Monday, May 26, 2025
Mostly sunny. High 72 degrees.
Today’s mostly sunny skies are expected to become increasingly overcast as the week wears on, with showers forecast for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Temperatures at the beginning and end of the week are predicted to be in the mid- to upper 70s, with a mid-week dip into the 60s.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Monday is Memorial Day, a federal holiday honoring the more than 1 million members of the U.S. military who have lost their lives while serving in our country’s armed forces from the Revolutionary War to the present.
On a lighter note, It’s also National Paper Airplane Day, an unofficial observance marked each year on May 26. While most of us have folded and tossed paper planes at some point in our lives, it may come as a surprise to learn that these gliders are actually serious aviation tools used by scientists to study aerodynamics. Historians believe their roots go back as far as 500 B.C., when Chinese engineers began flying small models of papyrus and bamboo. The Wright brothers reportedly built paper models when designing the biplane in which they made their historic 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., and in the 1930s, the Lockheed Corporation used paper models to test designs for its aircraft. If you’re looking for inspiration for your own paper aircraft, here are 50 designs of varying degrees of difficulty. And here’s an educational packet from the Federal Aviation Administration for parents and teachers interested in a “fun aviation-focused STEM activity” to do with children.
Upper West Side News
By Laura Muha
Ever since the pandemic, New Yorkers have been urging the city to do something about electric bikers who fail to obey traffic laws, swooping the wrong way down one-way streets, zooming through red lights, and weaving among pedestrians on crowded sidewalks. Last month, the NYPD began issuing criminal summons to rules-breaking cyclists on both e- and regular bikes, but some Upper West Siders are now questioning whether the punishment is too much for the crime.
Last week, the transportation committee of the local Community Board 7 became the latest to join the chorus.
In a resolution that passed 5-1 with three abstentions, the committee urged the NYPD “to immediately end the policy … and find another way to mitigate bad behavior,” reported Streetsblog. “Holding cyclists to a far higher standard than motor vehicle drivers is unjust, puts immigrant workers at grave risk, and sends the wrong message about the actual danger on our streets.”
Motorists who are caught violating the city’s traffic laws typically are issued traffic-court summonses; if they fail to respond, their driver’s license can be suspended. However, that approach won’t work with cyclists, whose incentive to respond is low because they don’t have licenses, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a recent editorial in the New York Post. So starting on April 28, the NYPD instead began issuing criminal-court summonses to cyclists who violate traffic laws, concentrating on the morning and evening rush hours in high-volume e-bike corridors throughout the city.
In the first two weeks after the crackdown began, the NYPD issued 916 summonses to e-bike cyclists — nearly twice as many as it issued in all of 2024, according to Streetsblog.
The first of those cyclists began appearing in criminal court last week; Streetsblog reported that Judge Michelle Weber lectured them about following the rules of the road, but dismissed most of the citations because police had not filled them out correctly.
While no one is arguing that cyclists ignoring traffic rules aren’t a significant menace, some opponents to the NYPD crackdown worry that it could lead directly to deportation for some offenders, as the Daily News pointed out in a recent editorial: “For the largely immigrant community of delivery workers — who have grown vastly in number as New Yorkers have gotten more and more used to delivery of food, groceries and goods — such a summons can have extremely grave consequences as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to detain and deport as many people as possible.”
Rather than issuing criminal summonses, the editorial urged the companies that employ the delivery workers to “institute realistic delivery times, set standards and establish a culture where drivers understand that safety is the priority, not speed.”
You can read the full editorial — HERE.
In addition to serving as a backyard for New Yorkers, Central Park is also the country’s No. 1 tourist destination, visited by 42 million people every year. And like any public space in which large numbers of people come into contact with one another, problems sometimes arise.
Enter the eight members of the Central Park Conservancy’s new Ranger Corps, who, clad in green uniforms, have been stationed throughout the park seven days a week for the past six weeks. Their job? To provide what the conservancy calls “a steady, supportive, and visible human presence” in the 843-acre park.
