{"id":307378,"date":"2026-07-28T04:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307378\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T04:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:20:08","slug":"tuesdays-headlines-nypd-fails-on-bus-speeds-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/307378\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday’s Headlines: NYPD Fails On Bus Speeds Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know we toot our horn louder and more piercingly than most outlets, but today we rise to praise Liam Quigley\u2019s story yesterday in Gothamist<\/a> about naggingly slow bus speeds.<\/p>\n

Sure, there\u2019s some good news: bus speeds have \u201cmostly improved\u201d on the 67 total routes where the MTA equipped buses with cameras to automatically ticket bus lane blockers \u2014 with speeds increasing by 5 percent overall.<\/p>\n

But on nine routes with camera enforcement, bus speeds actually dropped. One of the buses\u2019 problem could be attributed to construction on its route. But one the other eight routes, we have met the enemy \u2026 and it is plate-covering scofflaws.<\/p>\n

Quigley\u2019s story had plenty of pictures of drivers who cover their plate or raise their trunk lids so that bus cameras can\u2019t snap their license plates \u2014 which, if you know anything about me, people<\/a> who<\/a> deface<\/a> or cover<\/a> their<\/a> plates<\/a> has been<\/a> a personal<\/a> obsession<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

So when automated enforcement is thwarted, who ya gonna call<\/a>? It\u2019s up to the NYPD to make sure bus routes are free of illegally parked cars and, more important, cars with unreadable plates that are willfully preventing camera enforcement.<\/p>\n

How is the NYPD doing? Not very well. A quick search of the city\u2019s Open Data portal showed that from fiscal year 2024 (July 2023-June 2024) to fiscal year 2026 (which just concluded), the NYPD wrote 12 percent fewer tickets in the key categories related to defacing or covering a plate. And in the fiscal year just ended, the NYPD\u2019s massive force of officers and traffic enforcement agents wrote just 8,793 tickets for \u201cfraudulent use of a parking permit\u201d (also known as placard abuse).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s virtually none.<\/p>\n

So the next time you\u2019re on a bus stuck in traffic, first, blame the scofflaw driver who covered his plate to avoid getting a ticket, but also blame the NYPD for not targeting these hot spots with boots on the ground.<\/p>\n

Oh, and speaking of buses, Dave Colon had a nifty story yesterday<\/a> about how they\u2019ll be spewing pollution for the near future.<\/p>\n

In other news:<\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s<\/a> gaslighting of New Yorkers continues. On Monday, Murdoch\u2019s minions decided that the city\u2019s long-overdue secure bike parking program is a scam because it gives cyclists something they don\u2019t deserve in the form of \u201cugly\u201d bike parking units. The paper is wrong for many reasons: 1. cyclists will pay for the parking spaces, unlike virtually all drivers, and 2. anything that encourages cycling (and lack of safe places to park is a real impediment) is actually good for drivers because it potentially takes another person out of a car. And if you want to complain about something ugly, just look out your window, where car drivers have filled both sides of every street with hulking metal cages (yes, even in \u201chistoric\u201d districts that were settled before the advent of the car). There\u2019s nothing uglier than our current version<\/a> of Park Avenue vs. what it .<\/p>\n

Speaking of brain-dead newspaper coverage, Our Town<\/a> was so intent on drumming jp controversy to the DOT\u2019s Park Avenue beautification and safety plan that it had to quote a rando from Nextdoor, the toxic NIMBY-and-fearmongering website, where supposed Midtown resident Caroline Garcia posted, \u201cSitting in the middle of six lanes of traffic seems like a perfectly nice and healthy way to spend an afternoon. Does every bad idea come to NYC to be implemented?\u201d We\u2019ll tell Garcia what we always tell the Post: Park Avenue wasn\u2019t six lanes until cars ruined it. We\u2019re the conservatives who want it to go back to what it was.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, even The New Yorker<\/a> knows how nice it is to get on a bike and then relax somewhere nice.<\/p>\n

A driver killed a real estate broker out on a jog in the Hamptons. (NY Post<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Kudos to Erik Engquist at The Real Deal<\/a> for championing Off Ramp NYC<\/a>\u2018s great idea for converting the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into a transit-way and park. No good deed goes unpunished, of course, as revanchist has-been Bob Holden tweeted<\/a> his vitriol, but the former Council member clearly lacks the imagination to see the many ways to get goods around a city built on water. And he apparently wants city employees to live far from their jobs so that they have long car commutes.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/a> did some more reporting on President Trump\u2019s decision to stiff Democrat-controlled states of their rightfully allocated transit money \u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 which maybe explains part of Sen. Chuck Schumer\u2019s outrage over Trump\u2019s attempt to name Penn Station after his favorite president. (NYDN<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The MTA\u2019s Park Avenue viaduct \u2014 on time and under budget. (The City Reporter<\/a>; NY Post<\/a>; NY Times<\/a>, with surprising snark)<\/p>\n

Mass Transit<\/a> and NY1<\/a> followed our epic two-day<\/a> coverage<\/a> of federal Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy\u2019s latest wrongheadedness on transit and bike lanes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like Death Race 2000, but with bikes! ()<\/p>\n

Soon it\u2019s gonna rain \u2014\u00a0rain pell mell (that\u2019s a reference to a very old play<\/a>, kids). (Gothamist<\/a>)<\/p>\n

On a personal note, it\u2019s nice when people don\u2019t give up, even in the face of impossible odds, and promise to do right by their colleagues. (amNY<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And, finally, we\u2019re of two minds on yesterday\u2019s photo of former Mayor Eric Adams riding a Citi Bike in Midtown. Yes, we love that ex-Hizzoner is riding a bike, which, as we\u2019ve always said, is the best way to run quick errands or go 10 or 20 blocks. Kudos to the former mayor! But there\u2019s a big but here (and it\u2019s not the mayor\u2019s): The picture showed Adams going the wrong way down a one-way street. Yes, he was going slowly and only from a Citi Bike rack to the corner \u2014 normal biking behavior \u2014 but this is the mayor who made such behavior a criminal offense<\/a>. So, no, it\u2019s not just a fun photo of the former mayor, but a snapshot of his hypocrisy:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know we toot our horn louder and more piercingly than most outlets, but today we rise to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-307378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}