NYC NOW - Midday News: The Entourage Surrounding Luigi Mangione, A Small Taste of Winter, and Street Safety in 2024

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Mayor Adams is defending the large entourage of law enforcement that accompanied accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione into Manhattan. Plus, we could see a little snow this weekend as temperatures across the region fall. Finally, a look at the year that was in street safety in New York City.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, December 20th. Here's the midday news from Tiffany Hanson. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is set to sue one of his accusers. The former New York Governor filed a notice of claim yesterday against his former aide, Charlotte Bennett. She's accused him of sexual harassment, which the former governor claims is on true. Cuomo says he intends to sue Bennett for defamation. Bennett's attorney says Cuomo's case is without merit and suggested Cuomo is trying to, quote, silence and punish his accusers. The former staffer says

Cuomo asked invasive questions about her personal life and went as far as to ask her to find him a girlfriend. Cuomo has been eyeing a run for New York City mayor next year. And Mayor Adams is defending a large entourage that accompanied accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione into Manhattan. Mangione was flown by helicopter and escorted off the downtown helipad by more than 20 people, including armored officers with assault rifles, as well as Adams and police commissioner Jessica Tish. Speaking on PICS 11, the mayor said it was necessary. I'm not going to just allow him to come into our city. I want to look him in the eye and stated that you carried out this terrorist act in my city,

the city that the people of New York love, and I wanted to be there to show the city. symbolism of that. City Councilmember Justin Brannon of Brooklyn is among those who criticized the spectacle on social media. Mangione is facing federal charges in United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson's killing. Currently a few flurries around a chance for rain and snow, yet this afternoon little to no accumulation in the city. We're sitting at 37 degrees currently under an overcast sky. Stay close. There's more after the break. Earlier this year, New York City marked the 10th anniversary of Vision Zero. That's the initiative launched under former

Mayor Bill de Blasio that seeks to eliminate fatal car crashes across the five boroughs entirely. As 2024 comes to a close, we're joined by WNYC's Transit and Infrastructure Editor Clayton Gouza to review the year in street safety. Hi, Clay. Hi, Tiff. All right, let's just get to brass tax here. Our traffic deaths up or down this year. So they're on track to be down slightly from last year, and they're actually on track to the lowest number since the pandemic hit, but it's still higher than what we saw before the pandemic. And when de Blasio was in office, there was a lot of progress on reducing the number of

traffic deaths. Once COVID kind of shut down the city, there was a lot of reckless driving happening. Streets were empty. People were driving like crazy. And there's a lot of sociological reasons still to be determined as to why that behavior has continued. But one reason is changing commuting and traffic patterns. More people are driving now than they were before the pandemic. But the DOT also points out that there are other signs of progress this year. We're seeing a big drop in the number of elderly people who are dying in car crash as pedestrians being hit, which they say is a good sign of progress in protecting, you know, one of the city's most vulnerable population groups. Well, let's talk about where things are right now.

Mayor Adams has faced some criticism for not doing enough to improve street safety. Has that started to change? Maybe a little. I mean, during his first two years especially, Mayor Adams administration, state a lot of projects across the city, a lot of open streets, which we might remember kind of popped out of the pandemic. He stalled several bus lane projects and pedestrian plazas. A big example was his administration's delay of major changes to McGinnis Boulevard in Greenpoint. They pushed that back after there was some opposition from local business owners and community members, some of whom donated to Adams campaign. But we did actually see that McGinnis project go through with kind of a lesser version of it. We did see some progress recently. Things have

started to change this year a little bit. In response to that, let's pivot. What are the advocates saying? Always with the street safety advocates, it's build, build, build. You know, more bus lanes, more bike lanes, more pedestrian plazas. And the constant drumbeat you're hearing from a lot of these groups is that Adams administration is still not meeting the mandate set by the city council in 2019 when it passed its so-called streets master plan. And that plan, you know, it went into effect at the start of Adams' term, and it required hundreds of new miles of new bus lanes and new bike lanes and a lot more pedestrian plazas during Adam's first term in office.

He hasn't even come close to meeting those requirements. They also say the mayor's transportation department should do more to redesign some of the city's most dangerous intersections where crashes keep happening and happening and happening. And, you know, this year the mayor made the goal of daylighting. a thousand intersections. Daylighting is when kind of take away parking spots near the intersection to improve visibility. But, you know, advocates are still saying it's not enough. What's going to be interesting is how these issues become a big topic in the mayoral primary. How is challengers come and criticize him over this, how Adams defends himself over this as the primary season

starts to heat up this year. One of the things Adams was touting was the Fifth Avenue project. We listeners may remember earlier this month there was the 200th. the anniversary of Fifth Avenue. I assume that project is still a go. Are there others as well? Yeah, and that project is moving forward, at least in the design phase this year, right? But the big thing that I think a lot of people who watch this closely are looking forward to in terms of street safety this year is congestion pricing. That's set to launch January 5th. And that's the city's biggest move to discourage people from driving altogether, charging a $9 fee to even enter men had. But there are two other big projects that the DOT is kind of looking at least to make some progress on. There is the Flatbush Avenue bus sign. Flatbush Avenue is one of the bus corridors in the city.

It's also one of the slowest. And then there is kind of adjacent to that in Brooklyn's Doe, Grand Army Plaza. It's a big car circle. Since Adams came in, the DOT said we want to think about redesigning this. There's a few proposals out there. They're doing a lot of community outreach. We could see some advancement on that this year to kind of make it more. more pedestrian friendly. Clay, we could probably spend another 35 minutes talking about congestion

pricing, but I think we'll leave it there. Sure. Thanks, Tiff. WNYC's transit and infrastructure editor is Clayton Gousa. Clay, thanks again. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening. You know,