“The Central Park Ranger Corps. is a response to the growing need for civility, clarity, and shared responsibility in a space visited by over 42 million people each year,” Betsy Smith, president and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy, said in a statement announcing the initiative. “We see increasing challenges around how people use the Park and hear directly from the public about ongoing concerns and issues. The Rangers offer a friendly, informed presence to help guide appropriate Park use and ensure the Park remains a safe and welcoming place for everyone.”
Although the conservancy officially announced the new initiative last week, the rangers in fact began work in early April. Since then, the conservancy says, they’ve addressed more than 1,600 visitor concerns and quality-of-life issues; responded to 280 vendor infractions; resolved 40 unpermitted events; offered support to over 250 homeless individuals; asked dog owners to leash more than 2,500 dogs; and assisted in more than 60 other incidents, such as reuniting lost children with their families and supporting the care of injured wildlife.
The rangers can’t issue summonses, but they work closely with groups who can, such as the NYPD and the Parks Enforcement Patrol.
“We all have an idea of what a park ranger is there for,” Erica Sopha, the organization’s vice president for park use and stewardship, told NY1. “Park rangers tend to be these very positive people who understand the park, who know how the park operates, and are there to take care of people, take care of the land … so that’s really what we’re out there trying to achieve.”
Read the full story — HERE.
If you’re looking for summer reading, you may want to check out bestselling author Chris Pavone’s new thriller, “The Doorman,” whose main character is – as the title suggests – the doorman at a fictional luxury Upper West Side building called the Bohemia.
In a recent interview, Pavone told Alison Stewart of WNYC that he’s always been fascinated by the “upstairs-downstairs” aspect to life in New York, with some monied residents insulating themselves so successfully that the only people of other races and social classes they ever interact with are the staffs of the “fortress like” buildings in which they live.
“The Doorman” explores this dynamic as it unfolds on a single day on Billionaire’s Row on West 57th Street. A huge demonstration is taking place to protest yet another killing of a Black man by a white police officer, and, as counterprotestors wearing MAGA caps and bulletproof vests begin to gather, doorman Chicky Diaz grapples with what to do if the chaos on the street spills over into the building.
“While a mystery hums beneath the narrative — who won’t make it out of the book alive? — ‘The Doorman’ is better read as a state-of-the-city novel, a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York at a singularly strange moment,” wrote Sarah Lyall in a review for the New York Times last week. The obvious comparison is Tom Wolfe’s 1989/ “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” “but Pavone’s humor is more humane, his sympathy for the characters’ struggles and contradictions more acute,” Lyall wrote. “With his eye for absurdity and ear for nuance, he seems as if he’s writing not from some elevated place high above the city, but from within it.”
You can listen to Stewart’s interview with Pavone — HERE; if you’re short on time, you’ll find a condensed version on Gothamist — HERE.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
It’s insane that NYPD is giving criminal summons to e-bikes who run red lights and not doing the same for cars.
At nearly every light the last car or two is running a red, they are never ticketed much less criminally charged.
As John Venditto points out below, one difference is the consequences of a ticket for bike riders and car drivers. But another difference concerns what we are trying to accomplish by actions against bikers and drivers. The goal is everyone’s safety. While it is true that many drivers enter intersections just after the light has turned red, they are aware that they are technically breaking the law, and generally take care not to push their luck, so to speak, too far. They also generally take care that what they are doing is not likely to cause harm. Bottom line, there are norms around this behavior that drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians all understand, tacitly agree to, and adjust our behavior to accommodate. And police should issue summonses when those norms are broken. For e-bikes, those norms have not yet had time to develop. As a result, e-bikes often ignore all traffic laws – red lights, one-way signs, riding in the street instead of the sidewalk, etc, and seeming to think that they are only subject to the rules that pedestrians must follow (which of course have recently lost most of their teeth as “jaywalking” is no longer illegal). So, I think it is entirely reasonable, at least until these e-bike behaviors are no longer acceptable, for police to issue criminal summons for them, while not doing so for cars. Maybe once everyone, i.e., e-bikers as well as others who use the streets, learns how to behave so all are reasonably safe, and once there is some accountability for e-bikers, criminal summonses could be eliminated.
