Business
The Battle for The Streets of New York
On a recent morning, the intersection of East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue presented a vivid illustration of the tumult.
A taxi trying to make a left turn had to maneuver around a Verizon crew digging up the asphalt. A box truck was parked in the bus lane, and the M102 bus, with its accordionlike belly, was forced to change lanes and snake around it.
Dozens of people streamed out of the subway and into the crosswalk. A man pushing a double stroller navigated between the subway entrance and a sidewalk compost box. A woman’s shopping cart wheels got stuck in a crack in the sidewalk. CitiBikes and delivery bikes whizzed by. A cargo bike stopped in front of a FedEx truck that was unloading packages next to a bike lane.
Lively, energetic streets make city living attractive — people to watch, windows to browse, benches to sit on, trees for shade.
But lately, New York City streets are teetering between lively and unlivable. Residents clash over traffic, noise, parking, 5G towers and heaps of trash. Most years, far fewer pedestrians get killed by motorists than in generations past, but last year was the deadliest year for cyclists since 1999.
Still, people who have thought deeply about the state of the city’s streets believe dramatic improvement may be on the way — if New York is willing to seize the moment.
That’s because the city is about to embark on the nation’s first congestion pricing plan, charging most drivers $15 to enter much of Manhattan below 60th Street — and forcing many commuters to find a different way into the city.
The aim is to reduce car traffic in one of the world’s busiest commercial districts and raise money for public transportation.
People, bikes and vehicles compete for space on New York City’s streets.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times
“I think this could be the catalyst for a streets renaissance in New York,” Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s former transportation commissioner, said in a recent interview.
“We have to talk about how we’re going to reclaim that space and make it work for people.”
Of course, congestion pricing, too, comes with a fight. The plan is supposed to start in June, but it faces several lawsuits brought by elected officials and residents from across the region, who describe it as ill-conceived and unfair to commuters who drive because public transit isn’t robust enough to serve their needs.
“They don’t drive because they want to,” said Susan Lee, a member of a coalition called New Yorkers Against Congestion Pricing. “They don’t want to sit in traffic.”
Could congestion pricing actually reduce the number of cars in the city to a dramatic extent? If so, what would take their place?
There are other ideas and experiments in the works for taming New York’s streets, and they raise questions of their own. Could a proposal to ban parking close to intersections improve public safety? Will the Sanitation Department’s garbage containerization plan make sidewalks cleaner? Is there a way to keep package delivery trucks from blocking the streets? Must 5G technology create public eyesores in residential neighborhoods?
In the months ahead, The New York Times will examine the debates raging in neighborhoods all over the city about who and what gets to take up space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.
How did we get here?
Orchestrating the flow of traffic and pedestrians has been a complicated and emotional project for centuries.
New York City’s streets were laid out before anyone knew how they would ultimately be used — long before cars were even invented. The first city planners could not have anticipated Uber vehicles, let alone Amazon deliveries or commuters on electric scooters.
In New York’s earliest days, the streets were a free-for-all. People walked or rode horses. There were no crosswalks or stoplights; if you had to cross the street, you simply walked across the street.
Traffic on Broadway in 1859 consisted of pedestrians, horse-drawn carts and streetcars.
William Notman, via Getty Images
Soon, horse-drawn vehicles used the streets alongside pedestrians, and people dashed between them. (Later, New Yorkers dodged streetcars in much the same way, giving the Brooklyn baseball team its name.)
The arrival of bicycles neatly encapsulated the city’s ever-shifting debate over how the streets should be used — and by whom.
By the 1890s, the streets were full of bikes. Men and women took to cycling through the city so quickly — and dangerously — that it was called “scorching.”
About 100 years later, in 1987, speeding bike messengers were deemed so dangerous that bicycles were banned from Midtown — temporarily.
Today, the city encourages residents and visitors to ride bikes. New York has bike lanes and a flourishing bike share program, plus an explosion of food delivery powered by e-bikes. The renewed popularity has also come at a grave cost: Last year 30 cyclists were killed on city streets, and 395 were severely injured.
“It’s hard to say whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times for bicycling,” said Jon Orcutt, the director of advocacy at Bike New York and the former policy director at the city’s Department of Transportation. “More people are doing it than ever.”
