Ben Fried

Doug Gordon of Brooklyn Spoke fame reports that NYPD sent a battalion of bike enforcers out to the intersection of Chrystie Street and Rivington Street on the Lower East Side this morning. This is a T-intersection where no motorized traffic conflicts with the path of northbound cyclists. If you're biking north on Chrystie, it makes a lot of sense to treat a red light here as a "yield to pedestrians and cyclists" sign. That does happen to be against the letter of the law, however, and police were taking full advantage, handing out $190 tickets. (Meanwhile, the maximum fine for drivers caught speeding in Albany's proposed automated enforcement bill is $50.)

The elimination of flashing blue lights on the MTA's Select Bus Service vehicles is probably the most absurd transit setback of the past year. Since New York state law limits the use of flashing blues to volunteer firefighters, the MTA caved in to pressure from Staten Island pols and took them off SBS buses this January.

The viral video of the day, courtesy of Dan Amira at New York Mag, is this bout over a free parking space on the Upper East Side. It's got all the hallmarks of NYC street dysfunction -- traffic backups, aggressive use of motor vehicles, honking, road rage, left jabs.

Turn up the volume and listen for the sociopathic pacesetter about halfway through this clip. This is southbound Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, recorded with my bike-mounted camera at the intersection with Dean Street at about 9:40 p.m. last night.

Over the weekend, Ted Mann and Josh Barbanel at the Wall Street Journal wrote a great piece about what it will take to expand NYC's bike-share system to the city's less affluent neighborhoods, and how the Bloomberg administration's decision to forgo public funding affected the system map. Then came a silly Ginia Bellafante piece in the Times that completely muddled the issues at play, mixing up free helmet-fittings with bike-share access and misleading readers about why stations were chosen for particular neighborhoods.

Reader Liz Patek sends in these photos of a crash at 71st and Broadway last night. According to witnesses she spoke to, the driver of the car with the smashed-up front T-boned the ambulance. It seems that, miraculously, no one was seriously hurt. NYPD's public information office had no information on the crash, but it appears as though the ambulance driver was traveling northbound on Broadway or Amsterdam and struck by the SUV driver heading westbound on 71st.

While parents and kids were out celebrating three years of safe, all-ages cycling at the Prospect Park West Family Bike Ride last week, the remnants of NBBL were apparently scouring their Rolodex for media contacts who still take them seriously.

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