Charles Komanoff
Recent Posts
The ‘Burbs: Extremely Safe or Especially Dangerous?
| | 12 Comments
Long Island is safe. So safe that police recruits are flocking to the island’s two counties, according to an article in last Tuesday’s New York Times: High pay coupled with low crime rates make a coveted Long Island job “like winning the lottery in law enforcement,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police […]
When Traffic Enforcement Doesn’t Include Moving Violations
| | 11 Comments
The streets of Soho, where trucks roam free If you have an eye for New York City traffic mayhem, then you know those "Where’s a cop when I need one" moments. This is about a mayhem moment when a cop was right there — and did nothing. It took place last November, a little before […]
The Times Applauds Cycling… The Times of London, That Is.
| | 7 Comments
Here’s an editorial one wouldn’t expect to see in The Times: An unabashedly pro-bicycle manifesto anointing cycling as "the cheap, green answer to so many contemporary troubles" and urging city authorities to use congestion-charging revenues to create a first-class cycling infrastructure. Alas, this remarkable editorial was published not in the New York Times, but in […]
Public Health and Livable Streets: Making the Connection
| | 5 Comments
Thirty years ago the health arguments against car-dependence were 90 percent about air pollution and 10 percent about physical inactivity. Now, with tailpipe pollution down and obesity and diabetes up, those percentages are reversed. The latest evidence is a valuable new report, Steps to Get New Yorkers Moving (PDF file), from the Public Health Association […]
In Defense of Ghost Bikes
| | 23 Comments
Aaron’s piece questioning the memorialization of bike fatalities reminds us that cycle advocacy is rife with paradoxes. Drawing attention to cycling deaths and injuries can be powerful politically and symbolically but may also scare off would-be riders. Moreover, cycling is safer for all when there are more cyclists. We’ve all wrestled with these contradictions and […]
Fresh Direct Builds a Grocery Empire on Free Street Space
| | 38 Comments
Today’s Times marked the onset of Gridlock Alert season with a paean to Fresh Direct — the dot-com that brings New Yorkers expensive, home-delivered groceries along with idling engines, double-parking and gridlock galore. Founded five years ago, Fresh Direct is now a $240 million a year outfit that offers us "a glimpse of the next […]
NYPD Has Spent $1.32M to Suppress a Monthly Bike Ride
| | 18 Comments
Charles Komanoff, flanked by Marquez Claxton and Norman Siegel, at City Hall this morning. Time’s Up took its campaign for safe bicycling into the economic arena this morning with release of a report documenting the Bloomberg administration’s squandering of New Yorkers’ tax dollars in suppressing the Critical Mass bike rides. With the City Hall steps […]
“Freak Accident” That Seems to be Happening Regularly
| | 2 Comments
Has it come to this, a car can be driven down a sidewalk for an entire crowded city block, injuring four pedestrians, one of them critically, without the driver getting a ticket or even a photo appearing in the next day’s newspapers? Just before 6 p.m. yesterday, a driver reportedly hit the gas pedal instead of […]
DOT to Neighborhood: Your School’s in the Way of Our Highway
| | 7 Comments
There is a palpable schizophrenia in the Bloomberg Administration these days when it comes to Livable Streets issues. On the one hand, the Administration is developing some 200 miles of new bike lanes, initiating a long-term sustainability project and, for the first time, talking openly about reducing automobile use. On the other hand, very little […]
Scrimp My Ride
| | 3 Comments
November 7, 2006 To: Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Quinn and various other electeds and commissionersFr: Charles KomanoffRe: Your request for Conflicts of Interest Board guidance on repayment for personal use of taxpayer-funded cars and drivers. Forget the Conflicts Board. You don’t need them. Talk to me and Brian. We’ll tell you what to pay. Brian […]
Pirro: Why Not Make Reckless Driving into Your Issue?
| | 4 Comments
Republican lobbyist and convicted tax-evader Albert J. Pirro is the husband of Jeanine F. Pirro, the law-n-order Westchester prosecutor and Republican candidate for state Attorney General. Albert was busted the other day in White Plains for doing 51 in a 25 mph school zone – just two months after being clocked at 98 in a […]