Ross Sandler, Center for New York City Law Director

The City aggressively attacks unsafe conditions for bike riders on the City’s streets and avenues, but less successfully attacks unsafe behaviors of bike riders. Unsafe conditions can mostly be engineered away, but unsafe behaviors require changes of a cultural nature. The City in 2019 experienced 28 bike rider deaths and more than 4,000 bike injuries. So far 2020 has experienced more bike injuries than in 2019. To make the City safer for bike riders, the City should aggressively enforce the traffic laws against vehicles, but also aggressively enforce the rules against bike riders who ride against traffic, ignore traffic signals, speed, or text and talk on phones while riding.

The Demarest Building, at 339 Fifth Avenue. Image Credit: Google Maps

Landmarks decisions should not be made behind closed doors. Yet they are when the Landmarks Preservation Commission refuses to hold a hearing as it recently did with the Demarest Building.

Ross Sandler, Center for New York City Law Director

The number of persons killed by contact with subway trains is truly alarming and, worse, consistent year to year. The victims include persons with severe mental problems and drug and alcohol addiction on the one hand, and, on the other hand, adventuresome youths who see romance and challenge in the subways’ dark tunnels, speedy trains and endless tracks. All the deaths are tragedies.

Ross Sandler, Center for New York City Law Director

The American Museum of Natural History gave the City a contemporary lesson in common sense in the manner that it has handled objections to the Roosevelt Memorial sculpture. The museum created a teaching moment in the best tradition of its educational mission.

Ross Sandler, Center for New York City Law Director

For 80 years Yellow Cabs have been uniquely successful in New York City, that is until Uber, Lyft and the other app-based networks undermined the industry. This is a huge loss. A street-hail cab system that offers prompt transportation in safe, inspected, insured cabs with a meter and fixed fee is a huge public service. This is especially true in the dense business districts and transportation terminals like the airports. App-based services have no advantage at these locations.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gather to protest nuclear arms, on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York, June 12, 1982. Since the election of President Donald Trump, New York City has been host to many protests hostile to his agenda, with the women’s march drawing about 400,000 participants on Jan. 21, 2017. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times)

Corey Kilgannon of the New York Times wrote about the use of the Great Lawn in Central Park for OZYFEST, “a splashy weekend long event on July 20 and 21 with multiple stages and top tickets selling for $400.” (NY Times, 7/13/19) Portions of the Great Lawn will be closed to the public for nine days in order to accommodate the festival.  The use of the Great Lawn to facilitate a commercial venture raises the following questions:  What and who is the Great Lawn intended to serve?  The first amendment to the U.S.  Constitution provides for first amendment protest rallies on the Great Lawn.  Have such rallies been permitted in recent years: If not, why not?