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When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority made the decision in April to end 24/7 subway service in New York City, the reasoning was to allow for the deep disinfecting of subway cars and stations as the pandemic raged in the city – and as part of an effort to keep homeless New Yorkers from sleeping on trains.
But nearly a year into the pandemic, these kinds of cleaning efforts have been dismissed by some experts as “hygiene theater,” noting that the spread of the coronavirus largely happens by airborne transmission, and not surface transmission. To boot, the closures don’t save the MTA any money, as officials acknowledged at a joint legislative hearing on Tuesday. “That was not done as a cost-saving effort,” MTA Chief Financial Officer Robert Foran said of the closures. “We are still running trains. They are to get our workforce back and forth.”
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With 211,038 crashes in the city in 2019, which killed 243 individuals and injured 61,265 (that’s an average of 578 crashes and 169 casualties a day, but who’s counting?), stopping reckless drivers from killing and maiming is an urgent public-health priority for the next mayor. So Streetsblog asked those who would lead us out of this crisis to detail their street-safety bona fides. Of the 11 we asked, 10 stepped up. (Ray McGuire was the exception.)
This is the fourth of daily rollouts of the candidates’ thoughtful and often-voluminous answers, which should provide safe-streets activists with a roadmap of where the hopefuls stand on our issues (the previous three installments focused on safe streets, “free” parking and a car-free Manhattan). At the end of the series, we’ll post all seven installments in one place for easy reference.