Monday’s Headlines: Canal Conundrum Edition

Tragedy struck on Saturday when a recidivist hit-and-run driver struck and killed a 55-year-old cyclist and a 63-year-old woman sitting on a park bench at the dangerous intersection of Canal Street, The Bowery and the Manhattan Bridge.

The 23-year-old, whom The Post identified as Autumn Donna Ascencio Romero, plowed off the highway-like bridge, over a curb and onto a grassy median, where she killed cycling advocate Kevin Scott Cruickshank, 55, and May Kwok, 63. (The paper also has video of the crash, if you can stomach it.)

Sources told the Daily News the driver was charged for a hit-and-run in April — when she had been driving without a valid license, the paper said. The judge in the case released her, pending trial — a trial that didn’t happen before the weekend tragedy.

New Yorkers have been begging for years for city official to make Canal Street safer, particularly after congestion pricing cut traffic on the crosstown strip.
The Manhattan Bridge entrance is particularly dangerous: The bridge’s speed limit is 35 miles per hour, but drivers frequently exceed that. Its highway design sends drivers ripping onto busy pedestrian-heavy Manhattan streets.

The Department of Transportation’s effort to tame the wild roadway is long delayed, which could explain why on Sunday — just one day after the twin killing — a driver of a car with New Jersey plates sped off the bridge and slammed into a food truck and a building at the exact same intersection, WNBC reported.

Yes, traffic enforcement and putting speed limiters inside the cars of recidivist scofflaws is great, but our North Star remains redesigning streets so that reckless or merely distracted drivers can’t cause such carnage. Road diets, protected bike lanes, pedestrian islands and other items in the DOT toolbox remain as crucial as ever — and, as Kevin Duggan shows today, so easy.

In other news:

• We’re not the only news outlet that’s questioning the criminal focus of the mayor’s watered-down “Department of Sustainable Delivery.” (Documented)
• City and State got an interview with former “Train Daddy” Andy Byford, who is now overseeing President Trump’s Penn Station revamp. On the plus side, Byford promised “a Penn Station that is transformed in every aspect, top to bottom.” The bad news? He wasn’t asked about any of the really thorny infrastructure issues that make Penn Station such a challenge (maybe he should re-read Nolan Hicks’s definitive piece).
• Would-be mayor Andrew Cuomo said he would move to Florida if Zohran Mamdani defeats him in November, though he later said he was kidding. But given Cuomo’s driving record, you could be forgiven for hoping he’s telling the truth. (NY Post)
• Meanwhile, Mamdani keeps doing his job as a candidate — winning over voters and unions. (The City)
• Lots of e-bike batteries have been recalled. (The Verge)
• The New Republic drew a straight line from the Trump administration’s climate research cuts to the subway flooding earlier this month.
• Here’s a sensible op-ed from someone who thinks Zohran Mamdani would be nuts to keep Establishment darling (and cyclist scourge) Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. (Substack)
• Bronx residents to Gov. Hochul: Don’t dump a new highway on us. (NYDN)
• Take this, Rupert: The Daily News ran an op-ed from a Queens man who said congestion pricing is one reason why he and his family didn’t move out of the city.
• Cops arrested the hit-and-run driver who, they say, killed 95-year-old Mayya Gill earlier this year. (Gothamist)
• And a kid was injured by a driver in Brooklyn. (WABC)
• Cops also say they arrested the driver who killed a pedestrian in East Flatbush last week. (News12)
• More subway platforms got barriers. (WPIX)
• And, finally, if you missed our own Sophia Lebowitz talking about bike lanes on Bike Talk, here’s your chance to not miss out.