Michael Bloomberg

More on tomorrow's rally and press conference on the city's proposed pedicab regulations: Chad Marlow of the Public Advocacy Group, the pedicab industry's lobbyist, sends along this press release arguing that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Speaker Christine Quinn's proposal to put a cap on the number of pedicabs and ban electric-assist technology harms the industry and compromises safety while, really, helping no one in particular. We don't like publishing press releases verbatim, but this one is really pretty good reading. You get the sense that these new pedicab regs were designed with the same level of sensitivity and awareness as the city's new school bus system. Here's what the pedicab industry has to say:

After Mayor Bloomberg's December announcement of his PlaNYC initiative to prepare for a sustainable New York of 9 million people by 2030, New York New Visions, the group of architects and planners originally organized around Ground Zero rebuilding, announced it was expanding its scope to tackle the new challenge. Last night, in a stark white room in the basement of the American Institute of Architects building in Greenwich Village, a collection of almost equally stark white faces began reimagining the New York of the future.  

From today's Crain's Insider:

The messenger is unexpected -- Robert Sullivan, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine -- but the message to Mayor Bloomberg on today's New York Times op/ed page is clear: It is time to act. When it comes to building a more livable urban environment and reversing automobile domination, New York City is falling behind other world cities. In fact, we're even lagging behind a number of American cities too, Sullivan writes:

Left to right: New York City Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner/Senior Policy Advisor David Woloch, Commissioner Iris Weinshall, a procurement and technical servicea aide and City Councilmembers John Liu and Gale Brewer.

Chris Smith has an outstanding story in this week's New York Magazine pointing out that New York City has fallen behind other world cities in addressing climate change and challenging the Bloomberg Administration to do more. An excerpt:

Map from the city's PlaNYC web site. See more maps at Gothamist.

In today's Gotham Gazette, Bruce Schaller, Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University, assembles a nice summary of the current state of the congestion pricing debate in New York City. He writes: