Friday’s Headlines: ‘You Get a Car, And You Get a Car…’ Edition

The story of the day was Mayor de Blasio’s non-crackdown crackdown on placards, which David Meyer of Streetsblog exposed for the sham it is. The Times’s Winnie Hu broke the details of the new strategy a few hours before it was announced, but the Metro section never updated the story to emphasize how little de Blasio was actually committing to — and how glowingly he spoke of cars and city workers who “need” to commute to their jobs in them.

The Daily News called out the mayor for a weak program that doesn’t get at the heart of the problem: the estimated 125,000 city workers who get free parking. Indeed, as Jillian Jorgensen (and Meyer) pointed out, de Blasio promises to build or lease parking lots so that cops have plenty of spaces after their long commutes from their homes outside the city. The Post also focused on the lack of cuts to placards overall.

City Limits also looked at the connection between all that driving and all that congestion. The Wall Street Journal and amNY also covered the mayoral announcement, albeit with less skepticism.

Meanwhile, here’s the other news of the day:

• Nuthin’ to see here? A piece of wood from an elevated subway train in Queens javelined through the windshield of a parked car and easily could have killed someone. The MTA says it’s “investigating.” (NY Post, WSJ, amNY)
• The L train will be out of service this weekend — and every weekend through mid-March. (NYDN)
• Corey Kilgannon offered a primer on manhole explosions, which are so popular this time of year. (NY Times)
• Thin-soled gumshoe Vin Barone did not go as far as Streetsblog in amNY’s coverage of AARP’s support for congestion pricing on Thursday, but the message is clear: Seniors can and most likely do support congestion pricing because they benefit far more from good transit than from the ability to drive into Manhattan for free.
• Sounds like an R-ible idea for Bay Ridge: Some southern Brooklyn pols say they want the Manhattan-bound R train to terminate at Court Street in Brooklyn Heights, rather than crossing the river into Lower Manhattan. That would end the slow, but one-seat ride to Manhattan. (amNY)
• It was nice to see usually car-friendly CBS2 do a story about how a construction project and double-parking in Brooklyn is endangering cyclists and delaying the completion of a protected bike lane.
• Did you see that car that drove on the sidewalk in Borough Park because private school buses park wherever they want? This is every day in that neighborhood. (Gothamist)
• Oh and don’t miss the answers to our public advocate questionnaires, featuring 10 top candidates!