Monday’s Headlines: L-Pocalypse Now Nah Edition

The story of the weekend was not the city’s “Car Free Day,” which featured a few a few hours of car-free blocks in a select number of small areas, no. The big story was that the L train repairs finally got underway on Friday night. (And Andy Byford himself was in the subways to oversee his workers and greet passengers, including our own Julianne Cuba, who was heading home from the Inner Circle dress rehearsal on Friday night, photo above.)

How bad was it? Depends on who you read:

• Pix11 reported that wait times were longer than the promised 20 minutes.
• The Daily News first reported that it wasn’t so bad, but then reported Sunday that Union Square is proving to be a thorn.
• The Post reported that it really really wasn’t so bad. And on Sunday, the Tabloid of Record’s Nolan Hicks revealed that apparently Gov. Cuomo’s truncated tunnel repairs are only going to save $10 million in the overall $492-million project. If you’re playing at home, that’s not a lot.
• After a long preview on Friday, the Times on Sunday declared the glass half-full.
• Vin Barone at amNY suggested that Friday was the nightmare, with Saturday and Sunday going much better.

The repairs will continue on nights and weekends for an expected 15 months (or much less, if you read Clayton Guse in the Daily Newsay).

Here’s the rest of the ICYMI news from over the weekend:

• Mayor de Blasio’s security team covered up a minor car crash to protect Hizzoner’s image, according to an exclusive report in the Daily News by Graham Rayman and Stephen Rex Brown. “As per CO no one is to know about this,” a sergeant texted members of the mayor’s travel unit, the paper reported.
• Reps. Max Rose and Jerry Nadler and a host of Staten Island and Brooklyn officials called for two-way tolling on the Verrazzano Bridge on Sunday — a good way to eliminate “toll shopping.” (NYDN, NY Post)
• Great hacks think alike. On Wednesday, our editor Gersh Kuntzman asked DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg about why she can’t provide more space for pedestrians and cyclists on the increasingly busy Queensboro Bridge. The commish said there’s some big repair project coming that will delay any major changes with the span. Then Jose Martinez of The City wrote it up.
• Martinez also had a nice scoop on Monday — that the Legal Aid Society is going to sue the de Blasio administration to force it to issue e-bike violation tickets to restaurants and other companies that use e-bikes rather than on the poor delivery people themselves. The de Blasio administration says it does that, but it does not.
• The Brooklyn Paper had a weird dog-bites-man story about the city’s decision not to expand dockless bike share to Coney Island — because it was basically reporting that the thing no one thought would happen isn’t âctually going to happen. Still, media commentary aside, we are sad that Coney Island won’t get a crucial form of public transportation that a big section of the city is currently enjoying.
• Curbed followed our own David Meyer’s piece about e-scooter legislation in Albany with some nice details.
• Here’s why all money should travel by bike. (NYDN)
• And, finally, let’s go back to that snark at the top of this story about the city’s “Car Free Day” on Saturday. The Twitter threads of the DOT and several elected officials crowed about how awesome it was to see Broadway devoid of automobiles — and it was. So why not make it happen, like, all the time? One city tweet really stood out: