The wheel turns

The Legislature’s biggest roadblock to safer New York City streets, upstate Assemblyman David Gantt, opposed bills to install speed cameras and redlight cameras as being “more about raising revenues than…about safety.” Thursday evening, Gantt blew through a stop sign in his hometown of Rochester and smashed into a van, injuring at least two small children. WHEC-TV, the city’s NBC affiliate, reported that a store security camera captured Gantt breaking the law and causing the crash.

While we hope that all those hurt make quick recoveries, Gantt deserves no mercy.

For many, many years, as chairman of the Assembly transportation committee, he bigfooted New York City’s mayor and City Council as they sought to stop bad driving our streets.

He did everything in his considerable power to block red-light cameras sought by New York City. To block speed cameras. To block cameras on buses to catch bus-lane blockers, as well as bus-lane cameras on street poles.

Every time, he repeated that rusty old saw that new enforcement tools were just a way to pick the pockets of poor drivers.

Nonsense. It was always about safety. About catching — and stopping — dangerous drivers like Gantt, who wasn’t caught by a municipal camera (which he wouldn’t have permitted) but by the camera of a private business.

Since January, Gantt has been in charge of something called the Legislative Commission on Critical Transportation Choices. Whether behind the wheel or in the Capitol, nobody’s botched more such choices than he.