Wednesday’s Headlines: Eric’s Interim Report Card Edition

The year is barely halfway through, but Mayor Adams’s record on traffic safety is already taking shape: While overall traffic fatalities are down over 12 percent, cyclist fatalities are up — to 20 overall compared to 13 this time last year.

That tally makes 2023 the deadliest year — so far — for cyclists in at least a decade, according to the Department of Transportation. Yet DOT and its boss, the mayor, opted to scale back their plans Greenpoint’s deadly McGuinness Boulevard, as Streetsblog reported late Tuesday. (Kudos to The City’s Gwynne Hogan for breaking the news.)

At least one elected official has noticed the mayor’s increasingly spotty traffic safety record. Brooklyn Council Member Shahana Hanif called Hizzoner out Tuesday during a press conference with other pols to announce a proposal to put “speed governors” in the cars of the city’s reckless drivers. The council member specifically cited the mayor’s McGuinness Boulevard retreat in follow-up comments to Streetsblog.

“We have been proactive and pushing against what this mayor is doing to undo street safety. We need to have the political courage across all levels of government to create a city that is walkable, prioritizes pedestrians, and ends these senseless murders,” Hanif said.

“In order to have a city that is visionary in safety we need that to come from our top leaders and that means the mayor,” she added after the presser. “We’ve seen what’s happening with McGuinness Boulevard, where there’s prioritizing of donors over people’s lives and that’s really taking us backwards.”

— Reporting by Julianne Cuba

In other news:

• Speaking of carnage: A driver with Illinois plowed onto the sidewalk and injured 10 people at Lexington Ave. and East 42nd Street before fleeing the scene. (NY Post, NBC New York)

• More carnage news: A Queens driver faces new murder charges for a fatal 2018 hit-and-run after a DNA test disproved her alibi. (Daily News)
• Still more: A 27-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with vehicular homicide for a 2020 crash that killed “two women and a young father.” (Daily News)
• ICYMI: Streetsblog’s Julianne Cuba masterfully navigating the drive-time audience of WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. (WNYC)
• Obstructionist City Council transportation committee chair pushing for more parking and fewer rental units in proposed Far Rockaway housing development. (Crain’s, Politico)
• The Daily News joined Streetsblog in covering Brooklyn pols’ new speed governor proposal.
• Subway accessibility is expanding slowly but surely. (NBC New York)
• Andy Byford, NYC’s former “Train Daddy” who’s now working for Amtrak, isn’t keen on the MTA’s Penn Station proposal. (Gothamist)