Month: July 2025

The Adams administration will be allowed to remove part of the Bedford Avenue bike lane as a legal battle about the lane’s long-term future continues.

On July 16, a state appellate court issued a temporary restraining order that prevented the city from removing or modifying the lane after local Baruch Herzfeld, his son, and advocacy group Transportation Alternatives filed to to appeal the Brooklyn Supreme Court’s decision to toss their lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams and the Department of Transportation. Peter Beadle, the lawyer representing Herzfeld and TransAlt, also requested a preliminary injunction that would have kept the lane in place until the appeal is officially decided.

A panel of appellate judges on Monday ended the restraining order and rejected the preliminary injunction, allowing the city to remove three blocks of the parking-protected bike lane between Flushing and Willoughby avenues and replace it with a standard painted lane. The decision does not affect the appeal itself, and the case will continue. 

“By reverting a safe street to a dangerous one, Mayor Adams is exposing the City of New York, and as a result, all taxpayers, to significant financial and legal liability when New Yorkers are inevitably hit, seriously injured, or killed on Bedford Avenue,” said Transportation Alternatives spokesperson Alexa Sledge, in a statement, “The City’s legal liability has been firmly established in court documents filed by his own Department of Transportation. Settling lawsuits isn’t cheap, and New York City taxpayers will be on the hook for the mayor’s blatantly political decision-making.”

The city installed the protected Bedford Avenue bike lane last fall in an effort to make the notoriously-dangerous stretch safer for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers. DOT data showed that injuries on Bedford Avenue between Flushing and DeKalb avenues dropped 47% after the lane was installed, per court documents. 

Mayor Eric Adams abruptly decided to remove three blocks of the parking-protected lane in June in response to outcry from local Orthodox leaders. Several children have been hit by cyclists in the lane between Flushing and Willoughby avenues,  most while crossing the street after exiting school buses and cars mid-block. DOT attempted to remedy the issues by installing designated bus loading zones, court documents showed, but they were frequently blocked by illegally-parked cars or ignored. The agency warned that taking out the protected bike lane would likely make the street more dangerous and could open the city up to litigation, and proposed alternatives like re-routing part of the lane.

In a document filed with the appellate court, the city argued that the data showing a 47% reduction in injuries did not include incidents not reported to police, including several handled by volunteer ambulance service Hatzalah. It further claimed that the “largest contributor to improved safety” were intersection enhancements, which will remain in place after the protected bike lane is removed.

” … the City has demonstrated that the planned modification to the bicycle lane is a rational compromise to address the specific safety concerns unique to the portion of Bedford Avenue at issue, while preserving the critical safety enhancements made to intersections where the majority of collisions and serious injuries occur,” the city’s lawyers wrote in the filing. 

City Hall did not immediately return a request for comment.

A final decision is likely to take months, and if the court were to rule against the city, it would be forced to reinstall the parking-protected bike lane.  

 Beadle said it’s difficult to prove a high enough “burden” to win against government agencies in court, even temporarily. He had hoped that the DOT’s warning against removing the lane would bolster the case to protect the lane while the appeal is in limbo. 

“I think this decision today just reflects that it is a very high burden because governments are, unfortunately, allowed to do stupid things, and that’s what this is, it’s a stupid thing,” he said. “It’s definitely not data-driven, it’s not road safety driven, and it could end up costing the city tons of money.”

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorial staff highlights images from around the world, photos courtesy of the Associated Press.

The post Our world in photos: July 28 appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

The 420-unit building, behind the Coney Island boardwalk, will complete the final phase of a trio  of properties BFC has brought to the once-underutilized blocks between West 16th and West 18th Street.

Министерство юстиции при администрации Трампа 24 июля 2025 года подало федеральный иск против города Нью-Йорка, оспаривающий давнюю политику города в отношении иммигрантов, находящихся в убежище. […]

He doesn’t know when to quit. At 82 years young, Alan Blanc still treks to the office three-times-a-week. Why? “It works for me,” he said.

The post Alan Blanc: He’s not a quitter appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

“It’s a dream come true,” Danny Mondello told The Post of opening Casa Cugine earlier this month in Williamsburg.

Appeals court overturns murder conviction after judge booted drowsy spectator, violating the defendant’s right to a public trial.

The post Murder conviction reversed after Queens judge kicked dozing spectator out of court appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

Man gets five years for hoax bomb threats to Jewish hospitals in New York City, driven by antisemitic hate and livestreamed online.

The post Oregon man sentenced for swatting and bomb threat scheme that targeted Jewish hospitals in NYC appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

The “Stay With Me” singer will rock Greenpoint’s Warsaw from Oct. 8-31.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo came under fire on Monday for claiming that he “wasn’t in charge” of building affordable housing in New York City during his 11 years as the state’s top executive.

Cuomo, who is running for mayor as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to socialist Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (Queens), argued that because he was governor of the state and not the city’s mayor, he did not control housing production within the five boroughs.

“I wasn’t the mayor of New York and I wasn’t in charge of building affordable housing in New York,” said Cuomo, referring to the city, during a July 28 interview with WNYC host Brian Lehrer. Cuomo was responding to the criticism that his actions as governor directly contributed to the city’s current housing crisis.

“If I were mayor of New York, we would have housing,” Cuomo said.

He contended that his record of constructing large-scale infrastructure projects in the city, under the state’s purview, as governor shows that he is best positioned to address its acute housing crisis, which has seen rents soar and left just 1.4% of apartments vacant.

“I built LaGuardia,” he said. “I built Moynihan Train Station. I built the Second Avenue Subway. I built the new Kosciuszko Bridge, new Shirley Chisholm Park. Those were all much harder than building housing. I can cut the red tape. I know how to do it. And I can get it done.”

Cuomo also cited his experience as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Bill Clinton to show that he is the most qualified candidate to boost housing production in the city.

The moderate former governor is not only in a November general election rematch with Mamdani, but is also competing against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and indepndent Jim Walden.

Cuomo’s comments drew swift backlash from critics who charged that, as governor, he had immense control over affordable housing construction in the city and simply did not act on it.

“The governor has enormous powers to solve New York’s housing crisis, both in NYC and across the state,” the pro-development group Open New York wrote on X. “This claim is ridiculous, and New Yorkers aren’t falling for it.”

Political strategist Sam Raskin, who worked on former city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s unsuccessful primary campaign, also slammed Cuomo’s remarks in an X post.

“This is a pretty revealing admission by Cuomo that he was asleep at the wheel as the statewide housing-affordability and homelessness crises got significantly worse while he was governor,” Raskin wrote.

Cuomo took heat from his rivals during the primary over his housing legacy as governor. Specifically, they blasted Cuomo’s 2011 move to defund a state housing voucher program for homeless New Yorkers known as Advantage — an action many say sparked a sharp rise in the city’s homelessness population.

Cuomo’s team has responded that he replaced Advantage with several other similar programs that he funded at higher levels.