Deucey

The vax is free for everyone. The health insurance info is for billing/claims and contact tracing if you need Covid follow up care

That’s one of the core ethos’s of America - domination of other groups to screw them vs having a common goal and different plans to achieve it and finding a middle ground to make it happen. I don’t think taking up 8 feet of road space so bikes aren’t on sidewalks or slowing down vehicle traffic is a waste of money - especially since bike riders pay the same taxes into the general fund that pays for local roadways.

I liked the J&J option with one shot, but bc it used a deactivated Rona virus - and because that method is used for flu shots, and I’ve gotten severe flu every time I got a shot - the RNA option seemed worth the risk since I’m now a cardiology patient. I didn’t spend a year inside my house and avoiding all of humanity and Rona to get right to the finish line and have my body chemistry go overboard reacting to a deactivated virus and putting me through ish. (That year of H1N1, I got it, recovered, got a flu shot afterwards ‘just to be safe’, got the regular flu, then recovered from that to get H1N1 again. But my body loves to overkill when dealing with viruses.)

You’d have to get City Council to revoke the uniform speed limit law or DOT policy, or get NYS to adopt a law like California’s that requires local DOTs to evaluate the mean speed on stretches of road and increase it every few years to accommodate that mean. Another alternative is to get NYS to “take over” roads and set their own speeds - but given how few roads in the City are State Highways, and that the ones that are (like QB, Webster Av, Conduit, et al), like expressways, are maintained by NYCDOT, NYS would likely not do it since it means road maintenance and clearing would come from the NYS Budget. So the last alternative is to vote for folks for council and mayor who would be more inclined to find compromises rather than pander to get loud and stupid people to stop yelling.

I just did mine at beginning of April. Was eligible back when they opened the vaxxes to anyone with chronic conditions, but waited to see what the short and midterm effects were. Since no one turned into a Walker or developed an insane devotion to the Umbrella Corporation, I went ahead. Only real side effect I’ve had from it is I’ve got the “drive” like I’m 19 and in college again. Being a man aged 40.5 and shaped like a NovaBus, it’s great that I still don’t need Frank Thomas’ Nugenix.

Already had both shots.

I got my Moderna at a Walgreens here in Shaolin and my 30 minutes was spent waiting for the pharmacist to get around to administering it.

NY politics is and has always been like the Royal Courts of the Tudors - there’s always a Cardinal Wolsey or Thomas More amassing power with others trying to take it away. We can’t have better things because Wolsey or More become megalomaniacal, and the King overreacts towards the ‘down with him and plan’ idea, while the people get screwed.

IIRC, DOT “owns” the bus stop signs (not in NY now; can’t go look at a sign to confirm), and obviously the sidewalk or roadside the sign is on. Seems to me actual good changes (stops, bus/bike lanes, shelters, etc) could be made quickly and effectively if DOT and NYCTA were more like TfL in controlling all transport infrastructure - non-freeway road maintenance and construction, buses and trains in the boros, etc. It’d have to be precise so NYCTA-DOT left small non-arterials to NYC to plow and pave, but it’d be several steps easier to relocate a stop, and funding and traffic management could be more stable if it got a portion of parking fine money. But it’ll never happen bc NYCTA and have given more reasons en masse to not government enterprise than the whole of NYC government has.

Because not everyone riding the bus is going to/from the ferry. Because we're supposed to get our 30 minute headways back when the "emergency" is over.

Why do that instead of a shield similar to the locals - like Greyhound and BoltBus have on their MCIs and Prevosts? This is fairly useless for all the relative frequent stopping unless that shield opens and closes along with the door.

Instead they did it at the state level. Police have always been Gestapo if you're Black or Latino - Civil Rights Era and before showed that.

But the now-Trumpsters said during the Bush years that this was necessary otherwise the "terrorists win."

To not do so is dereliction of duty - which is grounds for dismissal. DeBlasio reminded them of that that one year they decided to barely work after turning their backs to him at a funeral for a slain officer. And their wounded pride is a self-inflicted thing - as it is with all police in the US. It wasn't protesters confiscating bikes and hitting NYPD with batons as they were kettled and leaving Manhattan - it was NYPD. Damn sure wasn't protesters hitting cops with cars at Barclay's; that was NYPD. Definitely wasn't a protester who shoved a cop for filming at a protest in Brooklyn; that was NYPD. So if they're unwilling to do their jobs because people don't like them, and are unwilling to change how they do their jobs when their misdeeds are seen on international television and their bosses - the people they police - say "Don't do that", then they need not continue collecting paychecks from us. Military personnel get that, as do employees at private firms. So expecting people who are entrusted with the State's power to police to not only do their job ethically and effectively, but to be the example to the public isn't a far-fetched idea; to expect bus drivers and bureaucrats to do so but not the people with the ability to kill in the name of keeping the peace is.

