People

This morning, Council Member Brad Lander delivered a stack of petitions to Governor Cuomo's Midtown office demanding approval from the state DOT for a pedestrian safety fix that his constituents developed with NYC DOT. It may happen: State DOT says that it will complete a final design with the city by the end of next month.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed the speed camera bill into law, enabling New York City to use automated enforcement technology to deter speeding in school zones.

On Wednesday, Governor Cuomo announced a new raft of publicly-accessible data on the state's data transparency website, data.NY.gov. Some of the data sets include information that was already accessible in different forms, while other sets are newly available to the public. The release also includes detailed information about individual crashes from the Department of Motor Vehicles, but it falls short by failing to say where crashes occur.

Proponents of safer streets and a stronger MTA fared better than usual in Albany this year, securing speed cameras for NYC and scoring a tentative win on the transit lockbox -- which now depends on Governor Cuomo's signature to protect straphangers from budget raids by state lawmakers, including himself. However, legislators failed to pass bills that would have restored speedier bus service to NYC and helped protect New Yorkers from motorists who injure and kill.

Safety measures proposed for a crash-prone Brooklyn intersection where a senior was killed by a truck driver this week were rejected by New York State DOT, according to City Council Member Brad Lander.

Details concerning New York City's first-ever speed camera program are scarce. To slow down as many speeding drivers as possible with the small number of cameras permitted by Albany, this is as it should be.

It appears The speed camera bill will clear has cleared the Assembly, but the effort to protect NYC school kids from reckless drivers is in trouble in the State Senate.

The transit lockbox bill, which would require Albany to disclose the impacts of any raid of dedicated transit funds, passed both the Senate and Assembly unanimously in the final days of the legislative session, reports the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. It now heads to Governor Andrew Cuomo's desk. A nearly identical bill reached Cuomo in 2011, but the governor gutted the disclosure provision and signed a toothless bill. This time around, will Cuomo put pen to paper and protect transit riders?

The elimination of flashing blue lights on the MTA's Select Bus Service vehicles is probably the most absurd transit setback of the past year. Since New York state law limits the use of flashing blues to volunteer firefighters, the MTA caved in to pressure from Staten Island pols and took them off SBS buses this January.