Zohran Mamdani hires car-hating activist Ben Furnas for NYC transportation team: ‘War on drivers’
https://nypost.com/2025/11/29/us-news/mamdani-hires-car-hating-activist-ben-furnas-to-transportation-team-war-on-drivers/Open linkView original on lemmy.world706
Comments131
Conservatives always make leftists sound cooler than they really are lol.
In fact, I took one of my taglines from Trump's anti-trans executive order, "An Anti American Ideology". I'm a trans performer
Opening lines of the article:
Oh fucking please. NYC has always been a shit-show to drive in. If they would improve the mass transit options, i would never choose to drive in.
Media is just the mouthpiece for the rich and it shows.
Well the NYPost is literally owned by Rupert Murdoch. (Trump’s billionaire buddy who owns Fox News and half the Australian media).
So this is par for the course I’m afraid.
More of this please, I want NYPOST in tears every single day.
🤣 “War on Drivers”. Thanks NY Post, I needed a laugh
Good. Fuck car culture. Fuck the nypost too.
LETS
FUCKIN
GOOOOOOO
HA HA
That New York Post article is a hate-filled piece of garbage.
For example, it hates against these "polarizing rat-riddled street dining shacks" (quote is from the article).
I can guarantee you, i live in Vienna, we have these things all over the place. There's at least 5 of them on my way from where i live to university. There's never been any problems with them. In fact, they're delicious and typically much cheaper than sit-in restaurants. That's probably because they don't have to pay for expensive rooms. That makes the food much cheaper, it's typically around 5€ for a kebab (basically a sandwich) compared to 12€ for anything you get at a sit-in restaurant. I have gone to these street dining shacks every day for years and never had problems.
Nah, these are part of whatever restaurant is across the sidewalk. That does sound nice, but hasn't been my experience with them. I haven't eaten at all of them though, that's for sure.
It would be better to give the businesses and landlords some certainty and allow them to be built as a permanent structure. Add better trash holding infrastructure while they are at it.
Is that picture real? It looks like it should be a KenM post, talking about the very normal-looking restaurant shack instead of the prominent pile of un-binned garbage.
I would take these over franchises any day!
None of those were freestanding food places, they were simply an outside dining area for places that already had inside dining areas that nobody wanted to uses during Covid. Those little seating booths were necessary during Covid, when nobody wanted to be trapped in sealed rooms with other strangers, but their usefulness has passed, and we are left with the problems.
For one thing, they took away parking spaces, which are already extremely scarce. Secondly, because they are slightly raised, they made for a perfectly safe little living space for vermin under the floorboards. Thirdly, none of them were built with any kind of permits or regulations, and they were getting run down and poorly maintained, and that was only going to get worse. Finally, they're only useable for only about half the year anyway.
They were kind of neat during Covid, when everyone was trying anything they could to keep their businesses operating, and the government was willing to look the other way for a change, but those times have passed, and these things have become more trouble than they're worth any more.
Parking spaces should be scarce in NYC.
Lol, are you seriously trying to blame NYC's rat problem on these? The problem has more to do with the large piles of garbage sitting on the street.
Ooooh noooo, an unpermitted shed, noooo 😭
Land in a city should be put to its highest and best use. Are these little seating areas the highest and best use? Maybe, maybe not. But the highest and best use definitely isn't parked cars.
Sounds like they could use some iteration to reach their final form
A bio, so you don’t need to read the ridiculous NY post https://www.atkinson.cornell.edu/profile/ben-furnas/
@CompactFlax @lechekaflan Much of what I hear from New Yorkers lately is complaints that Transportation Alternatives has become too centrist during his time there.
The scaremongering is strong with this newspaper!
Oh boy, here we go. 🤣
Yeah, that's some interesting framing to say the least.
nypost was so sour about mamdani's election that it lead to this masterpiece:
I hope Mamdani frames one of those bad boys and hangs it on his office door.
He should have the city seize the means of production. Specifically, seize the NY Post. Turn it into an actually useful news source.
Accurately rename it the NY Dumpster but change nothing else about it.
New york post going full onion parody of itself. Might as well have batboy on the front page.
God, that's hot. I want this.
I need to put stuff up on my walls, and this is actually something that I would put up as artwork
Is this pic really real?
yes it is
Oh my god! I’m speechless.
Where can I enlist for this war on cars?
