement (which we’re now seeing, at least on Twitter) isn’t such a dirty word after all? What if allowing e-bikes in parks is like when the city finally relented and allowed overnight parking? What if it’s just the thin end of the wedge?
Yes, in the long term, it would be great if New York City had a bicycle lane, and an e-bike lane, and a motor scooter lane, and a lane for people who like to ride Onewheels while juggling. But until then, it’s fairly simple: if you ride a motor scooter or a motorcycle, there’s already a lane for you, and it’s the motor vehicle lane. Hey, if it’s not to your satisfaction, you can always start an advocacy group. Want advice on how to do that? Just ask the cyclists, they’ve been advocating for themselves for well over a century.
Eric Adams Promised to Be the Bus Mayor. Riders Are Still Waiting.
Mayor Eric Adams pledged to create 150 miles of bus lanes in four years in New York City, home to the nation’s slowest buses. Then politics interfered.
Eric Adams Promised to Be the Bus Mayor. Riders Are Still Waiting.
Mayor Eric Adams pledged to create 150 miles of bus lanes in four years in New York City, home to the nation’s slowest buses. Then politics interfered.
On Fordham Road in the Bronx, buses move slowly because of the heavy traffic.Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Ana Ley
Aug. 17, 2023
Early in Mayor Eric Adams’s first term, he rode a B41 bus through Brooklyn to cement his commitment to speed up New York City’s notoriously slow buses, part of his campaign pledge to be an advocate for bus riders and bicyclists.
Bus riders thought they had their champion. A riders group presented Mr. Adams that day with a jacket that read “N.Y.C. Bus Mayor” across the back and celebrated his vow to create 150 miles of new dedicated bus lanes in four years.
Then politics interfered.
The city, which has the slowest buses in the nation — averaging eight miles per hour — is expected to add as few as 10 miles of bus lanes this year. In 2022, Mr. Adams’s first year as mayor, just shy of a dozen miles were added.
The Adams administration is drawing up plans for new bus lanes on half a dozen more routes, including a three-mile proposal for a busy corridor along Fordham Road in the Bronx. More commuters rely on the bus in the Bronx, per capita, than in any other borough, and 60 percent of households do not own a car, according to analyses of Census Bureau data by city agencies.
But now that plan seems in limbo, after local businesses objected and one of the mayor’s political allies, Representative Adriano Espaillat, raised doubts.
Richard Davey, the president of New York City Transit who oversees the city’s vast subway and bus system, said in an interview that Mr. Adams had been a “huge transit mayor for us,” citing the mayor’s focus on subway crime and support for discount MetroCards for poor New Yorkers.
But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is powerless to speed up its buses unless the city creates more bus lanes.
Without urgently tackling projects, “the math won’t add up by the end of the mayor’s four years,” Mr. Davey said on Monday as he rode a Bx36 bus through the Bronx.
Richard A. Davey, head of New York City Transit, said he would paint a bus lane himself on Fordham Road to get the project going.Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
Transit advocates worry that other bus-friendly proposals could be in jeopardy, such as a major bus-lane plan for Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn that travels through the heart of neighborhoods that Mr. Adams won in 2021. Rita Joseph, the councilwoman who represents Flatbush, says she supports bringing a bus lane to her district.
“I have heard from my neighbors — both for and against, and now as an elected leader it is my responsibility to work with my colleagues to find a compromise that everyone can agree on,” Ms. Joseph said in a statement.
Transportation in New York City
- Congestion Pricing: A lawsuit that Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey has filed against New York’s plan to charge people to enter the busy commercial districts of Manhattan south of 60th Street has reignited a border war and led to charges of hypocrisy.
- Subway Fare: The M.T.A.’s board voted to raise the base fare for subway and bus trips for the first time in eight years, to $2.90 from $2.75, by Aug. 20.
- Hudson Tunnel Project: The federal government is on track to give $6.88 billion, the most ever awarded to a mass-transit project, for the construction of a second rail tunnel under the Hudson River to New York City.
- Penn Station: A private development firm presented an alternative plan for the remaking of the station, saying it would be significantly cheaper than a rival proposal backed by the M.T.A.
