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Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, November 1st. Here's the morning headlines from Tiffany Hansen.

Tiffany Hanssen: Authorities are searching for someone they say shot and injured a New York State trooper earlier this week. The shooting happened on the Southern State Parkway in West Hempstead around 11:45 on Wednesday night. New York State Police say 27-year-old state Trooper Thomas Massia stopped to help someone he thought was stranded in a black sedan. As he approached the vehicle, he was met with gunfire. Police say Massia was shot in the leg. He was taken to a local hospital and is reported to be stable. Authorities are offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest or conviction in the case. Women who say they were sexually abused by staff at the Rikers Island jail complex are urging New York City officials to take their allegations seriously. Several testified at a city council oversight hearing yesterday. Donna Hilton says a female captain raped her when she was a teenager on Rikers Island in the 1980s.

Donna Hilton: You hear our trauma. We tell it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Tiffany Hanssen: Hilton is one of more than 700 women who have accused jail staff of sexual abuse in recent lawsuits against the city. Department leaders say they have a zero-tolerance policy and are working to improve how they handle sexual assault. New Yorkers signing up for health insurance for 2025 will see new savings on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more.

Caroline Lewis: New subsidies aim to reduce costs for New Yorkers who earn too much to qualify for public insurance options like Medicaid or the essential plan. Individuals earning between 37,000 and $60,000 a year will now be eligible for silver tier plans that have lower deductibles and discounted copays. All plans on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace will also eliminate copays for non-hospital care related to pregnancy, postpartum care, and diabetes. More than 100,000 New Yorkers are expected to benefit from the new subsidies. Enrollment in Marketplace plans runs through January 31st.

Janae Pierre: Up next, our weekly segment of On The Way, covering all transportation news. That's after the break.

Sean Carlson: On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. It's Friday, which means it's time for On The Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporters Stephen Nessen and Ramsey Khalifeh. This week, Stephen, you wrote about a routine city transportation department workshop about a proposed 16-mile bike path in Northeastern Queens. Sounds like things got bananas. It devolved into chaos. Tell us more about it.

Stephen Nessen: Last Thursday, there was a workshop for this 16-mile greenway project in Northeast Queens that was announced last year. The city is finalizing the plans, and they hold these workshops with different communities along the route to fine-tune the plans, get feedback. The goal is to close gaps in cycling routes from Astoria to East Elmhurst and College Point. The route runs parallel to the Long Island Sound, but at this particular meeting, City Council Member Vickie Paladino, who is opposed to bike lane projects, generally showed up with, let's say an entourage.

The DOT let her speak first since I believe she was the only elected official that showed up, but she kind of misunderstood the format of the meeting and thought it was a hearing for everyone to speak. It was sort of these tabletop exercises, and she got kind of frustrated, and she said, anyone that's opposed to this project, get up and leave now. Saying that their voices were being silenced. Then things devolved into these chaos. Cycling advocate Alex Duncan, who's better known by his online nom de guerre, Miser, filmed this interaction with a person who appears to be Paladino's son.

Speaker 4: Why did you flip off that woman?

Speaker 5: Because she deserved it, and I'm not going to tell you my name. Please--

Speaker 4: Who are you?

Speaker 5: Don't worry about who I am.

Speaker 4: You're flipping someone off at a public meeting. I'm curious who you are. Are you a public official? Then what are you? What do you work for?

Stephen Nessen: There was this pushing, there was some name-calling, a lot of profanity. It did eventually die down and get back to sort of the routine business. I called Paladino to ask her about this. She denies that anything was wrong and that anything bad happened, but she says these projects shouldn't be rammed down the throats of communities like hers.

Sean Carlson: Wow. To be fair, Stephen, community meetings do often get heated. Is there a larger significance to this particular fracas?

Stephen Nessen: Well, the DOT postponed a Zoom meeting on this project last night so it could draft what it called a code of conduct for everyone to follow next time, presumably to eject people who violate it, so there's not this confusion. I think the larger issue is that bike lanes have just become so polarizing, even ones sort of as basic as this one, that would connect existing bike lanes draw such animosity. Bike lanes have become sort of a major front on the culture war in New York City, and we've seen conflicts recently like the McGinnis Boulevard bike lane.

There was A lot of pushback and drama around that. As the city tries to reduce the number of vehicles on city streets, I think we can expect more of these sort of intense backlashes to any new project that discourages the use of private automobiles.