Either way I read the article and I absolutely love everything they are saying Furnas is going to do.
I want to highlight a thingy in the article, NYT mentions "What about the mobility of seniors?" like they are all allowed to drive or have someone to drive them around if not.
Right here.
https://thewaroncars.org/
I hadn’t been to nyc for several years until this past weekend and the difference with e-bikes really struck me. There are so many more bike lanes than there used to be, so many more people on their e-bikes than there used to be, and even some cargo e-bikes like Amazon delivery. Manhattan taking “the right road” to transportation! Keep on going!
Oh yeah, my point. Anywhere an e-bike or cargo bike can go, so can personal mobility for seniors. Now that we have bike lanes, let’s take the next lane for golf carts.
This was definitely my type of trip: grab a Dunks on the way out of the house, hop an Acela down to nyc, watch some hockey, walk around tourist areas, and hop the Acela back!
New York is going to get the same media coverage as Paris did. Paris got so much better in the last 15 years it’s absolutely crazy.
Paris did the same thing Mamdani wants to do in NYC: Turn roads into green spaces and pedestrian paths/bikeways and make it much easier to get around without a car. While the people there were at first unsure about it and complained, they've been really happy with it now that it's proven itself to be beneficial. The air is cleaner, and the streets are safer and far less congested. It's totally transformed Paris.
I lived there before all the change and I am always confused as to why I didn’t like it more when I lived there. then I remember that it was a lot worse than today hahaha. I love walking along the river but could not do it before; I actually almost biked on the speedway and died while now it is a pedestrian bike way
Good news: its going to become much more affordable soon. Rent freezes, free busses, $30 minimum wage..
Have a look at this short video of some streets "before and after". Hidalgo (the mayor) has given Paris a complete makeover. People are swimming in the Siene again!
Wow that was a horrible and very onesided article.
Well it’s the New York post which is basically a tabloid.
The Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
He said......basically.....a tabloid......
Yes. Mods should ban links to it
Nonetheless it gives Furnas free publicity.
Bikelash
Source:
Life After Cars by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek
https://www.lifeaftercars.com/
Solution: become a Bikeshevik.
I fully support the pedal and saddle!
Goodness, this article was a pain to read. Every single point raised is easily refutable but there's one particular paragraph I wanted to pick apart:
Imagine calling a plan to build more playgrounds - something that would provide a long-term benefit for children- "bizarre" just because it just might remove some streets? I don't want come off as employing the overused "think of the children" argument since it's used to justify censorship but children do, in fact, have a right to clean spaces with breathable, unpolluted air.
This COMMUNIST thinks building PLAYGROUNDS will solve the LACK OF PLAYGROUNDS?! Gadzooks, what fooferaw! Communists are so silly! Let the free market provide playgrounds.
The NY Post is cancer. Anyone who works there should seriously reconsider their life choices.
it is funny how low they are willing to go, not even journalistic integrity is stopping them anymore. should have the name of the writer out there and his twitter account so they can be shamed on public. If this is an actual person and not fake name or AI.
They're trying to claim the playgrounds will be in the middle of the street. They even post a picture of an obviously poorly designed playground in between streets to associate the two ideas
This is despite the fact the whole point of closing low traffic streets to make a playground and cul de sac is so we don't have to put a playground in a literal street
It's propaganda, plain and simple
Dogshit title.
Its a war on the automotive industry and their planet killing infrastructure that's forced millions of Americans to own cars they can't even afford to get to jobs late that don't even adequately compensate them.
The NY Post is a dogshit tabloid.
Oh yes, that planet-killing infrastructure that allows your groceries to be delivered to your store.
Let me guess, your ideal future for humanity is ultra-densified condo towers with thousands of identical 250 sqft cubicles so we can all huddle together and bike to service jobs that don't even let you see a lawn for the rest of your life?
Would it also include 10+ billion people by 2050 Mr Planet Killer?
Non car transportation exists, trains will get your goods to the store but vastly more efficiently. But you’re probably baiting anyway you car brained hyper individualist dweeb
I’d love to see barts from the north end to the sound in my city. We have major streets that don’t need cars parked on it.
It's really got nothing to do with individualism.
And meanwhile, some European cities are implementing zero-emission zones for logistics (trucking and deliveries). It's not all rail.