“If you’re not killed — squished like a bug — you can bike across town in 10 minutes,” he added. “It’s easy. It’s really efficient.”
Enter the car — and the car crash
On the evening of Sept. 13, 1899, Henry Hale Bliss, a 69-year-old real estate broker, was riding a Manhattan streetcar on his commute home.
At 74th Street and Central Park West, Mr. Bliss stepped from the streetcar and into the street, where he was immediately hit by a taxi. He died on the scene and is recognized as the first person in the United States to be killed by a car. There is a plaque at the intersection commemorating his death.
“At the end of the Gilded Age, right before World War I, suddenly, there were motor vehicles everywhere,” said James Nevius, an author and New York historian.
The development meant people could move around faster — but it also put more people in danger.
In 1920, there were about 200,000 registered vehicles in New York City; by 1925 that number had more than doubled. A century later, that figure is two million.
This scene of Park Avenue near 57th Street was typical of 1930s traffic. Over 10 million cars went through the Holland tunnel in 1930.
George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images
And yet New Yorkers are still using the same streets that were laid out generations ago. In Manhattan, the rigid street grid was designed in 1811. Avenues are 100 feet across. Cross streets are 60 feet wide, including the space for sidewalks on both sides.
That’s 720 inches in which to fit not just cars but also pedestrians, baby strollers, trash, compost, scaffolding, bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, skateboards, package delivery trolleys, garbage trucks, delivery trucks, food carts, 5G towers, dining sheds, trees, CitiBike docks, buses, taxis, ambulances and on-street parking.
It’s like a giant game of Tetris — except all the pieces just won’t fit.
In fact, some of the pieces are growing larger: In the past decade, the average vehicle got 12 percent longer and 17 percent wider. (Cars’ blind spots have also gotten larger.)
And the number of pieces just keeps expanding. New York City’s population reached 8.8 million in 2020, and the New York region is now home to nearly 19 million people. The city’s population has dropped some in the past few years, but city officials believe that recent population estimates have significantly underestimated the number of newly arrived migrants, which, by some counts, is over 180,000.
Taming the streets
Even as New York’s streets and sidewalks have become more chaotic, there are also plenty of examples of the opposite: moments when the city has tamed the traffic and found new uses for its old spaces.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, sweeping pedestrian plaza initiatives — detouring cars and encouraging space for sitting and strolling — have gradually changed the landscape, from the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens to Times Square.
Times Square was once full of traffic. In May 2009, the city closed Broadway to cars and set out lawn chairs, the start of the area’s transformation to pedestrian plaza.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
The Open Streets program restored pedestrian-first streets, free of cars and safe enough for strolling, chatting and letting kids ride bikes.
The coronavirus pandemic ushered in a chance to rethink public spaces, and the absolute quiet on the streets during lockdown was a reminder that the city isn’t inherently noisy, but traffic is.
And there are plenty of other places to look for inspiration: In Bogotá, Stockholm, London and Paris, certain streets are being closed to cars. There is an effort in Europe to avoid the oversize pickup trucks and SUVs that make American roads so deadly. Paris has designated “school streets” where cars have been removed to make way for children. Cycling is flourishing in Europe; emissions are down.
In New York, Ms. Sadik-Khan, the former transportation commissioner, is among the people thinking deeply about the future of streets — and she is optimistic.
“There’s a new generation of New Yorkers who’ve never known a city without protected bike lanes and bike share,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. “More people than ever are working from home. Commuting patterns are in flux. There’s the opportunity to make a new deal for people getting around.”
What will a “new deal” look like? And will New Yorkers be on board?
No matter what happens, change doesn’t come without a fight — and many of the battles will be fought street by street and block by block.
Over the next few months, we will take a close look at some of these street fights — and we’re eager to hear about yours, too.
Use this form to tell us what you think about the state of New York City’s streets.
So much Trump-related news has appeared lately on the airwaves and in web pixels — what with Iran and Epstein and Minnesota and so on — that inevitably a nugget will fall between the cracks.
That seems to have been the fate of the most recent annual financial report of Trump Media and Technology Group, which covered calendar year 2025 and was issued Friday.
