NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: Judge Orders Trump Admin to Release City Funds, Williams and Rajkumar Clash in Debate, Liberty Set Franchise Record, and Mayor Adams Introduces E-Bike Speed Limits

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release hundreds of millions of dollars in housing and transit funds it was withholding from New York City. Meanwhile, the two leading Democratic candidates for public advocate, Jumaane Williams and Jenifer Rajkumar, traded sharp attacks in their first televised debate. Also, the New York Liberty have opened the season with eight straight wins, their best start in franchise history. Plus, in this week’s transit segment: a new 15 mph speed limit for e-bikes, bus-only lanes coming to Flatbush Avenue, and Amtrak proposes direct service to Long Island for the first time.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, June 6. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in housing and transportation funds. It was withholding from New York City. WNYC's David Brand reports. Congress already approved hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for low-wing. income housing groups, homeless service providers, and transportation projects.

But the Trump administration added a caveat. To get the money, agencies had to prohibit, quote, gender ideology, diversity initiatives, or sanctuary immigration policies. New York City and 30 other towns and counties sued to unlock the money. Arguing the executive branch doesn't have the power to revise the grant terms after Congress earmarked the funding. A judge ordered the Trump administration to drop the new conditions while the case continues. The leading Democratic candidates for New York City public advocate squared off in a heated debate last night. incumbent Jimani Williams and state assembly member Jennifer Rajkumar went head to head for an hour on Pix 11. Rajkumar repeatedly went after Williams' record, his ambition, and even his sleep habits.

That is not enough. The people of New York City deserve more than that. Williams pushback suggesting Rajkumar was leaning on racial stereotypes, which he denied. He also made a case for his experience in the role. I'm asking you to vote for someone who knows what this job is, has been using it. We'll stand up for you. Primary day is June 24th. Early voting starts June 14th. The New York Liberty off to their best start ever.

The defending WNBA champions have won all eight games to start this season. Last night, they beat the Washington Mystics, 86 to 78. With the win, they surpassed the 1997 Liberty who started their season with seven straight wins. Another WNBA team is off to a hot start with eight wins and no losses. The Minnesota Lynx, you remember them. That's the team the New York Liberty beat for the championship last season. And by the way, last night, Tyrese Halliburton hit a last second jumper as the Indiana Pacers won game one against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA finals. We're at 71 degrees now with sunshine.

We have a slim chance of some late afternoon showers and thunderstorms on this Friday, partly sunny mid-80s with a calm wind. Again, 71 and sunshine. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way. Covering All Things Transportation, that's after the break. It's time for All in the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and Ramsey Caliphay and editor Clayton Gouza. All right, let's start with some big news at a city hall.

Mayor Adams announced the city is going to impose a 15 mile per hour speed limit for all e-bikes. Why? And how does that even work? Do cops just stand out there with speed tramps and radar guns train on cyclists now? Well, we're soon going to figure out. But if you remember nearly two weeks ago, a video goes viral on social media showing a three-year-old girl getting hit by an e-bike in South Williamsburg. This sparked outrage both in that community that is called on reforms for years and also from the mayor. Adam said he'd look over proposals and he ends up picking this one, a 15 mile per hour limit on all e-bikes and e-scooters, and he announced it yesterday.

So the proposal has to go through this bureaucratic process. And if successful, we could see this rule change begin this July. City bike, which has around 15,000 e-bikes in the city, they're extremely popular. They're upset with this decision. And they told me they weren't involved in it at all and didn't get the opportunity to weigh in. So right now their e-bikes peak at 18 miles per hour just above that proposed limit. So they say that the proposal becomes the rule of law. They're going to install speedometers on the e-bikes so riders can actually enforce the speeds themselves.

So we don't actually know yet how the enforcement will happen on the police side of things. But Stephen has reported more on recent crackdowns and so is Clayton. Right. And a couple of things are happening right now. One, the NYPD has started to ramp up enforcement on regular cyclists who blow through a red light or maybe violate traffic laws. There's kind of this blowback after years of a lot of pro-cycling policy in the city by, you know, under DeBlasio to a degree and somewhat under Adams. Now there's kind of a pushback saying, we have a little bit of contempt for the way that you cyclists maybe sometimes skirt traffic laws, even though, you know, cyclists aren't the ones causing a disproportionate number of traffic tests like cars. Another thing's going on is that e-bikes and concerns over e-bikes has become a major issue in the mayoral campaign. Andrew Cuomo, when he announced his campaign, targeted concerns over e-bikes.

But in the background here also, why are all these e-bikes there? It's primarily delivery workers working low-wage jobs for companies like Uber and DoorDash. So there's like a conflict here, where do we steer the blame, where politically are our leaders steering the blame. and a lot of the times they're targeting e-bike riders. I mean, Uber and DoorDash have invested incredible sums of money into super PACs, mostly supporting Andrew Cuomo this election. It's kind of all how it's shaking out. And it came up a bunch in the debate last night.