Of course, police need to be trained to be equitable about this enforcement. Also, they, and all of us, should recognize that e-bike delivery people generally do follow the law, or at least take special care to be safe (maybe just because their jobs, and even their ability to remain in the country, depend on it, but still), and police might ignore their infractions if they are not endangering, while being more rigorous about infractions by people who are not biking for a living.
I’m not sure I agree with everything you write, Andrew, but I do really like the point you make about the importance of establishing social norms. For me, the question is whether the best means for establishing these norms is through criminal sanctions, a ticket, strong words from the pedestrians a cyclist endangers, or something else.
Every time I cross a thoroughfare in Central Park with my children or dog, it feels like we’re playing frogger, though I do see a number of polite cyclists slow or stop. These seem to be mostly delivery persons or tourists, whereas the sport cyclists who think they are training for the Tour de France are the ones who go through red lights so quickly they couldn’t possibly hope to stop should someone be so foolhardy as to exercise their right of way.
Yes of course they can ticket bikers that are breaking the law without a criminal summons, which was the state of affairs prior to this ‘crackdown’ – I actually don’t think police should be ignoring infractions by those that are delivering for a living, there is one set of rules for both recreational and professional cyclists.
Why the excuses for drivers who ‘enter just after the light has turned red’?! That’s running a red light, is a direct danger to pedestrians and is absolutely inexcusable. NYPD don’t bother to enforce it which is why we need red light cameras at every intersection.
Yes some of the urbanist bike bros have been observed riding aggressively, even with children on their e-bike or scooter cutting drivers off etc.
If an ebike operator has no license that can be revoked and no registration allowing for impoundment of the bike then how can the DMV-oriented moving violation system work?
It can’t and perhaps the insanity you complain of is in thinking it can.
Ebike operators shouldn’t have it both ways, opposing licenses and registrations and then insisting that the ineffective DMV process be used regardless.
And the enablers – like those members of the CB 7 Transportation Committee who continue to report to Transportation Alternatives and the “Open Plans” conglomerate – should face the fundamental contradiction: You can’t oppose some form of licensing or registration AND insist that a summonsing process DEPENDENT on licensing and registration continue to be used.
The difference is that e-bike riders do not get any points that are reflected not only on their license, but are reflected in insurance companies own internal point calculators. People who drive cars do get that. If a bike rider gets a ticket, they can go to the DMV traffic violations bureau and only pay a fine with no points or really no accountability if you simply decline to show up. Not showing up to criminal court triggers an arrest warrant, which is accountability. A person who drives a car who does not show up to the DMV for a traffic violation gets their license suspended.
Outside of New York City, theoretically under New York State law if you get caught by the police for speeding more than 10 mph over the limit or running a red light as well as numerous other traffic violations you could go to jail for up to 15 days. The reason why only outside of New York City is that New York City is currently the only jurisdiction that uses the DMV traffic violations bureau which is an administrative court that cannot impose criminal penalties, NYPD would have to write a separate summons returnable to criminal court. Outside of New York City, local towns and villages and other cities use town, village, city or county courts that use the criminal procedure law. An administrative agency cannot do that. The other thing is that traffic tickets can be plea bargained outside of New York City, e-bike criminal summons tickets can be plea bargained.
cars kill and maim people every day 100x more than ebike or bicycles. if this was about safety, they would go after cars.
People are tired of the “but cars” schtick. Cars are regulated and there is a lot more scrutiny. We all know you have no problem with your ubers and lyfts. E-bikes are what destroyed urbanists credibility.
Yeah try that argument when you get run over. Unless it’s a DUI – no problem for the driver
One of my great pleasures through my own personal journey was going on long bike rides, loving and following the freshly installed Bike Lanes around the perimeter of the City, and the Park and all the other boros. Then came Covid and everyone and their mothers started filling up the bike lanes…the wrong way…and then came the ebikes and they were worse because not only are they traveling the wrong direction a lot of the time, they’re going 25ish mph while the rest of us are zipping between 12-14ish mph.
