30 MAY 20, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Mayor signs Open Streets bill into law
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
Mayor Bill de Blasio last week
signed into law 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
by the communities they are in.
During the May 13 signing event
in Inwood on Thursday, 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.
The 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
FIle photo by Todd Maisel
a benefi t to communities to slate a
permanent redesign.
“When I first 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. “This
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.
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
officers 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. That’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.”
The 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
firefighter vacancies, so the MTA
needs to step up. They 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.
“There’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. “The
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.”
File photo by Dean Moses
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