Trump Media, which is 52% owned by Donald Trump and trades on Nasdaq with a ticker symbol based on his initials (DJT), is the holding company for Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.
The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Donald J. Trump were to suffer.
— A risk factor disclosed by Trump Media
The annual financial disclosure has garnered minimal press coverage. That’s a pity, because it makes fascinating reading, though not in a good way.
Here are the top and bottom lines from the 10-k annual report: Trump Media lost $712.1 million last year on revenue of about $3.7 million. That’s quite a bit worse than its performance in 2024, when it lost $409 million on revenue of about $3.6 million. The company attributed most of the flood of red ink to “loss from investments,” of which more in a moment.
Truth Social isn’t an especially strong keystone of this operation. The platform is chiefly an outlet for Trump’s social media ramblings and the occasional official White House statements. But no one has to sign in to Truth Social to see them — they’re almost invariably picked up by the news media or reposted by users on other platforms such as X.
That might explain Truth Social’s relatively scrawny user base. The platform is estimated to have about 2 million active users, according to the analytical firm Search Logistics. By comparison, X has about 450 million monthly active users and Facebook has more than 2.9 billion.
It’s no mystery, then, why TMTG disdains “traditional performance metrics like average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts, including monthly and daily active users,” according to its annual report.
Relying on those metrics, which are used to judge TMTG’s social media rivals, “might not align with the best interests of TMTG or its stockholders, as it could lead to short-term decision-making at the expense of long-term innovation and value creation.”
Instead, the company says it should be evaluated based on “its commitment to a robust business plan that includes introducing innovative features, new products, new technologies.” But it also acknowledges that, at its heart, TMTG is a proxy for “the reputation and popularity of President Donald J. Trump.” The company warns that “the value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Donald J. Trump were to suffer.”
How has that played out in real time? Trump Media notched its highest closing price as a public company, $66.22, on March 27, 2024, the day after its initial public offering. In midday trading Monday, the shares were quoted at $11.08, for a loss of 83% since the IPO.
One can’t quibble with stock market price quotes; nor can one finagle annual profit and loss statements, at least not without receiving questions, and perhaps lawsuit complaints, from attentive investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In recent months, TMTG has engaged in a number of baroque financial transactions.
In May, the company announced that it was planning to raise $3.5 billion from institutions to invest in bitcoin, with the money to come from issues of common and preferred shares. The goal was to climb onto the cryptocurrency train, which Trump himself was fueling by, among other things, issuing an executive order promoting the expansion of crypto in the U.S. and denigrating enforcement efforts by the Biden administration as reflecting a “war on cryptocurrency.”
Under Trump, federal regulators have dropped numerous investigations related to cryptocurrencies. Trump has also talked about creating a government crypto strategic reserve, which would entail large government purchases of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies; a March 3 announcement on that subject briefly sent bitcoin prices soaring by nearly 20%, though they promptly fell back.
Then there’s TMTG’s relationship with Crypto.com, a Singapore-based crypto “service provider” best known to Angelenos unfamiliar with the crypto world as the firm with naming rights to the Los Angeles arena that hosts the NBA Lakers and Clippers, WNBA Sparks and NHL Kings.
In August, Crypto.com and TMTG announced a deal in which TMTG would pursue a crypto treasury strategy consisting mostly of Cronos tokens, a cryptocurrency sponsored by Crypto.com. The initial infusion would consist of 6.4 billion Cronos valued at $1 billion, or about 15.8 cents per Cronos.
As of Dec. 31, TMTG said in its 10-K, it owned 756.1 million Cronos, acquired at a cost of about $114 million, or 15 cents each. By year’s end, they were worth only about nine cents each, for a paper loss of about $46 million. In trading this week, Cronos was quoted at about 7.6 cents, producing a paper loss for TMTG of about $56.5 million, or roughly half the investment.
The financial maneuvering involved in this trade is a little dizzying. The initial transaction was a 50% stock, 50% cash trade in which Crypto.com bought $50 million in TMTG stock and TMTG bought $105 million in Cronos. Who gained in this deal? It’s almost impossible to say.
Crypto.com did gain, if not purely in cash, then arguably through the Trump administration’s good graces.