Bikers got out of control and the City finally is doing something, but criminal summons is wrong, except for ebikers. If they’re endangering the lives of pedestrians (and they are when they travel the opposite directions at high speeds) then criminal summons is warranted. Cars are not often speeding and going the wrong way down one way streets, if they are, it’s a crime so, that argument is moot.
To imply that the issues biker present is a new phenomenon since the pandemic is absurd.
No, it’s not at all. Bike complaints before the pandemic referred to pedal bikes. E-bikes were not allowed in NYC streets before the pandemic. This is simply FACT. They were repeatedly rejected as being not road-worthy in NYC. Once the pandemic hit, they were approved by the NYC Council. Now it’s a mess. The solution is that they must have license plates, insurance, training, and all of it mandated by the State. The law proposed is called Priscilla’s Law, named after Priscilla Loke who was killed in Chinatown by an e-bike. That way, red light cameras can issue traffic tickets and not criminal summonses. Pedal bikes are still an issue, however.
Absent extreme or drunken driving, the moving violations drivers receive are ‘non-criminal,’ answerable at DMV or at the PVB in the case of red light and speed cameras. The reason that ‘non-criminal’ summonses work for drivers is that the license and registration system puts them at risk if they ignore it. Don’t answer the summons you risk loss of license and impoundment of vehicle.
The reason that ‘non-criminal’ doesn’t work with violations by ebike riders is there’s no license or registration to hold against them. Even tracing of them is difficult because they don’t have (or show) a license with a unique number.
And the same people who oppose licensing and registration of the ebike operators now complain that the only system that can work to enforce laws is unfair? While they continue to oppose licensing and registration?
THAT is the problem.
One can agree that criminal summonsing goes far, in many cases too far. But the fact is that the solution is, at the least, require registration of all throttled ebikes so the public can have recourse by impoundment when people flout the law.
Absolutely.
This is exactly what Commissioner Tisch said last month, as quoted right here in this article.
Dangerous driving is a problem, and a serious public safety issue. Commissioner Tisch is doing the best she can with the tools she is given. For everyone complaining about it, talk to your city councilmembers and ask them to provide the NYPD with different tools.
NYPD have the tools, they just stopped issuing summons for speeding or running red lights after the Bloomberg administration. I have never witnessed NYPD ticketing a driver but I witness drivers running red lights daily.
After the Bloomberg administration? You mean when De Blasio came into office. Guliani ran the city like it was an occupied country, Bloomburg ran it like a business, De Blasio ran it like a 5-year-old trying to see how many legs he could rip off a spider and it could still crawl. Adams is a straight up criminal, yes, I know he was a NYPD Captain but Cops who knew him hated him because he is a straight up PERP. The war on Police is the reason New Yorkers are no longer safe. Cops shut down because they don’t trust the leadership and with good reason.
I have been tickled while driving and while riding my bike.
Not after Bloomberg. After the summer of BLM
The War on Police.
Yes indeed, the War on Police: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/24/nx-s1-5392378/justice-department-cuts-to-public-safety-grants-leave-police-and-nonprofits-scrambling
Not to mention the War BY Police: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/us/police-killings-george-floyd.html
You can’t read the Daily News editorial, it’s paywalled. Based on some fast skimming before they kicked me out, it’s another paean to flouting immigration laws. This argument seems to contradict the oft-heard claim that illegal immigrant criminal rates are far lower than that of citizens. The News is basically conceding the opposite.
I had no trouble accessing the story, but then I first removed the URL’s query string and deactivated the site’s Javascript.
Perhaps if you’d been able to read the full piece at your leisure, your interpretation would not have been so imaginative; its main argument was that irresponsible employers who incentivize reckless riding by setting unrealistic delivery times are largely to blame for the mess.
As for citizen vs. immigrant crime rates, the Daily News conceded no such thing: given that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are disproportionately represented in bike-delivery, one may may reasonably expect, all other things being equal, their contribution to the crime rate in that field to be proportionally higher. 100% of all pregnant criminals are women — surprise, surprise.
It will be interesting to see who delivers our goods once Krasnov has deported all the immigrants; perhaps it will be former university students whose universities have been eliminated.