With New York City mired in traffic gridlock and grappling with the impact of climate change, giving priority to buses seems an obvious solution.
London and Beijing have sped up their fleets by giving more street space to buses. But in New York, the voices of drivers and business leaders are often louder than those of the city’s 1.2 million daily bus riders, many of them working-class New Yorkers.
A spokesman for the mayor, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, said in a statement that the Adams administration had improved commute time on many bus routes, including on Northern Boulevard in Queens, and “continues to do everything we can to meet the ambitious goals that the mayor laid out in his campaign.”
But as Mr. Adams, a Democrat, gears up to run for re-election in 2025, his administration has been deferential toward powerful interests and local leaders.
One of the mayor’s closest aides, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, has opposed street redesign projects and overrode the transportation commissioner in February 2022 to allow cars back onto an eight-block stretch in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, reserved for pedestrians.
Ms. Lewis-Martin also raised concerns about two bike lane plans in Brooklyn: one on McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint opposed by Gina and Tony Argento, influential Democratic donors to Mr. Adams who own a local film production company; and another on Ashland Place in Fort Greene opposed by Two Trees Management, a major real estate firm led by an Adams donor, according to two people who were familiar with the matter.
Mr. Lutvak denied that Ms. Lewis-Martin had meddled in the Ashland Place project and said that it was moving forward. On Wednesday, he said the city was also proceeding with a scaled-back version of the McGuinness Boulevard project, a development first reported by Gothamist.
Oswald Feliz, a local City Council member who is part of Mr. Espaillat’s so-called Squadriano political alliance, is fighting the proposal for Fordham Road, which has 85,000 daily bus riders. He, along with other opponents like the Bronx Zoo and Fordham University, fear that the plan would snarl car traffic and push it to surrounding streets because cars would be confined to one lane in each direction.
Less than 6 percent of visitors who drive to the zoo and other nearby attractions use Fordham Road to access it, Department of Transportation data shows.
{continued}
Mr. Feliz would rather have the city repaint the existing bus lanes red and install more traffic enforcement cameras.
“We would strongly support a busway or offset bus lanes in neighborhoods where they are necessary for faster buses; but what Fordham buses need is a fixing of current bus lanes,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Espaillat discussed the Fordham Road plan in a phone call last month with officials from the M.T.A., the governor’s office and the city’s Transportation Department and told them it was clear it did not have local support, according to a person who was on the call and granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The call was first reported by the website Streetsblog.
Originally, a busway was proposed for Fordham Road, but now the city is considering a bus lane. Local officials oppose even that measure. Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
A spokeswoman for Mr. Espaillat, who is Dominican American and a key ally in Mr. Adams’s coalition of Black and Latino leaders, said in a statement that he backed local officials “to make the best determination in the interests of city residents.” She noted Mr. Espaillat’s past support for faster bus routes when he was a state lawmaker.
Mr. Davey, noting that the city Transportation Department was short-staffed, said he was so eager to help the city start construction on the Fordham Road project this year that “I’ll go out and paint, personally, a bus lane.”
Opponents of the Fordham Road plan include a business group led by Peter Madonia, a bakery owner and former chief of staff to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and donors to Mr. Adams such as John Calvelli, executive vice president of the Bronx Zoo, and Marc Jerome, president of Monroe College.
The corridor was originally expected to become a busway, like the one on 14th Street in Manhattan that bars almost all through traffic except for buses and commercial trucks and has been shown to improve service. After a stretch of Main Street in Flushing, Queens, was turned into a busway in 2021, rush-hour bus speeds rose by 50 percent.
A new compromise proposal would add an “offset lane” for buses in the middle of Fordham Road, allowing for a parking and loading lane next to the curb.
A letter to the mayor from Mr. Feliz and three state lawmakers last month said the new plan would “negatively impact our thriving economic, social, and health ecosystem,” which includes Little Italy on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and “destinations for visitors and others to the Bronx from all over the world.”
Transit advocates have pushed back, sometimes in eye-catching ways: A giraffe costume was deployed to draw attention to the Bronx Zoo’s opposition.
