Friday’s Headlines: A Stop Light is Just the Start Edition

Sure, Trump got indicted, but the big news in our world was that the Department of Transportation relented and agreed to install a traffic light at the Astoria intersection where 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun was killed in February (the Post, oddly, covered).

For now, we’ll leave it to smarter people to tell us how a traffic light at the corner of Newtown Road and 45th Street would have saved Dolma’s life when a stop sign didn’t (drivers, especially the unlicensed one who killed Dolma, tend to roll through stop signs and stop lights), but we will give the DOT credit for honoring the wishes of the family, including Dolma’s brother, who got more than 30,000 signatures on his petition. (The DOT will also install all-way stop signs on Newtown and 46th Street, which is also nice.)

Streetsblog, of course, has been covering the fight for far more work to be done on Newtown Road — including treatments that would reduce car volumes and make reckless and inattentive drivers less likely to kill people. And we’ll keep covering that fight.

In other news:

• You can expect lots of parking on the plaza housing the African Burial Ground memorial on Tuesday (NY Post). In a related story, we love that The City didn’t deviate (at least as of midnight) from its news mission to cover the Trump indictment, which any good editor will tell you is a huge national story that local outlets need not waste ink on!
• You may have heard that the state budget will be delayed (Gothamist), but if legislators don’t shore up the MTA’s finances, you should prepare for a $3.50 base fare. (amNY, Crain’s)
• People like that subway booth clerks are now working outside their Plexiglas palaces. (NY Times, NY Post)
• OMNY is delayed again. (NY Post)
• Like Streetsblog, The City also covered the Department of Investigation’s NYCHA fire report.
• We posted our second Final Four matchup in the March (Parking) Madness contest today, but remember: Polls close on the Western Regional Final at noon today. Click here to vote for either Midtown South or the 43rd Precinct in The Bronx.
• Did you see that NY1’s Errol Louis name checked Streetsblog and Reinvent Albany in the same interview with MTA CEO Janno Lieber? (Transcript)
• Make sure to read Henry Grabar’s great piece about Paris in Slate. A taste: “The redistribution of public space is a policy of social redistribution,” deputy mayor for transportation, David Belliard, told Grabar. “Fifty percent of public space is occupied by private cars, which are used mostly by the richest, and mostly by men, because it’s mostly men who drive, and so in total, the richest men are using half the public space. So if we give the space to walking, biking, and public transit, you give back public space to the categories of people who today are deprived.” Amen, frère.

• There are protected bike lanes on plenty of narrow, cross-town streets, so we don’t know what the hell the West Side Rag is talking about when it suggests that bike lanes are not mathematically possible. (See photo, above right)
• Our friends from the War on Cars were on the Daily Zeitgeist podcast.
• And, finally, speaking of zeitgeist, Jimmy and the Jaywalkers’ new hit about biking on Pitkin Avenue is out. And, sure, it feels like a satire, but maybe satire is the best way to get the DOT to do its job.