Monday’s Headlines: Kevin Duggan Joins Streetsblog Edition

Kevin Duggan is no stranger to readers of our daily news digest. During his time as the transit and transportation reporter at amNY, “Double Duty Duggan” would appear daily, if not twice a day, in our headlines column, thanks to his prolific production of posts.

And now he’s with us!

Duggan announced last week on Twitter that he’d left amNY after a year at the paper, igniting a mystery for every New York media watcher … except us. We knew that he’d be joining us today.

So let us introduce you to the newest member of the all-star team of transportation that already includes Jesse Coburn, Dave Colon, Julianne Cuba, Eve Kessler and editor Gersh Kuntzman.

Duggan has been covering New York since about 2017 after getting his masters in journalism from Dublin City University in Ireland. After some freelancing, he landed a job with Vince DiMiceli’s Brooklyn Paper, where he covered southern Brooklyn neighborhoods and, later, Brownstone Brooklyn.

He moved across the newsroom from the Brooklyn Paper to amNY, where he finally focused exclusively on transportation, working hard and getting scoops. For instance:

• That time he revealed how the MTA consistently truncated a downtown bus route because of all the car traffic clogging streets near the Holland Tunnel. 
• That time he did a deep dive into how Mayor Adams’s “Speeding ruins lives. Slow down” ad campaign was a $4-million distraction from the need to design safer streets.
• That time he revealed the heavy policing against a subway fruit vendor, including a strip search, amid Adams deploying more cops into transit to enforce low-level crimes.

Fun facts: Duggan has a great Irish accent, but actually grew up in Switzerland (his parents are Irish). And he’s an avid birdwatcher. Don’t call him a loon — but you’ll spot him in Prospect Park looking for them.

Follow Kevin on Twitter at kduggan16 — and email him at kevin@streetsblog.org.

Now, all the news from a busy weekend:

• The big story of Sunday was Clayton Guse’s deep dive on the cost overruns and delays in the MTA’s East Side Access project — which was so cutting that the MTA issued a rare condemnation of it. Nonetheless, the main blame fell on previous managers of the project, which got back on track once Janno Lieber took over as the head of construction. (NYDN)
• Is the Parks Department just a patronage mill for Mayor Adams? (NY Post)
• Car carnage in Queens. (NYDN)
• A moped rider (not a scooter rider!) was killed by the driver of a BMW, but the Daily News didn’t bother to run the license plate on the car that caused the crash. If the paper had run the plate, it would have learned that the BMW has been slapped with three red-light tickets and five speeding tickets since June 2021. But it’s easier to blame moped riders for not wearing helmets than to fight car culture. (The Post and the Duggan-less amNY also failed to do a full job.)
• It’s nice to see the Post covering the problem of delivery trucks monopolizing city streets — but heaven forbid that the paper would start supporting the solution to the problem: fewer cars and more loading zones.
• A Staten Island pedestrian was hit twice: First by a driver, and then, fatally, by another driver when she was in the ambulance. (NYDN, NY Post)
• The Times seems to delight in the idea that progressives are now supporting more housing developments, but lots of progressives are YIMBYs.
• Steve Witt penned his latest screed against the “strong arm” bike lobby that was sort of about Council Member Lincoln Restler’s bill to allow citizens to ticket illegally parked cars, but not really. (Politics NY)
• Cops arrested a drunk driver in a wrong-way crash on the BQE. (NYDN)
• The Village Sun, which has been all over the outdoor dining program, reported that the long-awaited Council bill could be presented as early as the end of the month.