Iris Weinshall

Last week, opponents of the Prospect Park West redesign moved to appeal Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan’s decision to reject their complaint against the city. If the community board’s approval of the bike lane and the data showing its effect on speeding and safety didn’t persuade them not to sue in the first place, a judicial decision wasn’t going to persuade them now. The longer the litigation drags on, the more time they’ll have to muddy the truth.

Yesterday we found out that the well-connected opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane are refusing to accept the decision from Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan rejecting their lawsuit. A caveat to the journalists who might pick up the remnants of this story: Quotes from the opponents' attorney, Gibson Dunn partner Jim Walden, often need vigorous fact-checking.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan dismissed the lawsuit seeking to reverse the redesign of Prospect Park West yesterday, putting an end to a protracted, ugly chapter in the annals of NYC street safety improvements. The lawsuit, brought this March by a group of politically-connected opponents who failed to participate in the years of public process that preceded the redesign, had no standing because it was filed after the statute of limitations expired, Bunyan ruled.

Earlier this year, Streetsblog filed a set of freedom of information requests in our attempt to reveal the political maneuvering behind the campaign to get rid of the Prospect Park West bike lane. Since then we've received voluminous responses from the offices of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Council Member James Vacca, which have helped fill in some missing details. Thanks to those responses, we now have a clearer sense of how former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, the wife of Senator Chuck Schumer and a resident of Prospect Park West, has played a central role in the bike lane opposition. What we don't have, for the time being, is any Weinshall correspondence furnished by her current employer, the City University of New York, in response to our freedom of information request.

Tomorrow, Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bert Bunyan is expected to weigh in for the first time on the core arguments brought by opponents of the Prospect Park West redesign against the City of New York.

Thanks to some rescheduling, we've got nearly two months until the first court hearing on the Prospect Park West lawsuit. Flimsy as the plaintiffs' case may be, they now have a long time to run their smear campaign against DOT and the neighborhood advocates who put in years of organizing to make this street safer.

Jim Walden is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the kind of white shoe firm where lawyers represent major corporations at rates of nearly a thousand dollars per hour. His name has been popping up on Streetsblog recently because he represents a politically-connected group attempting to undo the redesign of Prospect Park West. According to press accounts, Walden is doing this work at no charge to the client. Walden would not comment to Streetsblog for this story.

The latest bike story ricocheting around the local media is Mayor Bloomberg's reaction to a crowd in the Rockaways that reportedly booed the mention of bike lanes. David Seifman at the Post ran with it yesterday. Adam Lisberg at the Daily News picked up on it today. And NY1 managed to work it into a story about today's blizzard.