Wait are you saying only (Woman) can become pregnant????? And you call yourself a liberal?
Okay, ~99.999+%. Happy now? Somehow one suspects you missed the larger point.
By the way, how’s your list of those “smart people” with whom you claim Krasnov surrounds himself coming along? Run into any trouble with that? If it makes you feel any better, know that I can’t accomplish the impossible, either.
I’m pretty sure that the more deliveries a person makes, the more their potential income in tips is. So to put most of the onus on the employers and their unrealistic delivery times is perhaps unreasonable.
I’m pretty sure that the faster drivers drive, the sooner they arrive. So to put most of the onus on drivers and their excessive speeding tickets and occasion fatal collisions (with, say, bike-delivery workers…) is perhaps unreasonable.
Or perhaps not.
I think you missed my point. But that’s ok.
So let me see whether I can figure it out:
“[…]the more deliveries a person makes, the more their potential income in tips is.”
Hence, employees have an economic incentive to ride fast. Right so far?
“So to put most of the onus on the employers and their unrealistic delivery times is perhaps unreasonable.”
Hence, it is perhaps unreasonable to expect employers to act contrary to their own — or their employees’ — perceived economic interests. Yes?
Thus, business regulation is perhaps unreasonable and indeed so is, perhaps, any deviation from pure laissez-faire capitalism. Drill, baby, drill.
What did I miss here? Have I checked my premises at the door?
All I know is that our favorite doorman at the Chesterfield, Garry Johnson will always be there for us no matter what unfolds down on the streets below!
Hey, with regard to the summer novel mentioned, I believe the official start of the UWS is 59th not 57th St. 🙂
That’s my understanding as well. Then again, 57th is “close enough for government work” — especially these days.
In fairness, 57th Street feels more like the UWS than the rest of Hell’s Kitchen, even Gale Brewer’s district includes West 57th Street.
As an avid cyclist, I have been an advocate for requiring cyclists to wear reflective vests that display a “license” number. Traffic law violators could at least be photographed and reported.
lol. Citizen cops. With cameras.
Is reporting them actually a negative consequence?
Chris Pavone’s book, “The Doorman” is a delightful and can’t-put-down read — highly recommended.
Just one thing: the fictional building in the book is on Central Park West, not 57th Street.
I have never understood why a license is not required for electric bikes and scooters. Require riders over the age of 15 or 16 to take a safety course and then carry proof of completion in the form of a license. It does not need to be as onerous as a driving license but at least there would be some official record of riders that could help to deter those who ride unsafely. It would allow for the development of official consequences that do not rise to the level of a criminal summons. It could be available to any resident regardless of immigration status. Other than the issues with immigrants who do wish to show an official presence, which will always be a stumbling block, what are the other barriers?
also check out Building Material – a memoir by a Park Ave. doorman. Not a great read, but more real-life upstairs-downstairs.
I am outraged that people think that the punishment outweighs the crime. Too bad. There’s an easy way to avoid the punishment – just don’t break the laws of safe cycling. It is so patronizing to say that immigrants and minorities cannot behave themselves.
BOTH e-bikes and bicycles are dangerous to pedestrians and need to be given some level of punishment that resonates. Since some people also think it’s wrong to have bikes licensed there needs to be a firm way to send the message that there are penalties to breaking the law. Too many people have been injured and killed to let this go on any longer.
See John Venditto’s explanation below as to why cars and bikes must be punished differently.
Thank you! This constant suggestion that the application of laws is unfair to people of color and immigrants is remarkably racist. But many people love to engage in the racism of low expectations.
Including many Upper West Siders!
“BOTH e-bikes and bicycles are dangerous to pedestrians and need to be given some level of punishment that resonates.”
Disagree. The only danger arises when someone uses their bicycle recklessly or carelessly
Unfortunately when one person ignores the laws others often see no problem following that example. Yes, a reckless bicycle rider killed a man in my community….a week later I reported another bicycle rider using the sidewalk as a speedway…another adult!
We are also discussing this as if there are police officers strolling the streets of the UWS, ready to issue summonses. When did you last see a police officer?
