Media Links
April 28, 2011
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Source: ABC 7The union that represents NYC cab drivers is about to ask for their first fare hike in seven years.
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Source: FOX 5 NY
MTA, Nassau End Bus Contract: MyFoxNY.com
The letters "MTA" will be coming off the Long Island Bus fleet in Nassau County. After 40 years of running bus, the MTA voted to end its contract with Nassau.
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Source: City Room / NY TimesThose small E-Z Pass tags — which are typically stuck to the car’s windshield to electronically transmit payment information to a sensor on the toll booth— are powered by small lithium batteries that are permanently sealed into the device. These batteries are meant to last for nine or 10 years, but the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Bridges and Tunnels department has a tag-replacement program in place.
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Source: AFL-CIO Now BlogThis May Day, working people are rallying across the country to oppose attacks on workers’ rights and immigrant rights. Just as we did on April 4, working people will declare: “Somos Unos—Respeten Nuestros Derechos” or “We Are One—Respect Our Rights.”
April 27, 2011
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Source:Forty years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHAct), “there is much more work to be done….The job safety laws must be strengthened,” finds the 2011 AFL-CIO annual job safety report “Death on the Job,” released this morning to commemorate Workers Memorial Day. (Click here for the full report.)
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Source:Outer-borough Democrats yesterday blasted a plan to slash the much-maligned MTA payroll tax and replace the funds by resurrecting East River bridge tolls.
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Source:Following last week's remarks by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz on the structural distress of the Manhattan Transportation Authority's old Downtown Brooklyn headquarters, an MTA spokesperson told The Real Deal that the MTA is still trying to figure out the future of 370 Jay Street.
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Source:Belmont Park fans can ride the rails to the track again after the New York Racing Association ponied up the dough to restore LIRR service from Penn Station.
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Source: Second Avenue SagasA few weeks ago, I was traveling from Midtown to West 4th St. on a B train shortly after 1:30 in the afternoon when I happened upon this scene. By all appearances, the man who made the B his own personal sleeper car didn’t seem to be homeless; he was just tired. So he fell asleep.
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Source: WNYCComplaints about taxi drivers refusing to take passengers to their desired destinations have increased by more than a third over the last year. So the city is moving ahead with a plan to increase fines and penalties. Officials hope expensive tickets and the risk of suspended, or even a revoked license will stop drivers from saying "no" to customers.
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Source: Fox 5 NYDelays on a New York commuter rail line this week have been attributed to the attempted theft of 500 feet (152 meters) of the fiber optic cable that provides critical signals for rail operations from the Otisville Tunnel, the Times Herald-Record reported Tuesday.
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Source: NY TimesThe nation’s main firefighters’ union, long a strong supporter of Democratic candidates, announced on Tuesday that it would indefinitely suspend all contributions to federal candidates out of frustration with Congressional Democrats who, union officials say, have not fought harder against budget cuts and antiunion legislation.
April 26, 2011
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Source: Mocker Blog / WPIX 11
Click to read more and the report from Prospect Heights Patch
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Source: Daily NewsAs I mentioned a bit earlier, my column in today's print editions of The Daily News was about a massive rally unions and community groups plan to stage against Mayor Bloomberg and the titans of Wall Street on May 12. As Michael Kink of the Strong Economy For All coalition told me as I was writing, the protest's message is when it comes to the city budget, layoffs and public services, "There has to be a solution other than 'Cut! Cut! Cut!'" Via our Adam Lisberg, here's what the mayor had to say to the press about it:
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Source: DNAinfo.comConstruction-related accidents have been cut in half so far this year despite several recent tragedies, the Department of Buildings says.
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Source: StreetsblogFive Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Bonacic, are making transit advocates an offer they can probably refuse. The payoff is appealing: state authorization for bridge tolls on the East River bridges. But the price they are demanding in return, the total repeal of the payroll mobility tax outside New York City, is too high to pay.
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Source: NY Daily NewsAs Gov. Cuomo ramps up his efforts to drive through the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples, the union movement is meeting up with the Empire State Pride Agenda to discuss not only marriage, but how LGBT issues affect its members.
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Source: NY Daily NewsUnions are hoping it'll be the shout heard around Wall Street - and City Hall. They'd also like its echo to reverberate into 2013.
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Source: Cap'n TransitYou might not realize it, but we're in the midst of a large expansion of transit capacity. That expansion is in jeopardy, though, primarily because a lot of people don't realize it. If we don't do something, it could come to a screeching halt, and years of work could be undone.No, I'm not talking about the ARC tunnel or the Second Avenue Subway. I'm talking about the boom in buses. You may have heard about them - every once in a while there's a breathless "trend" article about how all the cool kids are taking Megabus or the Chinatown buses, because they can do social network marketing on their iPads in transit instead of wasting time behind the wheel listening to Rush Limbaugh and books on tape.You may have also noticed the growth in other bus services: gambling buses to Atlantic City, Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods; Chinatown vans traveling to Flushing, Elmhurst and Sunset Park; Jamaican and Haitian dollar vans; I believe that the MTA also expanded express bus service after they took some routes over from the "private" operators. They've cut it back since, but I think overall there's still a net increase. Tour bus usage has also increased; many tour companies offer "hop-on, hop-off" tour bus networks that function as a parallel transit network without some of the "riff-raff" that tourists might fear in the subways. Hospitals like Sloan-Kettering and universities like NYU also run shuttle buses between campuses.Well, that's wonderful, right? A large increase in transit capacity, largely undertaken by private operators, at no cost. No expensive holes in the ground, no stations, just reuse existing infrastructure. The miracle of buses! It almost seems too good to be true.As usual, what seems too good to be true usually is. In this case, there is a cost. On a crowded island like Manhattan, the existing infrastructure is always being used by somebody, as we saw with the 34th Street Transitway. It turns out that they built the Port Authority bus terminals for a reason. Curbside long distance buses were tried years ago, and they require taking street and sidewalk space that other people want for parking and walking.The buses themselves need places to lay over between peak periods, and these places are hard to come by, in part due to the gentrification of Manhattan. In 1950 and 1979 the corner of 40th and Ninth was a low-rent district; now there are very few left in Manhattan. Many bus drivers simply park their buses at the curbside for hours until the next shift.I'm not sure how many people realized that this was actually a stealth land grab for transit, but the people who used to use the land have figured it out, and they're not happy. One article after another appears in the papers, each one a bit more insistent, each one enlisting another clueless pandering politician.Right now the support for buses is diffuse, which means that there could be a big backlash that could set back transit in this city by years. I'll talk more about what we can do about this in a future post.
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Source: Transportation NationTransportation information is knowable — though not always to a centralized authority. But the proliferation of both smart phones and social media means regular folks can tell each other when the bus is come as quickly as…well…they can tell you there’s a revolution underway in the Middle East.
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