Wednesday’s Headlines: The Big News Today Really is Big

We kid you not: Today at City Hall, Council Member Robert Cornegy Jr. will be presented with a Guinness Book certificate for being the world’s tallest male politician (NY Post and, wait, the Times did it too?). Cornegy, who played his college ball at St. John’s, is certainly tall at 6-foot-10. But the tallest in the world? Streetsblog will ask the tough questions at the noon ceremony (or, more likely, we won’t, as David Meyer will be covering a far more important hearing on placards at roughly the same time, and Julianne Cuba will be chasing a killer driver).

https://twitter.com/danarubinstein/status/1110629075863900161

And now the news:

  • We’re so glad Gothamist is staying on the electric ad boat story! Those things are a floating menace.
  • So the MTA says it will finally put some cameras on buses to write tickets to drivers who block bus lanes — prompting an old guy at Streetsblog to ask one of his young reporters, “Wait, they haven’t been doing that for years?” (Answer: Nope). “The cameras, the first of their kind, are coming to a small number of buses — 123 to be exact — on the B44 Select Bus Service route in Brooklyn and the M15 SBS route in Manhattan,” Vin Barone reported (amNY). Clayton Guse at the News had it, too.
  • We’ve all been noticing how blazing fast e-Citi Bikes are. But who knew how blazing? Clayton Guse, that’s who. (NYDN)
  • The Post covered the arrest of the oil truck driver who, cops say, killed 72-year-old cyclist Chaim Joseph in Times Square earlier this year. Streetsblog had it, too.
  • The Times’s Winnie Hu offered a nice primer on congestion pricing, though the best part was the second-to-last section, “Has it worked in other cities?” (Answer: Yes.)
  • It looks like Ocean Avenue is going to get a protected bike lane, albeit in a short stretch along Prospect Park (Brooklyn Paper). Funny how Central Park West doesn’t get the same treatment, even though a cyclist was killed there last year.
  • We-a culpa! Apparently, we left off The City from our headline roundup yesterday. Turns out, the scrappy pigeon-logo’d, soon-to-launch, Craigslist-funded newsroom was the first to post the fare evasion story on Monday. Hat tip to Jose Martinez. Sorry!
  • As we mentioned in yesterday’s headlines, the crackdown on fare beaters is about to get ugly. (Gothamist)
  • And, finally, we’re far more into policy than politics at Streetsblog, but as a practical matter, you have to love the sight of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren literally running to catch a train at Penn Station. Politicians — they’re just like US! (TMZ)