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Permalink Reply by Will on March 5, 2011 at 7:53am

And the backstory:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/nyregion/06sadik-khan.html?_r=1&a...

It does sound like Bloomberg's transportation commissioner can be abrasive, but it also sounds like she's done a lot of good for the city in a relatively short period of time. The line separating a visionary and a dictator can be very thin sometimes.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on March 5, 2011 at 8:20am

I don't know, but is seems to me this guy is a jerk...

 

;)

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on March 5, 2011 at 8:20am

This is a lesson to learn from this:  work to make enough progress and to sustain progress, but not alienate the morons to the point where later backlash erases all that progress.  Gotta sell the idea to enough people so that there's support to prevent progress from being erased.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Doom on March 5, 2011 at 8:58am

This has NOTHING to do with bicycles. It's all about Bloomberg, who isn't actually a New Yorker, running the city as if the boroughs didn't exist and dictating citywide policy without input from people who actually live in them. The bike lanes are just symbolic. Weiner is a huge dickhead, but he's actually right about the broad point.

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Permalink Reply by Alex on March 5, 2011 at 10:09am

Mr. Doom - You're mostly right, except that Bloomberg is a New Yorker, in that he is an extremely rich person who actually likes to spend most of his time in Bermuda. Also, it's somewhat about bicycles, but more about what bicycles and the accompanying hoo-ha represent. Which I guess you said, too, so I'll stop with that.

 

And Anne, some of those who are opposed to/critical/skeptical of the new bike infrastructure in NYC are not morons (though certainly some are). There are much larger issues at play regarding development and gentrification across the city. We have a lot of the same issues in Chicago, but at a smaller scale than in NYC. 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Doom on March 5, 2011 at 10:28am

Well, fair enough. Still it's easy enough to understand why politicians from boroughs the size of Chicago are irritated by having a Bostonian who may or may not know what Woodhaven Boulevard is lording over them. We'd have similar issues if Schaumburg were part of Chicago and Rahm Emanuel was constantly telling the people there that they were embarrassing yokels who should just go away.

Anyone who's irritated by this, by the way, will be amused to know that Weiner's name is pronounced "Ween-ur."

Alex said:

Bloomberg is a New Yorker, in that he is an extremely rich person who actually likes to spend most of his time in Bermuda.

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Permalink Reply by jennifer james on March 6, 2011 at 4:37pm

The Streetsblog has a commentary running on this as well- it's interesting to read some of the comments from there.http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/03/04/the-new-york-times-jsk-profil...

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