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cross-posted from: https://ponder.cat/post/1464776

Enforcement was already on the rise before Trump’s inauguration. Now street sellers are avoiding any risk of getting a criminal ticket that could make them ICE targets.

Drivers have damaged graves when using a closed cemetery road as a shortcut to avoid traffic in neighbouring roads.

The route through Avon View Cemetery in east Bristol is only supposed to be used by hearses, maintenance vehicles or visitors with limited mobility.

But drivers have been using the route regularly to avoid heavy traffic and bypass roadblocks within the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme.

The cemetery installed bollards to block the road, but people have since driven directly over graves to evade the closure.

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One suspects that, after six months, this will be like Michael Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. When that law took effect in 2003, it too was decried as a business killer, an overreaching, scoldy approach to behavior modification, an imposition on one’s God-given right to a Marlboro. A year or so later, virtually everyone had accepted it, and a great many nonsmokers realized their liberties had expanded rather than contracted. They had regained the right to breathe free

A long winter has set in for high-risk New Yorkers and others who rely on outdoor dining, after the City forced restaurants to tear down their roadside dining sheds for the first time since 2020.

Under new rules that went into effect this winter, curbside dining is banned from December through March. The number of restaurants offering outdoor seating plummeted as a result of burdens posed by the new system.

Many New Yorkers were sad to see the sheds go. But besides business owners, the biggest repercussions have been felt by people who can’t dine indoors due to the ongoing risk of COVID-19—the original purpose of the outdoor dining program, but one largely forgotten by policy makers.

"It's so isolating, and it’s so lonely, and it’s so frustrating," said Jennifer Pozner, an author from Brooklyn who only eats outdoors due to health concerns.

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After weeks of speculation, Australian Caleb Ewan has signed a late single-year deal with Ineos Grenadiers for 2025.

Ewan was set to be part of home WorldTour team Jayco-AIUIa this season for a second year, but his name did not appear on the squad's line-up for 2025, sparking rumours that he could be moving on, for reasons that remain unclear. There was talk about a possible deal with Astana, but the idea never gained real traction.

After Italian fast man Elia Viviani and Ineos Grenadiers parted ways in 2025, the British team were lacking firepower for the sprints, with Ewan now set to strengthen their options in that area.

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The cobble-bashing Dutch bulldozer fractured his collarbone Tuesday at the Santos Tour Down Under to continue a long sufferfest of sickness, injury, and case of “superglue face.”

According to Pro Cycling Stats, injuries alone will have robbed Van Baarle of around 24 weeks of racing in the 25 months since his high-profile move to Jumbo-Visma (now Visma-Lease a Bike).

And that’s not accounting for a spate of non-selections and non-starts due to sickness.

Sure, Van Baarle hasn’t suffered singular career-threatening crashes like his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert.

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As early as March of this season it was clear that the transfer market would be unlike anything women’s cycling had ever seen. For a few seasons, there had been talk of growing salaries, especially with the implementation of the UCI’s WorldTour minimum wage in 2020, but it wasn’t until Demi Vollering’s departure from SD Worx-Protime was confirmed that the number €1 million was thrown around. The report that UAE Team ADQ had approached the 2023 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winner with that number was ultimately debunked, but it set off a chain reaction that saw salaries rise even more ahead of the 2025 season.

Unfortunately, this increase in pay is only available to those at the top of the sport. While the top women are earning in the mid-six figures, women on Continental teams who line up against those same top riders are still barely surviving on €10,000 a year.

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The first WorldTour race of the year would be decided on the iconic Old Willunga Hill during Stage 2 of the 2025 Santos Women’s Tour Down Under. 23-year-old Swiss rider Noemi Rüegg surprised everyone by winning the stage after a tactical battle played out from the very first repetition of the famous Adelaide climb.

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Like the rest of those living in New Orleans at the time, Aaron Miller – then the city’s homeland security director – was terrified after a gunman drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French coastal city of Nice in 2016, killing 86 people and wounding many more in a terrorist attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS).

Similar car attacks in Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona also put him on edge as he thought about the safety of his city.

“We just said … it’s just too risky right now” to not fortify New Orleans’ most famous thoroughfare, Bourbon Street, the globally renowned festive drag. “God forbid somebody does this [here].”

By the end of 2017, Miller had overseen the city’s acquisition of road-blocking, cylindrical columns known as bollards – along with other barriers – designed to prevent terrorists from driving into revelers descending on Bourbon Street for one of the city’s many celebrations.

The barriers were part of a broader $40m public safety package unveiled by Miller’s boss in those days, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who left office in 2018 and more recently served as the co-chairperson of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

Some of the most visible elements of that plan remained in place early on Wednesday when a former US army veteran driving a rented pickup truck – flying a pole-mounted IS flag in the back – drove around a police barricade at the foot of Bourbon Street and plowed into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers, killing 14 and injuring more than 30 others before police shot him to death.

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Tolls on drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street will move ahead as scheduled this weekend — unless New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration can convince a judge to bolster a recent ruling.

Beginning Sunday, the MTA plans to flip on automated tolling cameras that will bill passenger vehicles $9 during daytime hours in the MTA's "congestion relief zone." It would mark the start of a years-in-the-making congestion pricing program that’s slated to raise billions of dollars for New York City’s public transit system.

An attorney for Murphy’s office, which sued to try to block the toll from taking effect, claims a ruling Monday from Senior U.S. Judge Leo Gordon prevents New York from moving ahead with the toll, at least temporarily.

But while the ruling demanded more details about the program, it did not include a specific order blocking the toll from taking effect. And unless Murphy’s office can quickly convince the judge to clarify that his ruling actually does temporarily prohibit the plan, the MTA and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul say they intend on charging the toll as scheduled.

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