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It’s Tuesday.
Weather: Sunny, with a high around 90. The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory.
Alternate-side parking: In effect until Saturday (Feast of the Assumption). Read about the amended regulations here.
New York City has a love-hate relationship with cars. If you’re a restaurant owner desperate for expanded outdoor seating, you might have a hate-hate relationship with cars these days.
At the start of the coronavirus crisis, traffic dried up, prompting the city to close more than 70 miles of roadway to cars and trucks for its Open Streets program. That made extra room for socially distant walking, biking and outdoor dining … for now.
There’s competition brewing for the city’s 6,000 miles of streets, and critics of car culture are pushing officials to redesign the grid to accommodate fewer vehicles and more pedestrians and cyclists.
[Will cars still rule the roads in a post-pandemic New York?]
“The longstanding tension between those who see cars as evil and those who see cars as essential has been heightened by the pandemic because usable outdoor space is more crucial than ever,” Jerold S. Kayden, a Harvard professor, told my colleague Winnie Hu.
Here are some takeaways from an article on the turf war by Ms. Hu and Nate Schweber:
The city has closed some streets to traffic.
Every few weeks, the city has been adding a batch of roadways to its Open Streets program, which bans cars for a stretch of the day, allowing restaurants to extend seating past sidewalks and cyclists to cruise freely. But it’s all temporary.
Some New Yorkers say now is the time to make long-lasting changes by creating more public space and reducing real estate for cars. Restaurant owners on Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan, for example, want to keep the outdoor dining; across the city, some parents wish to use the streets near schools for classes.
“You’re reimagining your city’s open spaces in a way that it feels like it belongs to people on foot and on bikes,” City Councilman Brad Lander of Brooklyn told my colleagues. “It feels, in my opinion, like a crusade for a more sustainable city.”
Other cities are repurposing streets.
London plans to create new walking and biking routes by widening sidewalks and permanently limiting some traffic. Officials in Paris want to add more than 400 miles of bike lanes.
New York City hasn’t presented any plans to permanently redesign the streets, but the fight to reduce traffic is unlikely to go away after the health crisis ends. City officials say they’re waiting to see how traffic fluctuates as more people return to work.
Drivers are pushing back.
The coronavirus has made many New Yorkers wary of public transportation. Streets are filling up with cars and trucks, and traffic volumes have more than doubled at some bridges and tunnels between the city and New Jersey.
It’s likely that many workers are preferring cars over the subway and buses as a safer commute. Demand for monthly parking spots is up — and so are the prices.
A plan to fix congestion has stalled.
Sitting in traffic is expensive. Before the pandemic, congestion cost the New York region about $20 billion a year in lost worker productivity and fuel and operating expenses.
There is a plan to curb traffic by imposing a fee on vehicles entering busy parts of Manhattan, but it has been delayed for at least a year. The fees from that plan would raise money for public transit, which is also facing a financial crisis as commuters avoid trains and buses.
“We’ve been talking about traffic and congestion for years, and we haven’t done enough about it,” said Carlo A. Scissura, the president and chief executive of the New York Building Congress. “Now, we’re at a moment of reckoning.”
From The Times
What Happens to Viral Particles on the Subway
Top Female Chief Quits, Accusing N.Y.P.D. of Widespread Gender Bias
With No Power, 90,000 Struggle in a ‘Nightmare’ a Week After Storm
Trump Moves to Force Manhattan D.A. to Reveal Details of Inquiry
Want more news? Check out our full coverage.
The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.
What we’re reading
The police in New Jersey arrested the host of a house party with more than 300 guests. [NBC New York]
Citi Bike promised to add thousands of its electric bikes to city streets this summer, but several neighborhoods still don’t have any. [Gothamist]
Bars have been getting creative to comply with a rule that requires alcohol purchases to be accompanied by substantive food, not just chips. [New York Post]
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated August 6, 2020
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Why are bars linked to outbreaks?
- Think about a bar. Alcohol is flowing. It can be loud, but it’s definitely intimate, and you often need to lean in close to hear your friend. And strangers have way, way fewer reservations about coming up to people in a bar. That’s sort of the point of a bar. Feeling good and close to strangers. It’s no surprise, then, that bars have been linked to outbreaks in several states. Louisiana health officials have tied at least 100 coronavirus cases to bars in the Tigerland nightlife district in Baton Rouge. Minnesota has traced 328 recent cases to bars across the state. In Idaho, health officials shut down bars in Ada County after reporting clusters of infections among young adults who had visited several bars in downtown Boise. Governors in California, Texas and Arizona, where coronavirus cases are soaring, have ordered hundreds of newly reopened bars to shut down. Less than two weeks after Colorado’s bars reopened at limited capacity, Gov. Jared Polis ordered them to close.
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I have antibodies. Am I now immune?
- As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.
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I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?
- The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.
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What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?
- Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees -- without giving you the sick employee’s name -- that they may have been exposed to the virus.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
And finally: ‘Working to provide healing’
The Times’s Troy Closson writes:
Decades ago, Native Americans were guaranteed free federal health care. But in 2020, it’s still difficult for eligible New Yorkers to see Indian Health Service providers in person because the agency’s nearest locations are hundreds of miles from New York City, according to Sutton Mikole King, a Bronx woman who is descended from the Menominee and Oneida Nations of Wisconsin.
Even with telemedicine, Ms. King said, the barriers that people faced were striking, partially because of what she said were restrictive definitions for whom the government considers Native American.
“Seeing the gaps in services that the government provides, I just thought, I can do more,” she said.
So, she left her job at the New York Indian Council, a social services organization, to help start another nonprofit, the Urban Indigenous Collective, a year ago. She is now president and executive director of the collective, which focuses on both the health and the general wellness of hundreds of Native Americans in the city.
Those issues are particularly pressing, Ms. King said, because the data available suggest that Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus crisis. Also, over the past two decades, suicides have risen within American Indian and Alaska Native communities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Higher rates of mental illness are common among the groups, too.
Ms. King said the coronavirus crisis had delayed a plan for a physical clinic, though opening one remained a top priority. In the meantime, she said, the collective was developing an app to connect people with Native American therapists who can center conversations on unresolved historical trauma.
“Working to provide healing” for Native Americans has been something that Ms. King says she has wanted to do since the second grade. After moving to the Bronx from Wisconsin nearly a decade ago, she realized that the city was where she wanted to embark on her passion.
“I just knew New York City was where I was supposed to make a difference,” she said.
It’s Tuesday — follow your passion.
Metropolitan Diary: Her favorite place
Dear Diary:
I had just taken, and passed, the most difficult exam of my life.
I walked outside, hailed a cab in front of Madison Square Garden and told the driver my destination: the New York Botanical Garden. It was my favorite place in the city, and I wanted to bask in its beauty.
As we drove to the Bronx, I called my parents excitedly to tell them the good news.
When we got to the garden, I asked how much the fare was.
The driver replied that he had heard me calling my parents and the ride was on him. He said he was proud of me. His nephew had just passed his medical boards, too, he said.
— Rebecca Moellmer
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