Dad on the Bike

A screen grab from an X/Twitter post by Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov talking like he's the damn robot. "The Waymo Driver is generalizing well, showing strong performance in Manhattan. Excited and grateful to have our autonomous-testing permit extended by @NYC_DOT!" The bottom of post includes a split screen video of the car's dashboard camera and the sensor readouts that reduce everything to 1s and 0s like it's a goddamn video game and not an actual place where people live and work and socialize.

"The Waymo Driver is generalizing well" 🤖💀

The only thing that makes this dystopian hell inevitable is acting like it's inevitable. There is no reason @nyc-dot.bsky.social needs to accept & encourage robot cars in our communities.

Maybe let's go all in designing NYC streets for people instead?

You’re not a fan of the bike lanes in Times Square. What’s the issue? They’re disruptive and intrusive. To put one in front of the Neil Simon Theatre is ridiculous. You get 1,500 people a day going to a show, and you’re not looking for bikes or these electric scooters that are going 40 miles per hour. I’m all for people biking, but this is dangerous.

I actually agree with Jimmy Nederlander about bike lanes in Times Square but not in the way he means it. We shouldn't have narrow bike lanes along the curbs near Broadway theaters. What we should do is completely ban cars from most of the theater district.

variety.com/2025/legit/n...

Headshot of a smiling Tim Gill

New episode up! We talked with researcher Tim Gill about how we need to make our cities safe for children, not cars. "Children are basically living very captive and kind of contained lives, and that's just not healthy."
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

@nyc-dot.bsky.social is making up math here. There are roughly 300 intersections on the UWS or ~2,400 potential daylighting spots, many of which are already bus stops or fire hydrants.

@galeabrewer.bsky.social got some bad information.

Why are we bean counting street safety in the first place?

A woman pedaling through the rain on a gray Citibike wearing a light colored business suit and a holding a bright blue umbrella over her head.

New York isn’t Amsterdam, they said.

A bunch of bikes of various sizes crowded around a tiny bike rack on the sidewalk in front of a stone building. (Not in frame are several long tail cargo bikes and box bikes parked along the curb.)

More than two dozen bikes at drop-off every day this week at my kid’s school. You love to see it.

Our next mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social should give @nyc-dot.bsky.social a mandate to quickly transform NYC into the safest city in North America for kids to bike. The demand is there & growing.

A person in a wheelchair is stopped, mid-crosswalk, facing away from the camera. A walk signal is visible at the opposite curb, indicating they have the right-of-way. Directly in front of them in the crosswalk is a black car, one of several cars obstructing the crosswalk. Several pedestrians and a cyclist try to squeeze through and around the vehicles, which include a large balcony SUV and a yellow taxi. In the right side of the frame, an express bus is stuck behind this same snarl of cars, delaying the commute of several dozen people.

The dysfunction of NYC's streets in one photo.

Private cars get the majority of space while everyone else (including bus riders) fight over what's left. Let's hope mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social takes up this issue with the urgency and at the scale that's needed (see: Anne Hidalgo/Paris).

We expect more from CM @galeabrewer.bsky.social than this.

There are ways to make the UWS more appealing for families and more livable for everyone. Continuing to fight over every single free parking space ain’t one of them. That’s the kind of thing that’s actually chasing families out of NYC.

Screengrab of the linked article that reads: "I would like to look at other aspects of smart curbs, but not priced parking," Brewer said in an interview. "I have hundreds if not thousands of people complaining.”

Street improvements aren’t a popularity contest decided by who screams the loudest and most often.

Letting a tiny minority hold the curb hostage because they want to keep getting something for free should be embarrassing for a progressive politician in 2025.

Powerpoint slides from a presentation entitled “Unleashing the Silent Majority to Beat Bikelash”, which feature photographs of urban transformation from cities around the world.

The global phenomenon of “bikelash” has become one of the biggest barriers to implementing interventions that make our streets more liveable, accessible and sustainable. So how do we best manage it as advocates for change? Here are eight strategies we recently presented at the Velo-city Conference.🧵

My most memorable parking story is that time they repaved my street in Brooklyn and there were no cars parked on it for a couple days and we met a bunch neighbors across the street who we had never talked to before because the cars had always been in the way.

It takes about half an hour to get used to it. And less than that to ask: “Why the fuck can’t people have this everywhere?”

A yellow pedestrian walk signal shown dangling from a cable at eye level.

Street sign showing the intersection where this poor walk signal is located.

Note to @nyc-dot.bsky.social pedestrian signal is damaged at La Salle & Amsterdam

World's oldest marathon runner, Fauja Singh, dies at 114 after being hit by a car Fauja Singh, known as the Turbaned Torpedo and believed to be the world’s oldest marathon runner, has died at 114 after being hit by a car in India.

Anyway, cars ruin everything.

Fauja Singh Keeps Going by Simran Jeet Singh: 9780525555094 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books The true story of Fauja Singh, who broke world records to become the first one hundred-year-old to run a marathon, shares valuable lessons on the source of his grit, determination to overcome obstacle...

My son loved this book when he was younger, and we loved reading it with him.