On March 27, the SEC formally closed an investigation of the company that it had launched during the Biden administration, when the agency was headed by a known crypto skeptic, Gary Gensler. Trump appointed a crypto-friendly regulator, Paul Atkins, as Gensler’s successor.
It’s reasonable to note that as a business model, crypto treasuries have been in vogue over the last year or so, allowing investors to play the crypto market without all the complexities of actually buying and holding the digital assets by buying shares in treasury companies.
I asked Crypto.com whether the steady decline in Cronos’ price suggested that the hookup with TMTG wasn’t bearing fruit. “The fluctuation in value during this time period is consistent with the entire crypto market, which is typical in a bear market,” company spokeswoman Victoria Davis told me by email.
Davis also asserted that the SEC’s investigation of the company had been closed by Gensler, “not the current administration” (i.e., Trump). That’s misleading, at best. Gensler put the investigation on hold after the 2024 election, when it became clear that Trump was going to be in charge.
Crypto.com’s March 27 announcement of the formal end of the case attributed the action to “the current SEC leadership” and blamed the case on “the previous administration.” I asked Davis to explain the discrepancy but got no reply.
TMTG, like Crypto.com, attributed the decline in Cronos’ value to the secular bear market raging in the entire cryptocurrency space, a reflection of “temporary price swings across the crypto market,” said TMTG spokeswoman Shannon Devine. She said the price decline “will not diminish our enthusiasm for the enormous potential of the [CRONOS] ecosystem.”
Trump’s coziness with crypto companies hasn’t gone unnoticed by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who issued a scathing report on the topic in November. (The White House scoffed at the report, saying in response to the report that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public.”)
In mid-December, TMTG launched yet another remaking — this time, plunging into the business of fusion power. The instrument is TAE Technologies, a Foothill Ranch-based company working to develop the technology of nuclear fusion as a clean energy source. According to a Dec. 18 announcement, TMTG and TAE will merge, creating what they say is a $6-billion company.
According to the announcement, TMTG will contribute $200 million to the merged company when the deal closes in mid-2026, and an additional $100 million subsequently. Following the merger, TMTG said last month, it will consider spinning off Truth Social into a new publicly traded company.
These arrangements are murky. TAE is privately held and the value of Truth Social is conjectural at best, so TMTG shareholders could be hard-pressed to assess their gains or losses from the merger and spin-off.
What makes them even murkier is the speculative nature of fusion as an electrical power source. Although numerous companies have leaped into the field — and TAE, which has been backed by Alphabet, the parent of Google, is among the oldest — none has shown the capability of generating electrical power at commercial scale with the elusive technology.
Although some researchers say that fusion could become a technically and economically feasible power source within 10 years, only in 2022 did fusion researchers (at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) achieve the goal of using fusion to produce more energy than is required to sustain a reaction. They were able to do so only for less than a billionth of a second.
Others working on the technology have expressed doubts that fusion could become a viable power source before the 2040s. The technical challenges, including how to convert the energy produced by a fusion reactor into electricity, remain daunting.
All this points to the fundamental question of what TMTG is supposed to be. TMTG’s original mission, according to its own publicity statements, was to build Truth Social into an alternative social media platform “to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet.”
Spinning off Truth Social would place that goal on the side. TMTG is on its way too becoming a hodgepodge of crypto, fusion and other investments selected without regard to whether they fit together or are even achievable. The only constant is Trump himself.
If you want to invest in him, TMTG may be the best way to do it. But judging from its latest financial disclosure, that’s not the same as being a good way to do it.
The U.S. attack on Iran is expected to have an unwelcome impact on California drivers — a jump in gas prices that could be felt at the pump in a week or two.
The outbreak of war in the Middle East, which virtually closed a key Persian Gulf shipping lane, spiked the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil by as much as $10, with prices rising as high as $82.37 on Monday before settling down.
The price of the international standard dictates what motorists pay for gas globally, including in California, with every dollar increase translating to 2.5 cents at the pump, said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
That would mean drivers could pay at least 20 cents more per gallon, though how much damage the conflict will do to wallets remains to be seen.
“The real issue though is the oil markets are just guessing right now at what is going to happen. It’s a time of extreme volatility,” Borenstein said. “We don’t know whether the war will widen or end quickly, and all of those things will drive the price of crude.”
