R10 2952

"ALBANY — Portions of a whistleblower's lawsuit that was filed in 2017 and accused the company that built the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge of covering up defects in the high-strength bolts used to hold the 3.1-mile twin span in place were unsealed last week in a ruling issued by a state appellate court. The appellate panel's unanimous 4-0 decision rejected a request by Tappan Zee Constructors, the company that built the bridge, to keep the case permanently sealed." https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Court-unseals-records-alleging-structural-risks-16056252.php

"Gas prices jumped just above $3 a gallon Wednesday, and many gas stations in the Southeast were out of fuel as panicking motorists rushed to fill up in the wake of the cyberattack on a crucial regional pipeline." https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/05/12/gas-shortage-gas-prices-colonial-pipeline-nc-virginia-north-carolina/5052551001/

That and watch Pelham's side streets turn into a parking lot once this goes into effect.

Agreed; Massachusetts did something similar under Deval Patrick in 2009 when they placed the MBTA and the Turnpike Authority under the direct control of the MA DOT. It's been unofficially said up there that the ultimate plan was to subsume the MBTA into DOT entirely, but ever since that smarmy GOP corporatist Baker pulled an upset win in the 2014 gubernatorial election, a lot of further reform has stalled and there have been concerns that Baker may be gunning for a backdoor privatization of the MBTA entirely. As for New York, I figure the million-dollar reason neither MTA nor Port Authority have been taken over by the DOT is because of political patronage. Albany is not going to stop milking that cow until it keels over and dies, basically.

Surprised they're going with the futuristic design version; the traditional look of the standard version is less pretentious if you ask me...

The ones sold off by NYCT were all refurbished before entering service with other operators. The A-frames as built at the factory were defective; fixing the buses solved a lot of problems, but the point is they should not have rolled off the production line with major frame defects in the first place. Grumman knew about the problem, but signed off on the uncorrected design anyway- that's why they got sued.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these contractual provisions that give preference to manufacturers just because they set up an in-state facility. There's something to be said for freedom of choice. Just picture the deep shit the TA would've been in if Grumman had a plant in New York State in the late '70s. They'd have been stuck with several hundred defective, unusable lemons instead of the RTSes.

I been taking the subway regularly for 20-25 years. That ain't changing anytime soon. And with all due respect, since when do you of all people care about what happens on the subway? Since time immemorial you've gone out of your way to remind the rest of us that you take the express bus and Metro-North because of your disdain for the subway. 🙃 You know, I could sit here and complain about all the yuppie snobs I've encountered in the 5-6 times in my life I've ridden the BxM18, but I don't because I almost never ride the express bus. I'm not in the habit of criticizing services I don't even use, so it always perplexes me when others do just that. If you have no stake in the outcome one way or the other, then why bother? Not saying people should never talk about things outside of their regular routine, just trying to figure out what your agenda is here..

I'm not condoning the string of incidents that have been going on in the subway, or the inaction by NYPD and deBozo, but even so I think it's a little disingenuous to compare it to the bad old days of 35-45 years ago. The current events pale in comparison to what was regularly going on between the late '60s and early '90s. Ready any account from back then and you'll know crime was so out of control that the Transit Authority at times wasn't even able to keep track of the rates, let alone prevent crime. The one thing I will concede is I've almost never ridden the subway between 12-5 AM, but that was drilled into my head as a kid for damn good reason. Same reason you won't find me navigating through the brigade of skells on East 28th Street at 2:15 AM on a Saturday; it's called common freaking sense...

The Bush Junior years alone are why I've never voted Republican; had McCain succeeded him in 2008, those demagogues would've probably tried to invade Iran, give even more tax cuts to the wealthy, and turned the FBI into some sort of American Gestapo.

All in all, I always thought the path of least resistance would have been for the LIRR to retain ownership and simply replace that wooden trestle over Jamaica Bay back in the '50s. If they could have held out another 12 years until the state takeover, the current debacle wouldn't even exist.

I see what you're saying; I guess the root of the problem is everybody wants 'better security' on the trains and buses, but I don't see anybody examining the other side of that coin-massive surveillance. As a society, we've normalized it to the point that people don't think twice about being monitored at almost every step they take in public.

Yes, they keep dragging their feet on genuine efforts at electrification- if they had simply done electrification as originally planned back in the early '80s, LIRR would be 10 steps ahead of where it is currently. That and the Main Line third track are way overdue.

