Column: City DOT’s initiatives are attacks on motorists

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Bird says its new technology will improve improperly parked scooters.
File photo

As a result of Hurricane IDA late last summer, numerous local businesses and homes were devastated by the well-known and long-standing deficiency in our community’s drainage system.

Following appropriate procedures, those who were impacted filed a claim against the city for damages.

In a shocking and arrogant response, the NYC Comptroller’s office responded, over six months later, that because city government couldn’t complete its investigation on a timely basis, IDA’s victims may have to file a costly lawsuit to obtain the funds.

It is another example of the arrogance of New York’s government, at almost all levels.

Officials in this city and state behave more like an occupying invader than an elected government. Clearly, they consider that their duty is not to the people, but to the pursuit of the extreme progressive goals they hold so dear.

The recent incident, in which a bodega owner merely attempted to defend himself against a criminal seeking to harm him was thrown in jail, indicates where the mindset of New York’s governments rests. You are not allowed to defend yourself was clearly the message. You have no rights, and your government has no obligation to protect you.

It is not even a question of allowing the police force to do its job. The number of officers has been reduced dramatically over the past two decades. What’s left of it is hamstrung by numerous rules and regulations that prevent it from doing its job properly. Our heroic police officers not only face physical harm by a criminal population emboldened by city leaders such as Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who obviously cares more for criminals than their victims or the NYPD, but financial and legal devastation by local officials and judges who appear eager to allow lawsuits against cops that could bankrupt them and destroy their pensions.

Your opinions are clearly unwanted by the ruling mandarins.

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) provides a clear example. It has conducted a jihad against motorists, while providing no adequate alternative form of travel. Indeed, you are more likely to be punished for parking at a meter that’s a few minutes overdue, than if you actually stole the same car. It can be argued that, considering the reduction in freight rail transport, NYC has a less adequate rail system now than it did a century ago. But no matter! Those old rail lines have been replaced by parks like Manhattan’s High Line, which services that borough’s elites, the same ones who show up at hearings demanding rezoning to end the low-density housing that exists in the middle-income communities NYC’s Progressives disdain. DOT, which has recently eliminated a number of bus stops, brags about now having expanded its fee-producing traffic cameras into a 24-hour program.

DOT’s arrogance can also be seen in its series of bizarre and illogical initiatives, such as road diet schemes which reduce lanes on local roads, producing more congestion. But in that agency’s fevered Leftist imagination, the fact that bike lanes are added solves the problem. That ignores the fact that less than one-half of 1% of the population has the time, health or convenience of actually using bikes on a regular basis.

A similar illogic pertains to the initiative to ram scooters down the throats of local communities. The same statistic applies to that idea, but is even made worse by the fact that the devices are left willy-nilly all over the area, causing tripping hazards and other issues.

The fact that local communities oppose these ideas doesn’t seem to matter at all.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that so many Progressives have recently criticized Abraham Lincoln. After all, the 16th President’s belief that government should be “By the people, for the people, and of the people” really doesn’t fit into their game plan.