President Trump has lauded the reduction of nationwide gas prices as a validation of his economic agenda despite worries about a weak job market and concerns of persistent inflation.
The upheaval in the Middle East could be more acutely felt in the state.
Californians already pay far more for gas than the rest of the country, with the average cost of a gallon of regular at $4.66, up 3 cents from a week ago and 30 cents from a month ago, according to AAA. The current nationwide average is about $3 per gallon.
The disruption in international crude markets also comes as refiners are switching to producing California’s summer-blend gas, which is less volatile during the state’s hot summers. The switch can drive up the price of a gallon of gas at least 15 cents.
The prices in California are largely driven by higher taxes and a cleaner, less polluting blend required year-round by regulators to combat pollution — and it’s long been a hot-button issue.
The politics were only exacerbated by recent refinery closures, including the Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington in October and the idling and planned closure of the Valero refinery in Benicia, Calif., which reduced refining capacity in the state by about 18%.
California also has seen a steady reduction in its crude oil production, making it more reliant on international imports of oil and gasoline.
In 2024, only 23.3% of the crude oil refined in the state was pumped in California, with 13% from Alaska and 63% from elsewhere in the world, including about 30% from the Middle East, said Jim Stanley, a spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Assn.
“We could see a supply crunch and real price volatility” if the Middle East supply is interrupted, he said.
The Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes, was virtually closed Monday, according to reports. Though it produces only about 3% of global oil, Iran has considerable sway over energy markets because it controls the strait.
Also, in response to the U.S. attack, Iran has fired a barrage of missiles at neighboring Persian Gulf states. Saudi Arabia said it intercepted Iranian drones targeting one of its refinery complexes.
California Republicans and the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance, a trade group representing fuel marketers, gas station owners and others, have blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies for driving up the price of gas.
A landmark climate change law calls for California to become carbon neutral by 2045, and Newsom told regulators in 2021 to stop issuing fracking permits and to phase out oil extraction by 2045. He also signed a bill allowing local governments to block construction of oil and gas wells.
However, last year Newsom changed his stance and signed a bill that will allow up to 2,000 new oil wells per year through 2036 in Kern County despite legal challenges by environmental groups. The county produces about three-fourths of the state’s crude oil.
Borenstein said he didn’t expect that the new state oil production would do much to lower gas prices because it is only marginally cheaper than oil imported by ocean tankers.
Stanley said the aim of the law was to support the Kern County oil industry, which was facing pipeline closures without additional supplies to ship to state refineries.
Statewide, the industry supports more than 535,000 jobs, $166 billion in economic activity and $48 billion in local and state taxes, according to a report last year by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
Bloomberg News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Fintech company Block said Thursday that it’s cutting more than 4,000 workers or nearly half of its workforce as artificial intelligence disrupts the way people work.
The Oakland parent company of payment services Square and Cash App saw its stock surge by more than 23% in after-hours trading after making the layoff announcement.
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and head of Block, said in a post on social media site X that the company didn’t make the decision because the company is in financial trouble.
“We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” he said.
Block is the latest tech company to announce massive cuts as employers push workers to use more AI tools to do more with fewer people. Amazon in January said it was laying off 16,000 people as part of effort to remove layers within the company.
Block has laid off workers in previous years. In 2025, Block said it planned to slash 931 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, citing performance and strategic issues but Dorsey said at the time that the company wasn’t trying to replace workers with AI.
As tech companies embrace AI tools that can code, generate text and do other tasks, worker anxiety about whether their jobs will be automated have heightened.
In his note to employees Dorsey said that he was weighing whether to make cuts gradually throughout months or years but chose to act immediately.
“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he told workers. “I’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.”
Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, which was later renamed to X after billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company in 2022.
As of December, Block had 10,205 full-time employees globally, according to the company’s annual report. The company said it plans to reduce its workforce by the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026.
The company’s gross profit in 2025 reached more than $10 billion, up 17% compared to the previous year.
Dorsey said he plans to address employees in a live video session and noted that their emails and Slack will remain open until Thursday evening so they can say goodbye to colleagues.
“I know doing it this way might feel awkward,” he said. “I’d rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.”
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