You've guessed wrong. I'm living in a (by US standards) high-density small European city right now. 95% of the time, everything I need is within walking or cycling distance. Public transport works well for the remainder. I'm living in a 1500-square-foot house, as are most of my neighbors. There's grass and trees outside, and a river. Neighbor kids are playing outside. I don't work in a service job. So go ahead and have your shit hemorrhage if you want, but if you ever become interested in facts, come and see how real people are living right now.
That's an unrelated problem. Only a fool assumes that there's only a single workable solution. And only a worse fool assumes that the existing arrangement is the only possible one.
Is it that controversial to want sidewalks?
Why are we posting Murdock owned rags?
Best news I've seen all day!
Hell yeah. Conscript me for this shit, we going netherlands on new years on those smelly fucks.
For those who are unaware: https://nltimes.nl/2025/01/02/record-number-car-fires-new-years-eve-highest-total-rotterdam
If possible I would avoid being anywhere densely populated in the Netherlands over New Years. The whole country loses their fucking minds, handing explosives to children as young as ten with the advice: "Go have fun in the street, kid". Strangers shoot fireworks in every direction, at buildings, into the canals, at random strangers just trying to get to shelter.
When I lived there, my girlfriend and I would always book a holiday well out of town on NYE. It's insane, and not in a fun way.
The first time I went to NYC, car traffic was still allowed on Broadway between 46th and 47th in Times Square. Closing it off gave all these tourists somewhere to go and made crossing the street so much safer. It’s crazy to me that so much real estate was ceded to making the area 5% more convenient for drivers when the land was so much better used for pedestrians. NYC is already so walkable but I’d love to see it even less congested. No reason not to use the bus.
Ban cars throughout the entire city. Delivery vehicles at night time only. Let the rich return to the ancient ways. To separate themselves from the rabble, they'll be carried around in sedan chairs like the rich fat bastards of yore.
The New York Post is concerned that traffic in NYC is going to get bad? Do they even live in NYC, or do they just live in their office, and never leave? How do they get to work? Surely they've noticed the traffic?
Those big metal moving boxes that honk constantly? That isn't the local wildlife, those are vehicles, and they are already everywhere. It would literally be IMPOSSIBLE to make it worse.
The Post? They probably all live on Staten.
TL;DR: They are stupid and selfish.
People like that would rather sit in two hours of traffic and risk a parking ticket than take a subway for 30-45min. They specifically hate the very idea of public transport and they can’t even understand that public transit can be expanded without any disruption but infrastructure expansion for the personal vehicle requires insane amounts of destruction and disruption for incredibly little gain which is cancelled out by induced demand within a year.
In Montréal I know that driving is “faster”* but I still refuse to and leave my car parked. It’s just better, but I can also handle a small amount of walking outside and I’m not such a little baby that I feel immasculated by the metro system.
*It’s faster when Google Maps applies the longest wait and transfer times, and if there’s no traffic, and if you don’t account for warming up your car and then finding parking at your destination and then walking from your car to where you were trying to go.
I was there last weekend, and some group was doing some sort of truck cruise. I first noticed “hey look at those idiots trying to drive full sized pickups in Manhattan traffic”. Then I realized the noise wasn’t just a bad muffler, but intentional.
I ended up seeing dozens, several light cycles, and they kept going well past midnight. Loud enough to be annoying from my 23rd floor hotel room
If it's so bad why could they only find Ms Rauch to complain about it? Seems like an article about a plan that's hated by a lot of people would be able to find more than one lady to talk to.
Reminds me of how they were using that same tactic for hit pieces about the congestion pricing a year ago.
Ah the New York Post... hate filled right wing rag.
LOL "War on Drivers." As if putting your hands on a steering wheel in NYC doesn't already immediately enable PVP mode.
Lmao the New York fuckin Post
NY Post is a Trump loving rag. Please don't give them clicks.
Zohran Mamdani seems like an actually good person. I hope I don't regret saying this.
How many politicians can you name that went on a hunger strike for over 1 week, to be in solidarity with poor people?
One of the many stupid things about it is that generally speaking, most measures to reduce cars have the effect of making car travel more pleasant. It's building tons of extra lanes that drives its own demand and makes driving slow and unpleasant.
You need to remember that the groups that push for this pro-car culture don’t represent the drivers, but the manufacturers.
They don’t care about the actual experience of driving - they only want to shit out as many new vehicles onto the road as possible.