“Riders are demanding that the mayor keep his promise, and nowhere is that promise more significant — more meaningful — than on Fordham Road,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group.
On a scorching hot day last week, Jennifer Reyes, 18, waited for the Bx12 bus on Fordham Road, which she takes to school, Marine training and a job as a cashier at a fried chicken restaurant in Times Square.
Ms. Reyes, a lifelong Bronx resident, said buses often arrive late and are too packed to board, so she leaves home early to make up for frequent delays.
Jennifer Reyes takes the Bx12 bus to school. She leaves home early to make up for frequent delays.Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
“I know it’s going to, like, make people mad,” Ms. Reyes said of the proposal to prioritize buses. “But us students, workers, we need to get to our places.”
Milagros Matías, a home care worker, said she was frustrated by the number of delivery vehicles clogging the street and hoped the city would move quickly to clear the way for buses.
“There needs to be more space for public transit,” Ms. Matías, 54, said in Spanish. “This mode of transportation is essential.”
Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.
Mr. Feliz would rather have the city repaint the existing bus lanes red and install more traffic enforcement cameras.
“We would strongly support a busway or offset bus lanes in neighborhoods where they are necessary for faster buses; but what Fordham buses need is a fixing of current bus lanes,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Espaillat discussed the Fordham Road plan in a phone call last month with officials from the M.T.A., the governor’s office and the city’s Transportation Department and told them it was clear it did not have local support, according to a person who was on the call and granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The call was first reported by the website Streetsblog.
Originally, a busway was proposed for Fordham Road, but now the city is considering a bus lane. Local officials oppose even that measure. Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
A spokeswoman for Mr. Espaillat, who is Dominican American and a key ally in Mr. Adams’s coalition of Black and Latino leaders, said in a statement that he backed local officials “to make the best determination in the interests of city residents.” She noted Mr. Espaillat’s past support for faster bus routes when he was a state lawmaker.
Mr. Davey, noting that the city Transportation Department was short-staffed, said he was so eager to help the city start construction on the Fordham Road project this year that “I’ll go out and paint, personally, a bus lane.”
Opponents of the Fordham Road plan include a business group led by Peter Madonia, a bakery owner and former chief of staff to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and donors to Mr. Adams such as John Calvelli, executive vice president of the Bronx Zoo, and Marc Jerome, president of Monroe College.
The corridor was originally expected to become a busway, like the one on 14th Street in Manhattan that bars almost all through traffic except for buses and commercial trucks and has been shown to improve service. After a stretch of Main Street in Flushing, Queens, was turned into a busway in 2021, rush-hour bus speeds rose by 50 percent.
A new compromise proposal would add an “offset lane” for buses in the middle of Fordham Road, allowing for a parking and loading lane next to the curb.
A letter to the mayor from Mr. Feliz and three state lawmakers last month said the new plan would “negatively impact our thriving economic, social, and health ecosystem,” which includes Little Italy on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and “destinations for visitors and others to the Bronx from all over the world.”
Transit advocates have pushed back, sometimes in eye-catching ways: A giraffe costume was deployed to draw attention to the Bronx Zoo’s opposition.
“Riders are demanding that the mayor keep his promise, and nowhere is that promise more significant — more meaningful — than on Fordham Road,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a transit advocacy group.
On a scorching hot day last week, Jennifer Reyes, 18, waited for the Bx12 bus on Fordham Road, which she takes to school, Marine training and a job as a cashier at a fried chicken restaurant in Times Square.
Ms. Reyes, a lifelong Bronx resident, said buses often arrive late and are too packed to board, so she leaves home early to make up for frequent delays.
Jennifer Reyes takes the Bx12 bus to school. She leaves home early to make up for frequent delays.Credit...Thalia Juarez for The New York Times
“I know it’s going to, like, make people mad,” Ms. Reyes said of the proposal to prioritize buses. “But us students, workers, we need to get to our places.”
Milagros Matías, a home care worker, said she was frustrated by the number of delivery vehicles clogging the street and hoped the city would move quickly to clear the way for buses.
“There needs to be more space for public transit,” Ms. Matías, 54, said in Spanish. “This mode of transportation is essential.”
Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.
