Election 2013

Yesterday, New York City Democrats chose the candidate who's campaigned as the anti-Bloomberg. But on issues of traffic safety and surface transit, Bill de Blasio, despite some wavering, has pledged to build on the current administration's progress while tackling the unfinished business of reforming the NYPD's approach to traffic violence. And with several City Council candidates endorsed by the newly-formed StreetsPAC winning hotly contested primaries, the results of last night's election bode well for livable streets in NYC over the next four years. As StreetsPAC board member Eric McClure put it, "It's clear from the results of the primary that support for safe and complete streets has gone mainstream."

The polls closed a few minutes ago, and the Times is reporting exit poll results in the Democratic mayoral primary that closely track the polls we've been seeing the past few weeks. Bill de Blasio is flirting with the 40 percent threshold to avoid a run-off. If de Blasio doesn't clear 40 percent, Bill Thompson seems to have the edge on Christine Quinn to get into the one-on-one run-off. The comptroller contest is looking like a toss-up, and Dan Squadron and Tish James may be headed for a run-off in the public advocate race.

Here's an ironic twist for the mayoral candidate who all but ignored bicycling and walking in his transportation platform: Bill Thompson has rented mobile advertisements-by-bike, with yellow-vested, red-helmeted riders pedaling around Borough Park with Yiddish-language advertisements for his campaign.

Today is NYC's most momentous day of voting in 12 years.

In case Streetsblog's guide to the mayoral candidates wasn't exhaustive enough for you, here's a truly epic compendium of where they all stand on transportation issues: CUNY's University Transportation Research Center has put out a 145-page white paper [PDF] covering what the Democratic and Republican candidates have said about everything from the taxi of tomorrow and dollar vans to freight policy and school buses.

If you're a registered Democrat in New York City, tomorrow is one of those rare occasions: an election where your vote carries a lot of weight. This is especially true in the City Council primaries, where winning candidates typically need just a few thousand votes to represent districts of more than 150,000 people.

The September 10 primary is just a few days away, and over the course of this grueling campaign the candidates have had plenty of time to lay out their vision for New York City's streets.

Yesterday StreetsPAC endorsed Bill de Blasio for mayor in the Democratic primary, after narrowing their choice down to him and Christine Quinn. The decision was based on the candidates' responses to a written questionnaire and sit-down interviews with the StreetsPAC board.

If you thought the last Democratic mayoral debate was thin on transportation issues, you could be forgiven for thinking that the issue didn't come up at all during last night's event. Blink, and you might have missed it. Like last time, transit was relegated to the lightning round, and thin questions from the moderators didn't elicit much information from the candidates.