This is awesome. I hope he comes up with real solutions other cities can adopt to curb car creep into cities. My city is fairly progressive and I can promise city hall is watching what he does very closely.
🫡
Good!
Aren't cars notoriously evil in NYC?
Yeah. I love how Murderdoch is eating his hat.
This article reads like satire, they're so mad
I swear, it reads like poison pen articles every time.
You guys should email the NYPost and show your disappointment. Maybe, if enough people emailed them and showed them how you, the readers, do not agree with the way they do things, they would change it.
Obligatory: fuck cars. I am of the opinion that cars might just have been our worst idea.
NYPost does not care about what their readers think. Their only job is to push a certain agenda. It is a propaganda rag.
Whoosh
Cars feel like a great solution to a relatively niche problem that got forcibly applied to several other problems for the sake of money.
Still, email them. Preferable the writers themselves as well. Show them your disappointment. Tell them they are actively worsening society. Ask them how they can sleep at night. Make a good argument.
Cars are fine. Car dependence is not. If you say something broad like "cars might just have been our worst idea" someone will simply point to the cases where it's unambiguously helpful such as ambulances, fire trucks, etc. and dismiss you entirely - along with dismissing the idea of walkable cities
I disagree. Cars are not fine. First, when people say cars, they are referring to civilian cars, not transportation cars.
Regardless, you are committing a fallacy. "In some cases, cars are helpful, therefore, cars are not our worst idea". A very simple way of showing that your conclusion is false is by just giving an example of having just 2 ideas, 1 of which is obviously worse than the other, even though that worse idea has some pros. Sorry, I know this is pedantic, but I just wanted to point out the fallacy first, in general terms.
But now to your point itself. Say we never invented cars and let's also say that that implies no ambulances (which it does not, we could have ambulances in a sort of public transport, ram ambulances, bike ambulances, etc). The amount of deads that cars cause is orders of magnitude larger than the amount of reads that ambulances save. I don't have data on this, I think everyone agrees with this. So, still, net positive.
So yes, I will repeat. Cars might just have been the worst idea we have ever had.
So what's the problem?
FWIW I don't actually hate cars. It's just hate angry drivers, pollution, danger to everybody from pedestrian to other drivers, noise, economical dependence, power imbalance, etc. The cars themselves are...
OK forget that, I'm a car hater too.
I see your point, but nypost is not a reliable source. Please repost with a link that's credible
Based
But ... but ... they need to sell cars, so they can get more taxes, so they can build more roads, so things are further apart and people need cars ... so they can sell more cars ...
I love my car just the same as I love this post because I would despise driving in NYC
I appreciate that they linked to the actual transportation agenda, but when you look at the article and agenda side-by-side, it becomes really obvious how dishonest NY Post is being here
NY Post is outright lying about parks in the middle of streets. I get their biases, but shouldn't they at least pretend to be honest?
it is funny because the editor of the article think this title is negative, while the one who voted for him are most likely looking at the title and saying "that is who I voted for"
based af
(Emphasis mine)
This may be the dumbest quote in the whole dumb article.
archive.today version of the url: https://archive.ph/MPReJ
basically the entire premise of this article is that he has the nerve to want to improve speed of the bus network and put parks and playgrounds on under utilised roads. the horror.
I thought it said cat.
Trump hires anti-vaxer for US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mamdani hires car-hating activist for NYC transportation team. What's next, some Priest as head of NASA?
"Transportation = Cars" in the usa apparently
but that is 100% true. biking for a senior with 60+ years old can be life threatening. If they fall (and they do because they have a reduced sense of balance), they go to hospital, and laying in bed for 2 weeks leads to severe muscle dystrophy which often can hardly be restored.
Driving cars for a senior with 60+ years old can be life threatening too. If they crash, they end up in traction or perhaps even die.
Heck even walking can be life threatening, if they get hit by a car while crossing the street, they could die.
In NL we've got mobility scooters for seniors and disabled people. They count as anything from pedestrian to scooter depending on the need. Doesn't the US have these?
We have everything. I have seen tricycles for adults, motorized wheelchairs good for 10+ miles, and of course golf carts
To encourage the latter two options, someone needs to give some thought to parking
I don't know, I'm from the Netherlands too. I was just mirroring OPs argument.
3 and 4 wheel bikes do exist. Driving for a senior 60+ is also life threatening, for them and others.
