{"id":346023,"date":"2026-09-14T04:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T04:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346023\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T04:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T04:24:09","slug":"mondays-headlines-a-predictable-tragedy-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/346023\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday’s Headlines: A Predictable Tragedy Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this summer, Mayor Mamdani\u2019s Department of Transportation delayed<\/a> its redesign of Canal Street approaching the Manhattan Bridge to 2027. On Thursday, a truck driver coming off the bridge killed a 77-year-old man at that very intersection.<\/p>\n

NYPD hit<\/a> the driver with criminal summonses for civil infractions related to driving with low and leaking break fluid and busted brake lights, police told the Daily News. The department\u2019s Collisions Investigation Squad is investigating, which could result in more charges.<\/p>\n

Post-crash accountability is fine, but Ting Jun Ye\u2019s death was also a predictable tragedy: Last year, after a driver killed a cyclist and a pedestrian<\/a> at the foot of the bridge, the DOT under then-Mayor Eric Adams implemented small mitigations \u2014 concrete barriers and speed limit changes \u2014 and teased a plan<\/a> for wider sidewalks it said it would install in 2026.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, under Mayor Mamdani, the DOT opted to split the Canal Street project in half<\/a> \u2014 delaying its redesign of the more dangerous eastern half by the bridge until next year (at the earliest), after the agency first redesigns Canal Street west of Broadway.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tRecommended<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n \t\"Not
\n \t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

As Chinatown Partnership Executive Director Wellington Chen tells it, DOT is afraid of a high-profile fight over the presence of illegal sidewalk vendors<\/a> on the corridor. <\/p>\n

\u201cI guess it\u2019s because the people were making a ruckus on the eastern side of Canal,\u201d Chen told Streetsblog in July.<\/a><\/p>\n

On the campaign trail for mayor in 2025, then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani pledged that, \u201cNo longer will we wait for a New Yorker to get hurt before we take action.\u201d As mayor, he committed to make the city\u2019s streets \u201cthe envy of the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

More recently, Mamdani\u2019s DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn said<\/a> that community input \u201ccan\u2019t be used as something that just derails good ideas, or if it\u2019s a venue only for the loudest voices to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s decision to delay its redesign of Canal Street east of Broadway runs completely counter to the spirit of those statements. \u201cCanal Street East\u201d is far more dangerous, statistically, than the western portion of the corridor. Yet DOT actually told the east side Manhattan Community Board 3 District Mamanger Susan Stetzer that it was taking its time to collect, in her words, a \u201cvast amount of feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to conclude Mamdani\u2019s DOT chose political ease over safety when it kicked Canal Street East to 2027. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too soon to course-correct.<\/p>\n

In other news:<\/p>\n

The Times<\/a> is getting impatient about the mayor\u2019s 34th Street busway, while DOT insists it plans to start the redesign \u201cin the coming weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tesla is testing (human-operated) AVs on city streets. (Gothamist<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Meet \u201cthe last NIMBY in town,\u201d Andrew Berman. (Curbed<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani should invest in greenway construction for safer streets. (amNY<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The view from the north: Toronto cyclists rallied against Premier Doug Ford\u2019s plans to rip bike city bike lanes. (City News via YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Frank\u2019s Bike Shop, whose owner Frank Arroyo died in January, is officially saying goodbye. (Christopher Robbins via X<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this summer, Mayor Mamdani\u2019s Department of Transportation delayed its redesign of Canal Street approaching the Manhattan Bridge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-346023","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\/346023","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=346023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}