The part of my OP when I said that the morale and other feelings are "self-inflicted"? You just explained it. Cops have job duties and often enough they're not doing them or doing them wrong. That was made plain to me when the video of that officer in South Carolina chose to shoot an already-arrested man with mental issues for running away instead of tasing or chasing him. Add to it that with NYPD Transit Bureau they're not policing the transit system except to catch farejumpers in the hood, AND that pre-Rona I could see unis with Anti-Terror unit STSing by the 2 Broadway side faregates of Bowling Green during Rush Hour, congregating all over GC-42nd St by the fare gates but not at any other station on the lower Lex - save USQ and Fulton St, again by the fare gates, that perception of the subway being unsafe can easily be changed. NYPD Transit has the bodies. Those bodies are just uninterested in doing more than minimal job duties or even doing them in a way that doesn't get people killed.

If they can get alt fuel efficient enough to make subsonic flight viable to knock 8 hour trips to 4 or 5 hours, or make the Kangaroo run not need three crews, it'll be worth it.

Self-inflicted wounds that are easy to heal - especially within the NYPD, but that's another OT debate. I wish I could remember where I read it - it's been years, but in the 00s there were comments in newspapers about how too much responsibility was being put on police for them to do their job effectively and correctly. IIRC, part of it was related to terrorism law and social services duties like mentally disturbed persons. Leaving out the systemic racism in policing from the beginning, here we are. That's why I haven't understood two things about NYPD: 1) 35,000 sworn officers and they can't find at least 2800 to be in station on platforms to rapid respond if something happens (ie not need to hold at station and wait for at least two cops to come into the paid fare area) 2) Why NYC needs 35,000 when City of LA has half NYC's population and only 1/4 of the cops (without CHP and LA Sheriff supplementing on patrols) As much as people kvetch here about bloated inefficiency of staff, no one seems to ask why NYPD is so big but ineffective in it's overall responsibility, and in this narrow one for the Transit Division.

With all the police substations in the subway, and a whole NYPD Transit Bureau, if they're not in the subway policing, they're definitely not doing their job. So why do they still have the jobs?

It's not like riding to/from the Rockaways way back when, but the ferry fare then getting on a bus or subway and paying that fare. It's "better" than when I had to pay for the bus to the Orange yacht, then pay the $4 or whatever it was to take the NY Waterways East River Ferry to W'burg, but it's still two fares. It should be a transfer. Damn fiefdoms and/or NYC not scouring the subway lease and bus franchise agreement to see if there's any leverage to force a transfer acceptance or trying for a reciprocity/integration/coordination agreement...

I just wish it was integrated with OMNY/MetroCard so it isn't a two-fare zone for those passengers, along with making these ferry landings LTD and SBS bus hubs.

Since the NEC subsidizes Amtrak ops for all those unprofitable long haul routes politicians want so sundown towns have train service but few of those residents ride, that's a bit out of our control as NYers. But folks do complain. They just happen to be folks who want to cut others' service and subsidy but keep their own.

Based on this high ass taxation in these Boris, I'm sure there was some deal with NYS and the barons that let NYC acquire upstate land, run them extraterritorrialy, and build these aqueducts so long as NYS didn't have to foot the bill. There's precedent - SF came to own Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite (130 miles away) similarly, and LA via the family that owned the LA Times did similar with the Owens River. NYS likely didn't give NYC remit to own and operate transit beyond the Bronx and Queens county lines, so we end up with what we have.

That 25 mile radius is how Chris Christie got PA to pay for the Pulaski Skyway retrofit - calling it a port approach road. Interesting thing I read somewhere was that the VZ was supposed to be a PA bridge by the same logic - but leased to TBTA, but TBTA "bought it" and that's why it's a bridge today.

BART is an authority created by the State of California whose mission was to create a rapid transit system to relieve congestion in the SF Bay and San Pablo Bay Areas, but counties had to opt in. That's why BART doesn't go to Marin and Napa Counties, and barely into San Mateo County (Daly City Station is roughly a block away from the SF County Line) until it agreed to join the tax regime - which is how the extension to SFO was finally built. And it wasn't until Santa Clara County agreed to join that the San Jose extension was built. WMATA was chartered by Congress as an Interstate Compact after DC, MD, and VA agreed the need for a unified rapid transit authority in the DMV. NYCTA was just a thing created by NYS to fix deficits after NYC bought the subways and buses from the private sector, but it (the subway) was built by franchise agreements with the City. The City didn't and doesn't extend to Westchester or Nassau Counties. was just created to run commuter services from those non-NYC counties to NYC, and took over NYCTA to keep Mayor Lindsay from taking Triboro Bridge Authority tolls from NYS. So a regional transportation management solution was never the plan in NYC - as it was in the DMV and SF Bay; it was all about controlling money and reminding folks who was "in charge". Doesn't mean it can't change, but given how NYS has always been about people with egos reminding everyone "who's in charge here", it'll be very hard to do because it requires mindset changes - and trying that resulted in Andy Byford going back to London.

Retirements and that hiring freeze.