Sarah Goodyear

Whose light is it, anyway?

Yesterday's New York Times editorial on transportation policy makes a strong case for linking concerns about traffic congestion to concerns about health. It's worth looking at the full text of All Choked Up, the report from Environmental Defense that the paper references when arguing that in order to achieve his goal of a sustainable city,

Speaking on his weekly radio show on WABC, Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced he would veto the City Council's legislation capping the number of pedicabs in the city at 325:

Yesterday marked the opening of the Sexy Green Auto Show at the Eden Project bio theme park in Cornwall, UK. It's a display meant to demonstrate that "green" cars (like the Ford Focus Flexi Fuel bio-ethanol number at right) don't have to fit the clunky Birkenstock stereotype. As the Guardian notes,

While reading the NY Times essay about the woman who drives back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge the other day, I was reminded of the Tiki Barber ads for the Cadillac Escalade. The spot that premiered during the Super Bowl is a moody, impressionistic montage that shows the former New York Giants running back driving solo through the streets and over the bridges of New York, talking about "seizing opportunities." The tagline is "Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit."

This weekend's City section of the New York Times featured a mind-blowing essay by children's-book writer Sarah Shey about her habit of taking her one-year-old son out for drives in the city -- drives with no destination or purpose in mind, in which she crossed and recrossed the Brooklyn Bridge endless times.

Three Injured by Colliding Cabs in Midtown (Gothamist) Long Island Bus System Embraced by Riders, ‘Orphaned’ by Gov’t (NYT) Council Eyes Taxi Stands in the Four Boroughs (Sun) Pedicab Drivers Take Fight to Public (AMNY) Slow Down, Multitaskers: Don’t Read in Traffic (NYT) Jitney Civil War: UWS Hits Back, Markowitz Unimpressed (Curbed) A Museum-Quality Car … Continued

City: One-way Plan Is DOA (Brooklyn Paper) RELATED: Want to Stop DOT? Make Our Streets Safer (Brooklyn Paper) RELATED: In Defense of A Technocrat (Brooklyn Paper) Fifteen Buildings to Fall Soon, Says Ratner (Daily News) Pedicab Fight Gains Speed (AMNY) Please, Renovate Queens Plaza! (Queens Gazette) LI Woman Gets 4-12 Years in DWI Death (Daily … Continued

Prospect Park West at 8th Street, September 16, 2006, 9:45 am. "Higher vehicle speeds are strongly associated with a greater likelihood of crashes involving pedestrians as well as more serious pedestrian injuries." American Journal of Public Health

This comment from Carolyn Konheim of Community Consulting Services, which appeared on a thread that stemmed from our earlier report about the likely appointment of Michael Horodniceanu (right) as the next NYC DOT Commissioner, provides an interesting counterpoint to the "cars-first" rap he has been tagged with: