Tuesday’s Headlines: LEGO Finally Gets It Edition

Set your calendars. On Aug. 1, LEGO will finally start selling a “Downtown Streetcar and Station” kit as part of its LEGO City line, ending an epoch in which transit-loving kids were forced to build urban toys that only featured trucks, police SUVs, airplanes, science labs and even (hold onto your coffee) a “police prison island.”

Now you know Streetsblog has had our issues with LEGO over the years for the company’s failure to help kids imagine truly livable cities by not including bike lanes in their kits or for envisioning a shopping street with no space for pedestrians (and let’s not even mention the Legoland tax breaks).

But now, with “Downtown Streetcar and Station,” LEGO seems to be getting with the program. The new kit is even fully wheelchair accessible, which is more than we can say for the MTA, thanks to Gov. Hochul’s elimination of congestion pricing that has enraged disabled New Yorkers, as we reported today.

We weren’t the only kids who were excited about the LEGO announcement:

In other, non-toy news:

• City & State looked that tiny crevasse between the rock and the hard place in which Janno Lieber finds himself right now.
• Another Times “Street Wars” reporter led a story with the supposition that bike lanes are the reason for New York City’s congestion even though the only hard data in the story proves the opposite: traffic has gotten worse primarily because of all the cars on the road! It’s worth noting, which the Times did not, that congestion in New York City existed long before there were bike lanes. And it’s worth noting, which the Times did not, that bus lanes provide service to hundreds of people who might otherwise be in cars and therefore contributing to congestion. It’s time to declare the Times’ “Street Wars” column a failure because of its frequent and willful disregard for the facts.
• Like Streetsblog, Crain’s, amNY, Gothamist and the Daily News looked at a backdoor effort to create more charging stations for e-bikes and mopeds. Earlier in the day, the Daily News got the handout about the latest advance in a lithium-ion battery swap program.
• So, your son has just killed someone driving by driving your car recklessly and without a license? Parenting classes for you! (NY Post, NY Times)
• Queens state Sen. John Liu is grumbling about the MTA’s bus redesign. (Gothamist)
• Once again, I was named to this year’s City & State “Transportation Power 100” list, which ranked me 48th. The write-up celebrated my “criminal mischief” campaign, though, oddly, did not link to the hit song, which is below. Also oddly, I was the only journalist on the list. I thank City & State for the honor.