Streetsblog New York City

I doubt it exists. How individual members feel about these specific items is unknowable.

Shout out to everyone in Silver’s district who keeps this oblique parasite in office, either by masochistically voting for him or not raising a finger to stop him.

To those opposed to him however, keep up the fight.

Shout out to everyone in Silver’s district who keeps this oblique parasite in office, either by masochistically voting for him or not raising a finger to stop him.

Maybe they like having a legislator who twists arms to provide billions for subway constructions.

It is time to redesign 1st and 2nd Ave with physically separated bus lanes, with delivery cut outs, mountable curbs and/or wide enough to allow for passing. And fill in the gaps in the bike lanes.

Albany can’t stop the installation of bus cameras. It’s approval is only necessary to collect fines.

If the MTA weren’t so broke, I would suggest installing the cameras anyway, photographing the plates, identifying those blocking the lane, and posting the information on the internet.

Assembly member David Gantt. Blame him. He he is the Chairman of the Assembly’s Transportation Committee and for some weird, bizarro reason, against these bus lane cams, even though the program has been projected to be budget neutral. That’s right, budget neutral; canceling this program does nothing to balance the budget.

“There is a long way to go in this budget crises and Silver wants the mayor and governor to pay for everything they get.”

The Mayor and Governor will not pay anything. Young people pay. New York City children pay. Anyone who might want to live here in 20 years pay.

They want to take everything and leave nothing.

If Gantt didn’t exist Shelly would have to invent him. Gantt is a foil. It is not believable that a guy from downtown Buffalo, on a second tier committee, is dictating policy on an NYC issue to the NYC delegation. The city and legislature have been battling over red light enforcement cameras for decades. Gantt is playing the same role he has been. The fire house quid pro quo happened, you can look it up. Gantt doesn’t care about fire houses.

Apologies to Sam Hoyt and the city of Buffalo, Gantt is of course from Rochester. Typical downstate confusion.

they’re protective of the little white-only gated community they’ve got goin’ on here

Corrected.

Sure. The immigration system in Denmark, like in most European countries, is designed based on the fiction that all nonwhite immigrants are guest workers, who will return to their home countries within a few years. They can rarely get naturalized without marrying a citizen, and their children do not automatically acquire citizenship. The government makes no effort at social integration.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s levels of racism, while not quite as bad as Switzerland’s, are nonetheless egregious. In the US, you won’t find mainstream center-right newspapers draw cartoons of portraying minority communities as terrorists. Comedians who engage in such racism are either equal opportunity offenders, like Borat and Sarah Silverman, or far outside mainstream discourse. In Denmark, Jyllands-Posten published the Muhammad cartoons portraying him as a terrorist, a few years after rejecting cartoons making fun of Jesus.

But the point is – Denmark has an amazing model of transportation policy, and isn’t that what we’re really interested in here? haha

I’m actually in Aarhus, and I wasn’t aware of that local political situation, but it makes sense as I do notice the unnecessarily large roads leading out of and circling the city (“ring streets”) with levels of traffic you don’t really see in Copenhagen. However it’s still a relative haven for me compared to what we’re used to in the States – they still have CPH-style, wide separated cycleways and great transit. But I’d suspect the higher levels of traffic as one suspect for limiting Aarhus’ bike trips at 20% (half of CPH’s 40%). Biking along the highway with the fumes still kinda sucks.

And from what I’ve been told about (and shown on Google maps), my girlfriend’s hometown nearby is really walkable, bikeable, and transit-oriented as well, giving me the impression to make a good bet than any urban development in this country is on a whole standard of its own.

In regards to the race issue: no “but”s there. I actually asked my girlfriend her thoughts on this and she was saying the racism tends to be targeted mostly towards not simply Muslims but more so those who don’t seem to have an interest in integrating and don’t speak Danish. But as you touched on, that’s likely more due to lack of government efforts than anything else.

Anyway, I must say you sound like a refreshingly knowledgeable and reasonable man. Can I ask what you studied (or study)? Cheers.

Ah I see. I just checked out your blog as well, I see you’re Israeli – nice (I’ve spent a short time there, and you probably guessed my name is Jewish). I’m actually almost in awe of your apparent mastery of English and knowledge of U.S. politics & life for someone who’s only been in NY for such a short time.