Thursday’s Headlines: Ferry Bad News Edition

A big story yesterday was the apparent sick-out by workers on the Staten Island Ferry, which caused delays and cancelations that threaten to continue today. (Coverage: NYDN, NY Post, amNY, Gothamist, The City).

The MTA (the same agency that has refused to put a bike or pedestrian lane on the Verrazzano Bridge) rushed to add express bus service. And the NYC Ferry is still running its service from St. George to the West Side of Manhattan — aka “The Rock Yacht” — but those boats are much smaller than a John F. Kennedy or an Andrew J. Barberi (but at least the tickets are free!). In the end, commuters should expect crowding there and on the R train between Bay Ridge and Lower Manhattan.

Where are Colin Jost and Pete Davidson when you need them?

In other news:

• The big breaking story yesterday was the early morning crash in Inwood that killed two pedestrians. Streetsblog and amNY led the pack with stories that focused on the danger of reckless drivers on Sherman Avenue rather than falling prey to the predictable tabloid approach (NYDN, NY Post) to crash coverage, which never points out that crashes are preventable with proper road design, more speed enforcement and better driver training (Gothamist had a good spin, too). Oddly, the car-loving Times, which almost never covers crashes, quickly put up a story about the Inwood deaths, but it read like it was written by a bot (or someone at the Times who is never called upon to cover the city in the paper’s very name), with such lines as, “Through a network of agencies and programs, like automated speed cameras, Vision Zero has been working to reduce fatalities on the city’s deadly streets” and “Mr. Adams promised to invest $900 million over five years to the city’s safe streets program in April, which would include money for infrastructure upgrades to protect bike lanes and pedestrian areas.” (The NY Today write-up of speed cameras also suffered from the way the paper covers long-known programs as if someone just told them about them.)
• Speaking of the car-loving Times’s odd coverage, the paper interviewed 28 car mechanics about the apparent rise in rats chewing through car wires. Twenty-eight mechanics! To probe an apparent crisis that doesn’t affect the majority of residents of the city that is in the paper’s very name! Think of the resources wasted on that one story that could have been spent on a real investigation of the damage done by cars, not to them.
• There was another fire in a Housing Authority building from a substandard e-bike battery, but instead of rushing to blame e-bike riders, perhaps city officials can come up with a micro-mobility strategy. (NYDN, The City)
• Hell Gate did a broad overview of where the “open restaurant” program is going.
• Wow, Vornado really needs that Penn Station boondoggle! (Crain’s)
• Give blood, get beer. (Patch)
• And, finally, set your calendar for the annual Pokey and Schleppie Awards: on Monday: