Thursday’s Headlines: 20,000th Citi Bike Edition

Blue power!

The biggest news yesterday on our little beat came in the form of an incremental story, one of those heartening milestones that prompt pols to take victory laps: Citi Bike completed its expansion into the farthest northern region of Manhattan, installing its newest station at Nagle Avenue and Thayer Street in Inwood.

That means the rental service, which now fields more than 20,000 bikes, “will now extend from the Battery in lower Manhattan to 220th Street at the tip of Manhattan, covering the entire island,” according to Department of Transportation Manhattan Commissioner Ed Pincar.

The tabloids chose various angles: The Daily New played up the fact that the city’s bike-sharing network now is “bigger than Paris’s Velib,” while The Post took the slant that our Citi Bike is now set to become the biggest such network outside of China. For amNY, the bike-rental service reached the Manhattan “finish line.” 

That’s nice, but onward. Being from the Boogie Down, we just want to see Citi Bike blanket the Bronx!

In other news on a slow news day:

• Gov. Cuomo’s plan to build a bunch of skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan, ostensibly for the purpose of amortizing the Penn Station rebuild but per usual for the governor also as a sop to his edifice complex, hit more heavy sledding, as a coalition of groups that included the Tri-State Transportation Campaign registered opposition at a rally. (WSJ, NJ.com)
• Cuomo’s satrapy, the Post Authority of New York and New Jersey, played fast and loose with the environmental assessment of the LaGuardia AirTrain, according to a trove of documents pried loose by critics. (NYPost)
• A former Taxi and Limousine chairman argues in an op-ed that the city should torpedo the commission if it wants to save the industry. (Crain’s)
• A number of City Council candidates are proposing to regulate food-delivery apps in a bid to help exploited delivery cyclists. (Queens Eagle)
• Manhattan Community Board 8 failed to get a majority vote supporting permanent protected bike lanes on East 61st and East 62nd streets. The measure now goes before the full CB, an activist reports. (Paul Krikler via Twitter)
• Finally, with an assist from Streetsblog’s spotlighting of the issue, advocates stopped Cuomo from raiding hundreds of millions of funds for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in order to stanch holes in the state’s $212 billion budget. (Via Twitter)