NYC NOW - October 18, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Some New York City educators are calling on officials to allow students to learn remotely when they're quarantining with COVID. Also, Jersey City is suing the state of New Jersey as the battle over whether the state should allow off-duty officers to consume marijuana. Finally, Mayor Adams came into office promising to be the “bike mayor.” But nearly 2 years into his tenure, cyclist deaths have reached their highest total since 2014. WNYC’s transportation reporter Stephen Nessen has been talking to advocates and community leaders about the Adams Administration's record on street safety and joins us to discuss.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, October 18th. Here's the midday news from Michael Bill. Some New York City educators are calling on officials to allow students to learn remotely when they're quarantining with COVID. WNIC's Jessica Gould explains. Education Department policy says kids with COVID have to quarantine for five days after they test. positive. They're marked absent during that time, although it's considered an excused absence.

But some educators worry quarantines are adding to chronic absentee rates, which track students who miss at least 10% of school days. Those rates have spiked since the pandemic. Educators say low attendance rates reflect poorly on schools and can put them at risk of closure. They want the city to consider allowing six students to do assignments remotely and get marked present. In response, city officials say they're offering school strategies to boost attendance generally, and it's starting to improve. Jersey City is suing the state of New Jersey as the battle over whether the state should allow off to the officers to consume marijuana. In a new federal complaint, the city's public safety director cited a federal law that prohibits anyone who consumes a control substance

from possessing a firearm. But in New Jersey state law defends the police officer's right to consume weed off duty if it's bought legally. In the early, August, the State Civil Service Commission ordered an officer's reinstatement after it found Jersey City had no basis for firing her over her use of cannabis outside of work.

If the New York Liberty win tonight, they'll tie up the WNBA finals at two games and head to a deciding game 5 Friday night in Las Vegas against the Aces who are trying to repeat as champions. Tip off tonight is at 8 o'clock.

61 now, some sun and mostly cloudy, partly sunny and 64 today, tonight 52, then tomorrow mostly sunny and 67, and then on Friday afternoon showers likely mostly cloudy and 65. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. Mayor Adams came into office, promising to be the bike mayor, but nearly two years into his tenure, cyclist deaths have reached their highest total since 2014. That's when the city launched Division Zero campaign to eliminate. traffic deaths. WIC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson has been talking to advocates and community leaders about the Adams administration's record on street safety and joins us to discuss.

Hey, Stephen. Hey, Sean. What exactly is the mayor's record on the issue? What has he accomplished in staking office? Well, the mayor came in saying the right things. He's a biker. He's going to be the bike mayor. He supported secure bike parking. He even had a pretty decent record with advocates as Brooklyn Borough president. But now, listen to this from the mayor talking to a reporter just this week. You're able to ride your little bike safely throughout city.

No one is coming at you. This was a reporter trying to ask the mayor about 26 cycling deaths this year. Like you said, it's the highest since Vision Zero launched. For a mayor who promised 150 miles of protected bike lanes over his four years, we're just so far away from that. Two years in, in a recent report, we found there were about 33 protected bike lanes last fiscal year, 26 the year before that. And some of those began on de Blasio's watch.

You know, there are other projects like there's a bike lane at Ashland Place that people are very excited about. But just before it connects with Fourth Avenue, it just dies. It just stops. And the reason it's like that is because of pushback from the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a real estate company that is in that area. So it's not clear that there's an appetite going forward to make tough calls when it comes to balancing new bike lanes versus business interests when it comes to this mayor. Okay, you've been talking to advocates and officials about these competing interests that Mayor Adams has been juggling. What are people saying? There's a lot of frustration.

There's a lot of disappointment and a little bit of fear about what the next two years might look like. And it's not unfounded. There are a few indicators about how serious this mayor is about balancing streets versus concerns from well-connected critics. Let's start with the Willoughby Avenue open streets. This was in his first year. Advocates call this the canary in the coal mine. It was an open street. kids could play in it and suddenly cars were driving down it because some folks complained to the

mayor's office. He ultimately did reverse it, but it was a concern that, wow, things could change really quickly without notice. I think one of the biggest projects that shocked people was Fordham Road. This is a busway that the DOT Department of Transportation and the MTA had been planning since 2019. Busways really speed up buses. Do you know that one on 14th Street? Oh, yeah. That was one of the first to go in. So they were going to do this in on Fordham Road in the Bronx, but local businesses opposed it. And so, the Department of Transportation scaled it back. Instead of doing a protected sort of busway for buses only, they're just going to repaint some lanes in the road. Stephen, one of the things that's been in the news a lot has been

McGinnis Boulevard in Greenpoint and Brooklyn. What happened with that project? It's a somewhat similar story. Basically, a very long-planned protected bike lane from McGinnis Boulevard was scrapped at the last minute when well-connected businesses in Greenpoint, that is a family who donated a lot of money to the Adams campaign and when he was Brooklyn Borough president, started complaining. Just before that work was about to start, the Department of Transportation again capitulated. They scaled down this project from a, you know, what was once a two-way protected bike lane to really half of that to a lane that's just protected by parked cars a few hours of the day. And they cut the whole project in half and folks really aren't optimistic

that the second half is going to be completed. Are there any bright spots we can point to in the Adams administration on street safety and improvements? Sure. It's the second safest year for pedestrian deaths on the streets. That's a good thing. You know, there were some smaller bus lane improvements. Just last week, the mayor announced a commitment to the green wave. That is, you know, dozens and dozens of miles that are protected completely from traffic.

I will say, though, Mayor Adams himself adds that he is moving forward on projects, but he's going to take it slow and include more input from communities. I don't want to steamroll communities, and I hear it often. When I'm on the ground, people talk about waking up, next day, seeing the entire streets change without being knowledge of it, and I don't want that. Still, some of these projects, as I mentioned, have been workshopped and reviewed for nearly four years. It's hard to imagine projects going any slower than that. Is there any optimism among street safety advocates that the mayor will, at least in their eyes, come around on the issue? There's always optimism, but advocates for cycling and street safety have lost a lot of faith in this mayor in his transportation department.

You know, there are big projects that were in the pipeline. For example, Flatbush Avenue was going to get a new busway from downtown Brooklyn to King's Plaza. You know, that's a massive project that cuts across many community boards and would impact 280,000 bus riders. Here's John Orcutt with the group Bike New York, summing up what a lot of folks I've spoken to feel about that. I think one of the biggest problems there is that for the next two years, at least, there's going to be a chilling effect on what kind of designs DOT is going to come out with because they know they can be undermined at any moment by the bosses at City Hall. I did ask the city directly if that was right. They didn't respond. I have heard from a source in the transportation department that people are moving forward, but there is not a lot of confidence that these projects will see the light of day. That's WNYC, Stephen. Steven, Ness. And Stephen, thanks so much. Thank you, Sean.

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