Yesterday. Several in fact.
In 2024, 37 pedestrians were injured in the entire year in 179 reported e-bike collisions, the NYPD said. In that year, 9,610 pedestrians were injured overall, so e-bike riders caused just 0.4 percent of pedestrian injuries.
That pattern has continued in the first three months of this year, with one pedestrian injured by an e-bike rider, according to the NYPD. Over the same period, 2,271 were injured overall, so e-bike riders caused less than 0.04 percent of the reported pedestrian injuries.
Melinda,
NYPD data under-reflects incidents involving bike hits and injuries.
This is partly due to coding issues and partly because the NYPD is not automatically on scene as they’d be in vehicle crashes.
Another contextual issue: elderly who are hit by bikes may suffer significant injury just from the fall.
This may not be categorized as the result of a bike. (this happened to my neighbor)
Actually hospital ER info may be a better illustration of what is happening
How nany close calls, though, I wonder?
This!!
Exactly, ebikes should follow the rules of course, but lets not lose sight that drivers cause the VAST majority of injuries and deaths.
TransAlt and their allies employ a rhetoric of concern about immigrants, but their real concern is their own profits. And who is concerned about immigrants who are run down by E-bike riders who ride on the sidewalk, go through red lights, etc etc?
CB7 has the time to pass a resolution condemning the NYPD issuing criminal summonses to e-bike riders who have violated the law, but when Muslims on the UWS are unconstitutionally stopped and frisked on the UWS and are profiled even if they are not involved in anti-Israel or pro-Palestine activity or doing nothing illegal or doing protected first amendment activity, the leadership on the UWS does nothing and doesn’t care. If CB7 or any of the liberals truly cared about profiling by police going on in the UWS, they would start with the small victories such as protecting the constitutional rights of Muslims on the UWS who haven’t done anything wrong or illegal.
Evidence?
I love this. Rather than saying that motor vehicles should be put at a higher standard, they are saying we should lower the standard for e bikes? And this is in part to protect immigrant workers?
I genuinely do not understand this thinking. If someone is here seeking asylum and is speeding, that is not a reason to be deported. Not should someone be deported if he or she is in the US on a visa and is arrested for speeding. At the same time,the e bikes go very very fast, people do not obey traffic laws,. This includes people on the e-citi bikes. And while cars are more dangerous, I would say the majority of e bikes do not obey traffic laws . It is really dangerous and it is also ridiculous that cars are no held to a higher standard
the editorial urged the companies that employ the delivery workers to “institute realistic delivery times, set standards and establish a culture where drivers understand that safety is the priority, not speed.”
Seriously? Their solution is to put the fox in charge of the henhouse? Yeah, that will work
Just because police aren’t ticketing drivers as often as they should be, doesn’t mean it’s wrong to impose a fine on e-bikers who are putting pedestrians in danger.
There seems to be NO winning with most issues and the police are totally demoralized which doesn’t bode well for us when we need them.
A criminal summons is not a fine, that’s the whole point of this conversation.
Actually, it is.
Unless they kill someone, no one will serve time for riding an ebike through a red light. At most it’ll be a fine.
Crimes are more likely to be committed when there are no or low consequences
I hope the Central Park Rangers will have a meaningfully impact on the rampant unlicensed vending that has become the norm in Central Park. The ubiquitous fruit sellers (unsanitary, not inspected, no running water) have been joined by all manner of peddlers selling things from baseball caps to sodas and water thereby competing with licensed vendors. Cries of “mango mango mango” disrupt the park. Its time to put an end to this.
Wow. Just, wow.
“such a summons can have extremely grave consequences as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to detain and deport as many people as possible.”
Liberalism is a mental illness. You are worried that people who are breaking traffic laws will be punished for breaking immigration laws? The people who controlled Biden let MILLIONS of illegals into this Country, we simply cannot allow Millions of illegals in our Country.
“MILLIONS”? More like 21 TRILLION, according to a certain someone: https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/05/26/trump-memorial-day-rant-blasts-scum-biden/
(Never mind that that’s ~2,600 times the world’s total human population.)
