4 THE QUEENS COURIER • MAY 20, 2021 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Open Streets program signed into law, making it permanent
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Mayor Bill de Blasio last week signed
into a bill passed by City Council in
recent weeks to not only make the city’s
Open Streets program permanent, but
also ensure that the Open Streets are managed
De Blasio pledges surge of 250 cops into subways, but asks MTA for help
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Mayor Bill de Blasio conceded to the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s
repeated calls for more NYPD offi cers in
the subways, pledging on May 17 a surge
of 250 additional offi cers.
Now, with more than 3,000 NYPD offi -
cers in the transit system, de Blasio said
the subways will boast the largest NYPD
presence in 25 years, but the MTA will
need to hire the full 500 offi cers approved
by the MTA board in January 2020 before
the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a
hiring freeze for the agency.
Nonetheless, de Blasio said that if the
city was able to hire new NYPD offi cers at
this point, so could the MTA.
“Now, that’s what the city of New York is
doing. Th at’s what the NYPD is doing. We
need the MTA to pull their own weight as
well. It is easy to criticize. How about simply
contributing and helping achieve the
mission together,” de Blasio said. “So over
the past 17 months, we haven’t seen what
we needed. Seventeen months ago, the
MTA approved the hiring of hundreds of
new MTA police offi cers, but here we are
basically a year and a half later, and they
still haven’t fi lled all those vacancies.”
Th e de Blasio administration and the
MTA have sparred in recent weeks in
light of a series of attacks involving homeless
individuals, transit workers and, as
ABC7 reported, two offi cers in the subway
last night.
“Yeah, there was a pandemic, but guess
what, we managed to fi ll police vacancies.
We managed to fi ll fi refi ghter vacancies,
so the MTA needs to step up. Th ey need
to hire, they need to fi ll those vacancies,”
de Blasio added.
According to interim NYC Transit
President Sarah Feinberg, the number of
cops patrolling the subways will be substitute
for a normal daily ridership which
has only rebounded to 2.2 million from
pre-pandemic numbers of about 5.5 million,
which declined by over 90 percent
during the health crisis.
“Th ere’s certainly safety in numbers I
think the fundamental disagreement is
how do we get from here to there, you
know, I feel like we’ve got to make the system
feel very safe and secure to customers
so we can be responsive to those people
who are sitting on the sidelines, not coming
back yet,” Feinberg said. “Th e mayor’s
just saying we’re going to get there eventually,
like eventually we’ll get to enough,
enough riders where we’ll hit that tipping
point. I’m saying help us get there. Help
me, partner with me to get us there so
that the city comes back, and the economy
comes back.”
While the MTA, whose fi nances seem to
have stabilized aft er an infusion of funds
from the federal government through the
American Rescue Act, has argued that a
recent survey indicates that riders do not
feel safe in the system, de Blasio has balked
at the claim, dismissing it as an exaggerated
view of the state of trains at this time.
In February, along with the phased
reopening of 24-hour service on subways,
the MTA and Governor Andrew Cuomo
announced that they would resume the
hiring the 500 new transit police offi cers.
by the communities they are in.
During the May 13 signing event in
Inwood on Th ursday, de Blasio described
the bill as something that was forged as a
necessity of the health crisis, but proved
to be essential in the long run for New
Yorkers.
“I want people to remember, this is
something that was created — I’ll give
a lot of credit to our colleagues, to the
City Council for their leadership — was
created out of struggle. It was created
out of crisis. It was created out of pain,
but something beautiful came of it and
something we learned together, we could
do what we hadn’t imagined before,” de
Blasio said.
Th e bill, sponsored by Councilwoman
Carlina Rivera, will create a process in
which community organizations can
apply to manage Open Streets with
approval from the city’s Department
of Transportation, which will provide
resources to about 20 sites in the fi ve boroughs.
Under the legislation that is now enacted,
Open Street corridors would be examined
by DOT on yearly basis to decide
whether or not it would be a benefi t to
communities to slate a permanent redesign.
“When I fi rst introduced legislation in
the Council in April of last year to launch
an emergency Open Streets program, it
was at the height of the pandemic when
it was really clear that we needed more
space for socially distance recreation. I
think we can all acknowledge the important
role that eff ort played in so many
of our communities,” Rivera said. “Th is
enabled outdoor learning. It helped local
businesses thrive and inspired entrepreneurs,
and it allowed performing artists
to share their talent. It really connected us
to all of our neighbors, which I think was
probably the most important piece of it.
But it’s clear that we have to make important
changes, and we need to do that to
make it permanent and a successful staple
of our city.”
On Dyckman Street in Inwood, Rivera
said that the Open Streets program had
set a new dynamic in her Lower East Side
district as a gathering zone amid a pandemic
that left many people isolated in
their apartments.
“When it comes to rethinking what
public space looks like, how we use our
streets, how we make sure that children
and families and small businesses can
have safe places just like we are doing
here on Dyckman — we still have seven
months left in this City Council and in
this administration, and we are going to
continue to work together in this budget
and legislatively over the next seven
months … to make this a safe city that
works for everyone,” Council Speaker
Cory Johnson said.
File photo by Todd Maisel
File photo by Dean Moses
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