Mayoral Mercy Mission Edition – Streetsblog New York City

It is a longstanding tradition that New York City mayors head to the Caribbean in times of great disasters. And as New Yorkers, we support such efforts to help our neighbors, both here and overseas.

So we were pleased that Mayor Adams rushed to Puerto Rico to help the frequently battered island-that-should-be-a-state — whose diaspora fills an essential heart of New York City — recover from the most-recent hurricane.

But his transportation commissioner? That’s another thing all together.

We weren’t the only ones wondering why DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez was also in Puerto Rico with Hizzoner. After the Post published a video of Rodriguez in the background of a mayoral presser, at least one DOT staffer told us that plenty of people in the the back office in Lower Manhattan — where our story last week about the agency’s many problems was already Topic Number 1 — were shaking their head about Rodriguez’s role in the mercy mission.

Again, we admire New Yorkers who are moved to “help our brothers and sisters on the ground,” as the mayor put it, but whatever Rodriguez’s strengths — his empathy, compassion and warmth are without question substantial — helping a crippled nation get its transportation system back in running order is not on his professional resume.

Here’s hoping Mayor Adams is backing up his visit with genuine technical expertise on the ground.

In other news:

• You just had to love Christopher Robbins’s delicious story about the brouhaha in Gramercy Park after the city had the temerity to install a Citi Bike dock after … telling the neighborhood it was going to do just that at a recent community board meeting. Nonetheless, the poobahs of the private green released the cry of “We were never told!” anyway. It never ends. (Hell Gate)
• Sure, there was a big rain on Sunday night, but most of us rode to work on Monday confident that Lake Gutman had been fully drained by the DOT’s repaving efforts last week. Um, apparently not:

@NYC_DOT Good morning. The recent paving in the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane has exacerbated the pooling of water near the middle of the span. Can this please be fixed before winter when it will freeze into dangerous ice? @CMRestler @StreetsPAC @bikenewyork @TransAlt @TransAltBK pic.twitter.com/FowUoBuSUR

— ? (@_Steve_Bennett) September 26, 2022

But the good news, according to the DOT press shop, is that the agency is still at work on making sure the Brooklyn Bridge bike path doesn’t have puddles (which are a real danger in the winter). We’ll stay on the story.

• Political writer Ross Barkan obviously loved our reporter Jesse Coburn’s deep analysis of the problems inside the Department of Transportation — so much so that he devoted an entire column to it, and used Coburn’s reporting as another way into his refrain that Mayor Adams doesn’t know what he’s doing. (Political Currents)
• Will our various governments pay $52 billion to protect New York City from…