60 isn't that old. My grandpa turned 85 and rides 50+ miles a week, he hasn't fallen since he loves somewhere where cars can't run him over.
In Amsterdam, seniors and those with disabilities can drive tiny cars (like the Japanese Kei cars, I think) on bike paths. They have the protection they need for their health issues, they go slow so their slowed reaction times aren't a safety risk to themselves and others on a regular car road, and they have full access to groceries and medical appointments and social visits. Win-win.
If there is somebody who can’t walk, can’t bike, and can’t take alternative transit options (eg, disability-supported shuttle, or plain buses) I do not see a car as a solution for them and would be worried about their driving cohesion.
The handicap argument has been tried against walkable city infrastructure for a long time. It’s a terrible dog whistle; the pressure to use a car to get everywhere is hurtful to the disabled as well as the rest of us.
I know plenty of people who bike at 60+. If you’ve biked for years it’s no more dangerous than it is for anyone else.
I think you mean atrophy.
Good, Mamdani and Furnas should only be allowed to use public transportation for work purposes, otherwise they'd be hypocrites right? 🤔
There's a huge difference between personal behavior and policy. I'd rather see politicians who, while flawed in their personal lives, improve the lives of their constituents, than saints who sell out to the highest bidder.
But I suspect your snark does not come from a place of good faith, which is why you resort to cheap ad hominem attacks.
Overall I agree with the push against cars in an extremely dense city. Emergency vehicles, public transportation, logistics trucks (delivery/moving/etc) should have priority. I also like it when people lead by example.
Who is leading by example in the U.S. at this point? You’re literally just preemptively bitching and villainizing about an idea that would genuinely improve lives. Maybe just shut the fuck up instead of being a doomer and give things a chance to work before railing against good ideas and declaring the people advocating for them as hypocrites. I’m so fucking sick of your specific brand of asshole anymore.
I would hope they do, unless there's some work thing that takes them out of the city into bumfuck nowhere - which I can't imagine what that is.
Prefacing my comment with, as always, "I'm a car guy", I'll say this: Cities are not the place for cars, and NYC is fucking amazing for being carless, at least when I visited. It could of course be even way better, and as I understand, that's what Mamdani's trying to do.
We have better cities for public transit and walking here in Europe, but in terms of North America, I think NYC is one of the best.
Manhattan is far above any other us city on both walkability and transit. It’s the one place initiatives like this should be obvious and can succeed.
Meanwhile my city is one of the best in the us but far behind so I’m not sure I’d support such initiatives here. I did try a year without a car and it was mostly fine, and can only be much better now. We do have bus lanes for major routes now, fixed a lot of subways infrastructure and are building out bike lanes everywhere, but nothing like nyc. At the time I did feel like I still needed a car and wished there were options for long term storage, but that was before services like Uber/Lyft or short term rentals like ZipCar.
For the very long term, I have a lot of hope for the MBTA communities zoning law passed last year. Boston has long benefited from transit-based development, we have many pre-car towns with walkable centers, but now every town in the greater Boston area has transit-based development too!
Oh yeah, we walked around Manhattan and it was great. Nighttime was a lot fewer people than I would've thought for "the city that never sleeps", but then we randomly stumbled upon some guys freestyle rapping near Union Square (if I recall correctly), found a super weird grocery store that sold us alcohol at like 11 PM (in my country it's only legal to sell till 10 PM, after that only bars can serve and they can only serve open containers) (alcohol at 11 PM wasn't the reason it was weird, it was just... very different from everything else I'd seen, including in the US, interesting vibe lol - if I remember correctly, they had tables outside where we consumed said beer, so it was kind of a bar AND a grocery store? But I may be remembering wrong here)
Brooklyn was also pretty nice to walk around. The buildings were much prettier, and we also found random places to visit. Somewhere in Williamsburg there was literally like a mini music festival vibe place in an alleyway. Like multiple tents to buy drinks and at least one stage. No noticeable signs pointing to it IIRC, just a person who sold us a ticket at the entrance of the alleyway.
Didn't take much transit. Just the subway from our hotel near the airport to Manhattan or Brooklyn and then back at night. It worked fine, though wait times between trains were a bit longer than I'd expected for such a big city.
DC? I thought DC transit was pretty amazing
Boston. Also pretty good transit, but nothing in the us compares to Manhattan for walkability and transit
Isn't that the whole point? That's how transport works in functional cities.