It's not really clear what happened at Gov. Hochul's meeting with President Trump on Friday. Her office called the meeting "productive," according to the New York Post, and we know they discussed congestion pricing and other topics. "Productive" can mean anything, but one thing is true: today marks four days until the illegal and arbitrary deadline that Trump set for Hochul to turn off the cameras.
Judging by the governor's public statements, that date will come and go with little fanfare, but it's unclear where negotiations stand — or to what extent the conversations between the two executives could even be called that.
Hochul reportedly brought a "picture book" to the Oval Office in February to tout congestion pricing's benefits. No outlet has reported what the two discussed at their more recent meeting, but Hochul had plenty of good news to share.
For one, the notoriously pro-car Staten Island Advance picked up our story from last week about the lack of spillover traffic on outerborough bridges since the toll launched. Meanwhile, Courthouse News covered the phenomenon — also reported in Streetsblog — of New Yorkers "coming around" to the toll.
Stay tuned as the week's events unfold ahead of Friday's faux deadline.
In other news:
- "Paralysis of analysis": Gothamist was the latest liberal outlet to bend itself into a pretzel over why New York doesn't build anymore. But is it too much to ask that before we all drink Ezra Klein's Kool-Aid, we at least remember that part of the reason NIMBYism developed was because of Robert Moses-style destruction (not that that's mentioned in the Gothamist piece).
- NYC DOT is short millions of dollars of Biden transportation funds after U.S. DOT halted spending on bike lanes and road safety. (Crain's)
- Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has yet to qualify for public matching funds for her late-launching mayoral campaign. (NY Post)
- Mayor Adams may run for re-election as an independent. (NY Post)
- More mayoral news: Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bitchotte Hermelyn, who fought the McGuinness Boulevard bike lane at the behest of her donors, endorsed Andrew Cuomo for mayor on Sunday. (NY Times, Gothamist)
- Bichotte's husband works for Mercury Public Affairs, a P.R. consultant that counts Cuomo's campaign among its clients and had a bizarre row last week over the role of Probation Commissioner Juanita Holmes in the development of a Daily News op-ed with her byline. (Daily News)
- More heat on Hizzoner: The Trump Organization is "aggressively lobbying" to run Central Park's Wollman Rink. (The City)
- Related: Here's the inside story on how Adams convinced Trump to drop the mayor's corruption indictment. (NY Times)
- NYPD nabbed the hit-and-run driver who killed a beloved high school football coach last year. (Daily News)
- Imagine an outerborough dollar van company repurposing the "Trump bus" from the Let's Go Brandon store in Toms River. (NY Post)
- The state Legislature pushes for more money for treatment in involuntary commitment negotiations with Hochul. (NY Post)
- Nassau County is trying to short the MTA its share of the LIRR's expenses with bogus demands for "transparency and accountability." (NY Post)
- Wannabe governor Ritchie Torres praised wannabe mayor and Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo while asking Gov. Hochul to take Penn Station away from the MTA and give it to a public-private partnership. (NY Post)
