By: Darren Aclamia
Is there anyone these days who is not trashing hapless New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio?
One-time mayor Rudy Giuliani told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt that “it breaks my heart” to see what de Blasio has done to Gotham.
”I’m a Christian,” she said. “I love everyone, and I love him, but I don’t like what he’s doing for this city and that worries me. When I moved here everyone said you cleaned up Times Square. I don’t want it to go back to that. How do you feel about Mayor de Blasio and the direction of this great city?”
“It breaks my heart,” Giuliani responded. “I worked tirelessly to do that,” referring to cleaning up Times Square. “A lot of my friends told me I couldn’t do it. A lot of my friends told me I was crazy to run for mayor.” He added, “I think this is an exceptional city. There is none like it in the world, and to see this man break down not only what I did — but what Bloomberg did — I mean Bloomberg and I don’t see eye on eye on politics, but I thought he was a very good mayor.”
The mayor, involved in a hopeless quest to become the Democratic candidate for president, drew more hoots and catcall this week when he said he was considering requiring bike riders to be licensed, and of insisting that Citi Bike renters wear helmets.
“We have to think about what’s going to be safe for people first, but also what’s going to work,” the mayor said. “Is it something we could actually enforce effectively? Would it discourage people from riding bikes? I care first and foremost about safety. We are going to keep expanding enforcement on bicycles as well, because we still have a lot of bike riders who have to remember they have to follow the rules.”
“Requiring helmets and bicycle licensing is counterproductive to Vision Zero because they’re a deterrent to cycling,” Joe Cutrufo, spokesman for advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, told the New York Daily News in an interview. “When you discourage people from riding a bike, fewer people will do it, and the safest cities in the world for riding a bike are the cities where there are the most cyclists.”
Laying more nanny state regs on bike riders “would have the opposite effect,” suggested ny.curbed.com. “By creating even more barriers to entry for New Yorkers who are bike-curious, or those who are casual riders, the city would, in fact, make cycling even more dangerous.”
“Requiring adults to use bicycle helmets has been shown time and again to discourage people from biking,” Marco Conner, the deputy director of Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement. “When there are fewer people biking on city streets, we see higher rates of bicyclist crashes and injuries, in part because car and truck drivers become less accustomed to operating around bicyclists. The safest cities for biking and walking in the world do not mandate bike helmets or licenses.”