From our NY perspective, a lot of the things the MBTA does are potentially dangerous, to be honest. The subway headlights being off, even in the tunnels, is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of their third rails have no cover, their commuter railcars are mostly manual doors, frequent speed-related streetcar collisions and derailments (Mattapan and Green Line), and then of course that messy derailment on the Red Line back in June 2019 due to a damaged axle. They also have yet to figure out a way to properly ventilate Back Bay Station- several years ago Amtrak ordered its own personnel out of the ticket booths there permanently on account of all the diesel exhaust fumes.

So basically, MTA wanted to get rid of 2700 jobs already in 2019, and as a result of coronavirus shed 2600. Management got exactly what it wanted. Completely naive for anyone to think they're going to suddenly turn around and hire more people. As long as the State, City and the agency itself continue to be as toxic and politically mismanaged as they currently are, not a damn thing will change.

Can't recall the exact details, but generally MBTA policy does not mandate that the subway headlights be on continuously. The red lights in the front however are considered something akin to marker lights, and those must stay on (unless their policy has changed for whatever reason).

I can easily see this seatbelt idea blowing up in the regulators' faces; big difference between a 5-6 person car and a full-size motor coach. An overturned bus with 30+ people trapped hanging upside-down just seems like a recipe for a lawsuit.

It's the same agency that thought running 8-car trains of R40/42s on the would be a good idea. Stupid is as stupid does...

Last I heard the 748 trips to/from Pompton Lakes have been reduced to 2-3 peak direction trips, weekdays only. Who in hell do they expect to serve with that kind of shitty frequency?

Was going to comment on the article, until I saw it was written by that disingenuous tool Clayton Guse... Objective journalism it ain't.

Those obnoxious automated announcements really piss me off. Only thing they should be announcing on the buses are the major stops or if the route/destination has been changed, and not a damn thing else.

As long as Brooklyn and Queens continue to be physically located on Long Island, they're always going to be part of Long Island. The cultural distinctions do exist but they don't exactly put Nassau and Suffolk in a separate dimension of time and space. Culture is an artificial human construct- geography is not.

The original plan for the Crosstown Line way back was to have it tie in with the Franklin Ave Line in the south and the Astoria Line in the north. Would've honestly made more sense than the current routing, if you ask me. But it was proposed as an el instead of a tunnel, and at a time when Mayor Hylan was trying to tighten the screws against the BMT, so that's why we're stuck with the we have today.

My opposition to congestion pricing in Manhattan below 60th has historically boiled down to three or four things. First, the funds will be misappropriated by the politicians to fund other, non-transit related items. They will use it as a cash cow much as they've used other MTA funding sources in the past. Second, it will disproportionately penalize people living in the outer boroughs. Not everyone coming into Manhattan is an Audi-driving yuppie d-bag from Connecticut; plenty of ordinary folks drive in by car from SI or the transit-scarce areas of Brooklyn and Queens. Theoretically, you could get from a place like Rosedale to the Lower West Side by public transit, but the transit system right now is simply not capable of absorbing 100% of car commuters. Until that changes, it's not reasonable to limit access by car, and even if NYC and NYS theoretically got their shit together to put some shovels in the ground and build more subways, it would be years before any potential new lines open, anyway. Third, congestion pricing is a solution that fails to address the real problem of politicians not adequately funding transit in the first place; compared to other places in this country, our local and state governments possess rather vast fiscal revenues. You got 9 million people paying three income taxes (city, state, federal- part of which comes back to us as USDOT funding of course), but our leaders cry broke. Not enough people question where all the existing money goes and how it is spent, which is why I've called bullshit on congestion pricing since the start. On a final note, one can't help but question whether congestion pricing will be used as a political precedent for more radical measures. The city has already banned nearly all vehicular traffic from the north-south roadways in Central Park, capitulated to the bike fundamentalists by screwing up all the major avenues with these ridiculously overbuilt bike lanes (with all the extra curbs and stuff), and turned Midtown Manhattan into an archipelago of pedestrian plazas. What's next? Congestion pricing to enter Manhattan above 60th? Congestion pricing to enter any of the five boroughs from the rest of New York State? Banning cars from NYC entirely? The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.

True, and the other thing that has me wondering is why they're not working on restoring the Sunset Limited to Florida; the service was reasonably popular- ridiculous that it's been held up by red tape for all these years.