Sean Carlson: Well, speaking of street redesigns, Ramsey, you reported on a new Smart Curbs program rolling out on the Upper West Side. What is that exactly?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes, Smart Curbs is just a fun name that the Transportation Department is using for a pilot program to redesign the infrastructure around curbs. They pick the Upper West Side as the neighborhood to first get the redesign, and they say that there are more locations to come. What does this mean? New parking rules, a plethora of public seating, and installing 30 new bike racks. What that also means, we talk about cars, getting rid of cars on streets like Nessen said, that's getting rid of roughly 175 parking spots in that neighborhood.

There's also new loading zones which will be sprinkled around. That's one type for trucks and commercial vehicles to load and unload their goods. It's a designated spot instead of double parking, which you see all around the city. Some other zones are for taxis and for rideshare pickups and drop-offs. That's also very common post-pandemic. They're so many of these cars around. The whole idea is the city trying to readapt to changing business practices since the pandemic. Just think about how popular deliveries are now in these days. Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to rework public space. An example is this permanent outdoor dining program, though it hasn't really been that successful. We're seeing a lot of businesses not participating because of the new rules, because of the new costs. It also means he's also done things like getting scaffolding removed more quickly. It's contested, but there's a lot of these new initiatives. I spoke with Donald Shoup. He's an urban planning professor out of UCLA and acclaimed parking expert. He says that the Smart Curbs program is actually anything but that.

Donald Shoup: Every street, there should be loading zones and they should be higher priced than the non-loading zones. They should be charged by the minute.

Ramsey Khalifeh: What he's saying when we spoke was that New York could actually be doing a lot more to charge people for parking. Making it a revenue stream for local neighborhoods and also have less car parking overall. Apparently, it's a missing point.

Sean Carlson: He did tell me once, if you charged for every single parking spot in New York City, the city could offer free public transit for everyone.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes.

Sean Carlson: Interesting. Well, from parking to the trains, this week the city saw its sixth death from subway surfing. What is the latest on that? What can be done? We hear about this all the time.

Ramsey Khalifeh: In this case, it was a 13-year-old girl who died and like you said, it's the sixth person this year. Last year at this time, five people had died from subway surfing. Obviously it's a problem that's persisting. There's actually another teen girl who was injured subway surfing this week, and both of them apparently were riding on top of a 7 train in Corona, Queens. Last year, the MTA launched a PSA with kids speaking their own words about the dangers. You've probably heard it, it's something like ride inside, stay alive.

This week, the new president of transit, Demetrius Critchlow, was asked by an MTA board member about is there a technical fix we can do, like installing a device that would alert a conductor, maybe if someone got on a roof? He said he'd look into it. Mayor Eric Adams just did a press conference and he's basically imploring young people to talk to their fellow kids about this problem. Like the MTA, he continues to blame social media for perpetuating the interest and the allure of subway surfing.

Stephen Nessen: Yet on that note, the other things that the MTA has done is they actually met up with these social media companies and told them, take down these subway surfing videos. We don't want young kids seeing this anymore. It's encouraging this dangerous behavior. Instagram, TikTok, all those platforms. The MTA also says the message has to come from inside the home. What can parents do? How often can they tell their kids, like, don't participate in this behavior? The Queensborough president this week had also mentioned that he's going to plan a meeting with the schools commissioner and to see if there can be some sort of program that can be developed in the public school system.

I also asked MTA chair Janno Lieber, what about physical barriers, protections, things where kids couldn't climb up onto the top, but they mentioned, and this has been an issue that's been brought up before, that it would be difficult for them to do their regular repairs on top of the cars, so probably not a possibility.

Sean Carlson: Okay. Every week in our On The Way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This week, Alexander Dupuis from Manhattan has one. It feels a little spooky. I feel like it's appropriate for today. For many months, there have been two large crane barges that are parked in the middle of the Hudson River at about West 30th Street. It's quite noticeable at night as one of them is always lit up, although it does not appear active. Are these part of new rail tunnel work or repairs from existing tunnels, or is this entirely unrelated?

Ramsey Khalifeh: They are actually very active and it's part of the gateway project to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River. Those cranes, I've learned, are now building what's called a coffer dam, which is a dry enclosure in the water where they're going to build 2,000 columns that will stabilize the bottom of the river, and the columns will create this sort of strong foundation in the riverbed for the boring machines that will dig that new Hudson Tunnel.

Sean Carlson: Well, thank you for the question, Alexander, and thanks to WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen and Ramsey Khalifeh. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter@gothamist.com/ontheway. Thanks so much.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Thank you.

Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.

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