Neighborhood streets, where kids used to just tool around on bikes, haven’t changed. But what probably has changed is the kid’s friend’s dad, who lives next door, likes to drive his SUV fast and thinks people shouldn’t be in the street.

Hat tip to everyone who didn’t rank Cuomo, who talked to your friends & family about not ranking Cuomo, who posted Don’t Rank Cuomo signs in your neighborhood. And of course to everyone who canvassed for a better vision of New York City. Feels good to vanquish the baddies once in awhile 💫

90 minutes left to NOT rank Andrew Cuomo. Don’t miss out on the fun! Send that creep back to the suburbs.

Andrew Cuomo walks to the garage where he keeps his muscle car which he drives around midtown. Meanwhile…

Every man who knows a man who is voting for Cuomo should be sitting that man down and asking why in the ever living fuck he would vote for a sex pest.

Friends don't let friends vote for sex pests

I just have such good memories from him during COVID. Remember Cuomo-sexuals? I do remember! But really: Andrew Cuomo is a terrible person. For starters, he’s been credibly accused of sexual harassment by at least 11 women. No, yeah, I know. I’ve heard about that. Not great. You’ve probably heard that in passing, but it’s worth actually looking at what the reports say. There’s a long documented history of young women saying Cuomo groped them, made them feel unsafe, went out of his way to humiliate them. Throughout his time as governor, there’s story after story of him preying on young vulnerable women whose only crime is that they wanted to serve New Yorkers in government.

That is horrible. But that stuff is all in the past. Don’t we need a way of people to come back? Shouldn’t there be room for some sort of redemption? Sure. Of course. But any story of redemption has to involve change and repentance. And by all accounts, that is not Andrew Cuomo’s arc. Instead he’s waged an unrelenting scorched earth campaign against his accusers. He’s suing many of them, dragging out long legal disputes, and bankrupting them with legal fees. The City, in their deep dive into Cuomo’s “trench warfare”, called his tactics “in many ways unprecedented, wearing down and financially depleting not only women who have accused Cuomo of harassment and brought their own suits but others who never planned to enter a courtroom at all.” If that’s not bad enough, Cuomo is using the fact that he was employed by the state as governor when these accusations took place to force taxpayers to pay his legal fees! New Yorkers like you and me have already paid over 19 million dollars to his lawyers to defend him in the sexual assault cases alone (in addition to another $40 million in legal fees for other corruption & miscellaneous cases). I want my taxes going to libraries, not his lawyers.

Look, I get it. But #metoo was a long time ago. Some people might even say it went a little far, you know? Remember Aziz Ansari? LOL, not really, no. But let’s stay on topic. Reasonable people can disagree about #MeToo, or about what should happen to people accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, but the fact is that the sexual harassment is completely of a piece of how Andrew Cuomo does business. He’s a bully. The stories of him screaming at others, intimidating people who work for him, and holding nasty petty grudges are the stuff of legend. In their exhaustive look at the subject, The New York Times quotes one person who worked with Cuomo as saying, “his primary tool for governing is to create fear.” One lawmaker, whose father died in a nursing home during COVID (a subject we are going to talk more about in a bit), has publicly said Cuomo threatened to “destroy him” if he ever criticized the governor.

Answering some of the Qs about Cuomo's campaign, one by one...

First: What about the sexual harassment charges? Aren't they in the past? (Spoiler: No, and especially not since he's shown no interest in change or repentance.) amandalitman.substack.com/p/the-case-a...

Happy early voting Friday. Have you told everyone you know not to rank Cuomo? It’s not too late to spread the word.

🗳️ Vote
🚫 Don't Rank Cuomo
✅ Rank Mamdani & Lander plus 3 more candidates who are NOT Andrew Cuomo.

If we want this to stop, “Don’t rank Cuomo.”

How's My Driving NY Search New York City parking & camera violations.

I just looked up #NY_T717371C's 50 violations using @howsmydrivingny.bsky.social: howsmydrivingny.nyc/2fov6vks

Send this clown back to Westchester.

Don’t Rank Cuomo 🚫

New York, welcome to The War on This Car.

Tell everyone you know: Don't rank Cuomo.

I can't think of anyone currently running for office more dangerous than Andrew Cuomo. Not just for NYC but for the nation, because unfortunately NYC disproportionately affects the rest of the states. Bad politicians elsewhere don't have the same structural power. NYC: Do not vote for this man.

I don't think I've ever felt more like burning it all down than I have while witnessing the elite project to turn Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander into scary, incompetent monsters while turning an actual incompetent monster, Andrew Cuomo, into a merely complicated fellow who just made an oopsie.

Wow, NYTimes be like, “Andrew Cuomo is our problematic fave."

The editorial board willfully misunderstands something I figured out in early adulthood: that sexual harassment tells you everything about someone’s relationship with power, and on its own, ought to be enough to disqualify from office.

Clownish politics over livability & safety is an embarrassing hallmark of this mayor. Let’s not do it to ourselves again.

Don’t Rank Cuomo.

And while you’re at it, make the NYT mad by ranking Mamdani at the top of your ballot along with Brad Lander + 3 more candidates who are NOT Andrew Cuomo.