De Blasio signs off on Brooklyn,
Queensboro Bridges bike paths
BY MARK HALLUM
Mayor Bill de Blasio will be opening
sections of roadway on the
Brooklyn Bridge and the Queensboro
Bridge, which will be announced in his
State of the City address later on Thursday.
Advocates have long pressured the de
Blasio administration to pedestrianize the
south outer roadway of the Queensboro
Bridge, with the Department of Transportation
coming back to them with the excuse
that the fences are too low to allow foot or
cycling traffi c.
Pedestrians and cyclist have been forced
to share space on the north outer roadway
while the same cramped conditions have
been augmented by tourists on the Brooklyn
Bridge.
“Now, it’s time to bring them into the
21st century and embrace the future with
a radical new plan,” De Blasio’s prepared
remarks will say according to a City Hall
PHOTO BY TODD MAISEL
Residents enjoy a Sunday on the Brooklyn Bridge with a biota a breeze, but
nobody seemed to mind.
Mayor sets goal to vaccinate 5 million
New Yorkers in State of the City address
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
In his fi nal State of the City address,
Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to vaccinate
fi ve million of New York City’s
8.4 million residents by June.
In an 18-page proposal, and pre-recoded
video, entitled “A Recovery for All of Us,”
de Blasio outlined a massive vaccination
plan, with scant details, to jumpstart the
city’s post-pandemic comeback. The vaccination
effort, along with the bevy of other
de Blasio comeback proposals, is meant to
turn New York City into a leader in pandemic
recovery.
“We will reach high levels of immunity
to create a safer city, a city ready for a full
comeback. It will be a signal to the world
that the comeback is happening right here,”
de Blasio said.
Since shipments of the vaccine fi rst arrived
in December, over 699,520 doses of
FDA-approved vaccines from Pfi zer and
Moderna have been administered across
the fi ve boroughs, according to the city’s
vaccine tracker.
And although vaccination rollout has
been sluggish, de Blasio announced earlier
this week that the city would receive 30%
more of the Moderna vaccine in its weekly
shipments of the shot and reopened all 15
spokesperson. “On the Brooklyn Bridge,
we will ban cars from the innermost lane
of the Manhattan-bound side to transform
Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray
city vaccination sites which were temporarily
closed due to dose shortages.
In order to help meet this goal, de Blasio
said the city currently trying to recruit
2,000 members of a new Vaccine for All
Corps to join the 3,900 already existing
Health Department vaccination workers
across the city’s 412 vaccination sites.
Worker recruitment will take place in
the city’s 28 neighborhoods hardest hit by
the coronavirus pandemic which are spread
out among all fi ve boroughs. Those that are
it into a two-way protected bike lane and
turn the existing shared promenade space
into a space just for pedestrians. On the
FILE PHOTO
recruited to serve their own neighborhoods
will work as general staff in vaccination
sites.
In order to better lead the city into its
recovery, the mayor said, the city will begin
to bring back its workforce still working
from by May as another signal to the world
that the COVID recovery is happening in
New York.
Last year was not just defi ned by the arrival
of COVID-19, but also by sweeping
calls for police reform across the country
Queensboro Bridge, we will begin construction
this year to convert the north
outer roadway into a two-way bike-only
lane and convert the south outer roadway
to a two-way pedestrians-only lane.”
On the Brooklyn Bridge, the inner most
of the three Manhattan-bound lanes will
be converted for cycling use, leaving two
lanes for cars. This will happen by the end
of 2020.
The time to complete the conversion on
the Queensboro Bridge side will be slightly
longer, according to the mayor’s offi ce, due
to unrelated construction. The south outer
roadway will go to pedestrians while cyclists
will have the run of the north outer roadway.
“The mayor has agreed to open up the
outer roadway of the Queensboro Bridge
for cyclists, which is something I’ve been
fi ghting for for years, and Councilman
Ben Kallos joined me in that effort because
the bridge spans our two districts,”
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer said during
Thursday’s stated City Council meeting.
Van Bramer and Kallos offered to front
the money needed to replace the fence in
order to move this initiative forward over
the summer when the city was struggling
for funds.
sparked by the death of George Floyd.
In response to the mass protests in New
York City which began last summer, and
still continue almost nightly in 2021, de
Blasio created a task force on Racial Inclusion
and Equity made up of city government
leaders of color, charged with “identifying
new opportunities to push for progress and
address inequality.”
De Blasio credits the task force with
identifi ed the communities hardest hit by
COVID, the city’s Landlord-Tenant Mediation
project, and the $2.3 million One Fair
Wage award which helped 100 restaurants
keep their employees during the pandemic.
Now, in the spirit of recovery, that task
force will become permanent.
The city’s mass vaccination effort will
directly support it pandemic economic
recovery, de Blasio during his address. By
vaccinating millions of New Yorkers, the
city could account for 25% of all restored
jobs within the next two years, de Blasio
said. The city could also see as much as
125,000 jobs return in the hospitality sector
which suffered a harsh blow when the
virus forced people indoors.
In addition, de Blasio’s vision of turning
New York City into the public health capital
of the world could also mean more jobs as
investments in the city’s life and science
sector continue to grow.
Schneps Media February 4, 2021 3