A weekly roundup of good deeds, missteps, heroic feats and epic failures in the tri-state region and beyond.
Winners
Rutgers University and the City of New Brunswick, NJ — Fifty on-street parking spaces were removed from College Avenue on Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus in order to make way for bus and bike lanes.
Connecticut Representative Henry Genga and Senator Ted Kennedy Jr. — Rep. Genga has proposed a bill which would establish electronic tolls on Connecticut highways, while Senator Kennedy has been pushing the concept of variable-rate congestion pricing.
NYC Council Transportation Chair Ydanis Rodriguez — A coalition of 34 council members led by Chairman Rodriguez penned a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio asking him to “advance a plan and associated budget funding… to achieve [his] stated commitment to expand Citi Bike to all five boroughs.”
The Netherlands — Beating its goal by a year, the Land of Windmills now powers 100 percent of its electric trains using wind power.
Losers
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo — Taking a page out of President-Elect Trump’s book, the governor “dropped the Capitol tradition of giving a public address to detail the state budget,” and after hours of delay delivered a budget briefing to the media on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Not exactly “the most transparent and accountable” government in New York history.
NYPD — A school bus driver was caught on video running over a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but the NYPD failed to arrest the driver, nor did they issue any summonses or assign the Collision Investigation Squad to the case. Should’ve been wearing reflective tape.
Helmet laws — The bike share system in Seattle — one of the few American cities that requires bicyclists of all ages to wear helmets — will be shut down at the end of March.
Connecticut — According to a report released this week, Connecticut was the only state in the nation where, thanks to exclusionary zoning, home values declined between 2015 and 2016.
Planet Earth — “Two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases,” the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration found that the earth reached its highest temperature on record for a third straight year.