Stephen here pulled some tape from that. Yeah, there was a pretty lively debate. I'll just focus on the two leading candidates. We'll start with former Governor Andrew Cuomo. He says e-bikes on the streets are just the latest example of how New York has, dysfunctional city management. And he notes when he was governor, he legalized e-bikes, but it was supposed to be up to the city to set and enforce the rules. The candidate in second place, Zoran Mamdani, took the e-bike issue to throw it back in Cuomo's face over, like

Clayton was saying, who's funding his campaign? This is the very mayoral candidate who has a super pack that received a million dollars from DoorDash. How are you going to regulate DoorDash when they are giving you a million dollars to influence your street safety regulations and your labor regulations. And the governor responded with, yeah, so what? I work for the people of the state of New York, the people of the city of New York. I don't care who gave me what. I do what is right.

And that's how I... But you don't feel compromise? That's how I've always run my career. But don't you feel compromised? I just said the apps should be held responsible. Okay. So the issue of how to deal with e-bikes is still obviously going to be ongoing. There are the crackdowns like Clayton mentioned.

But I guess we'll just have to find out where things settle next year. Yeah. Well, speaking of traffic issues, Ramsey, you reported on big changes coming to Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. The DOT picked a final design to completely transform the clogged thoroughfare. What does it look like? So this has been years in the making. And finally, the city transportation department will replace two car lanes with a bus-only lane in both directions in the center of the avenue. They'll add concrete pedestrian islands for riders to board on and off the buses.

It'll stretch from Livingston Street to Grand Armory Plaza. That's the northern corridor of Flatbush Avenue. So listeners will note the avenue is an absolute mess. Traffic is constantly clogging the streets. And that B-41 bus, it's the busies of the 12 routes that go through there. It runs at an average speed of around four miles per hour. People aren't getting where they need to go. So not only is it so busy, it's also very dangerous for pedestrians and for drivers.

City data shows that 55 people have either been killed or severely injured in car crashes on Flatbush Avenue since 2019. So this plan is going to be quite transformative. It's the most aggressive redesign proposal for Flatbush that was picked over a year ago. There were multiple designs. Other designs would have put curbside bus lanes, which aren't as effective for traffic. You can imagine all the double parking on bus lanes. And while we don't have a timeline for this project, the proposal is being pitched to the Brooklyn Community Board 2 today. And duty officials previously said changes could come maybe this summer.

And you can kind of read this as Adams trying to turn around his record on buses. I mean, the mayor doesn't control the MTA's buses, but they do control the streets and the rights of way. And Adams, after promising in his campaign to install 150 new miles of bus lanes, has fewer than 30, almost through his first term. And, you know, it's politically unpopular. De Blasio also struggled to have a meaningful impact on bus speeds across the city during his two terms. The last time we kind of saw a big, major revolutionary push on bus lanes in the city was when select buses came in around 2008 under Bloomberg when they added, you know, those dedicated bus lanes, they stop every four blocks or so or half mile. They, you know, you pay before you board. So Adams is doing this, kind of.

He's approaching a plan on 34th Street to add a busway. So kind of like as his first term comes to an end looking at how he can improve his record on this issue. Now, this week, Stephen, you reported on some good news for Long Island. Amtrak is planning to run service to the island for the first time ever. Why is this happening now? And what does it mean for commuters? So Amtrak's talked about this for a while. They've looked at it.

They're actually selected as one of 69 corridors to receive up to $500,000 to make this happen. So at a recent meeting, they confirmed that they want to run three trains a day, non-peak hour to Jamaica, Queens, Hicksville, and Ronconcoma. It doesn't sound like much. but frankly, you know, Long Island Railroad does run 100 trains a day or more out to the island, 50 just to Ron Concoma. But it would allow Long Island residents to have a one-seat ride, meaning they could hop on the train of Ronconcoma and get off at D.C. Five hours later, without having to switch at Penn Station or anything. Yeah. But as Clayton would love to tell you about, there's many better ways to use Penn Station than currently do, and this could be an example of one of those ways.

Right. If you listen to this segment, you don't know about through running. We're going to tell you again. The through running is the concept to make operation at Penn Station more efficient. New Jersey Transit trains to run out to Long Island and vice versaaring tracks. Instead of turning around, it's what it was designed to do, but has evaded transportation planners. It could be a way as Andy Byford and Amtrak and other officials come in and try to plan to renovate Penn to avoid a massive expansion that would tear down a block of Midtown instead make the station more efficient, be able to increase service without increasing its funding. footprint would be the idea. This would create a one-seat ride between Long Island and the continental United States for the first time by train. But before you book that ticket, Amtrak still needs to wait

for its new trains to arrive, and that's not going to happen until at least 20, 30, five or six years away. Okay. Well, thanks to WNYC editor Clayton Goosa and Transportation Reporters, Ramsey, Caliphah and Stephen Nesson. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way as a always my friends. Thanks so much. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. 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.