Not real committed to the truth, are you? You are an excellent example of why DJT is the President.
I hereby *defy* you to point out my error(s) in my comment above. MY errors, not those of the Great God of Grift. Go ahead, knock yourself out.
(Oh, and how’s your “smart people” list coming along, or have you conceded the hopelessness of the task?)
Opod never disappoints. Lolol.
Citibike riders and spandex bicyclists are the problem .
They routinely go through red lights, the wrong way, ignore bike lanes, look at their phones and so on.
And don’t hesitate to curse any pedestrian who objects.
But TransAlt runs NYC along with REBNY.
Spandex cyclists – lol
I’m finding more and more that the delivery people on bikes are riding faster and faster and the number of bike deliveries has really increased.
I can’t really fault them for this. Time is money when it comes to deliveries. If you order from Instacart, you can request how soon you want your order delivered. Obviously the sooner an order is delivered, the sooner the delivery person can do another delivery.
Perhaps UWSers have been spoiled by such service. Not sure how to fix this as everyone seems to have a need for quick deliveries.
Yes food delivery and e-commerce increased since Covid.
Other factors – the expansion of delivery apps and legalization of e-bikes in NYC (2018?).
Demographically, younger people are major users of food delivery.
When a delivery worker is issued a summons, it should be addressed to THE COMPANY THEY ARE WORKING FOR. Those businesses need to be responsible for training and monitoring their employees. Let’s put the onus where it belongs.
Disagree. People who break laws are responsible for breaking laws.
(Except of course for THE KING.)
If the eight members of Central Park’s new Ranger Corps can do nothing more than reduce the number of unleashed dogs cavorting around the park, they will have more than made themselves welcome. The young lady with the long red hair (second from right in the photo) was on the news the other night, and her description of her job was great — not an enforcer but a helper who answers questions, gives directions and gently reminds people not to be jerks.
So happy the CPark Rangers will help with the off-leash dogs. It’s a serious issue and there’s been no enforcement (I’m a dog owner and always have my dog leashed). Hope this helps this ongoing problem!
I hope the Central Park rangers are very good this year and don’t end up on Santa’s naughty list.
Where are these rangers? I am in the park almost daily, birding, and have yet to see one.
And where is this patrol? Does it actually exist? I’ve been nearly knocked over several times by huge dogs, off the leash. If I say anything, the owner tells me to f*** off. Also, many bike riders ignore the “no riding” on walking paths and are also a danger and respond in the same way. I have actual photos to prove what I am saying, so I’m not exaggerating about the size of those dogs. Some may weigh nearly as much as I do. I’m 80 years old, 4’10” and slight. I love the park, but it’s often dangerous to wander there. I really wish there were “Rangers” around! Are they all down around 59th St.? Send some up to the Ramble, where they are truly needed.
What no one will tell you: The push back about cycling licenses is that many are delivery people who are illegal immigrants.
PROBLEM SOLUTION:
Register all bikes. That would end this lengthy discussion.
Why won’t they do that?
No, the e-bike menace to pedestrians did NOT start with the pandemic, it started with Bloomberg allowing them to illegally proliferate. The De Blasio, after his first year in office, ignored the problem, and the problem because even worse.
Then worst, the State legalized them in early 2019 (so 14 months before Covid) but did nothing about enforcement.
At this point, I know I speak for many when I say that as a pedestrian, I feel far more threatened by e-bikers — the too many who run red lights, ride in the wrong direction and ride on sidewalks — than I do by cars. It tracks that the UWS community boards 7 and now 4 would allow these dangerous acts to continue with impunity. Everyone knows that a civil summons is meaningless and will not effectively deter the rampant lawlessness. Stop with the fake argument that it will threaten illegal immigrants, a threat that has been roundly discredited, and get real about taking action against the street anarchy e-bikes have caused.
Well…you have to pick a lane, social activism or safety.
Elf and Santa won’t be happy to hear about this development one bit
I walk to Sal and Carmine’s a couple of times a week.
No tickets.
Just the BEST pizza on the planet.
Thank you and have a blessed day!