R10 2952

Where exactly do you expect the MTA to get the money to replace the R68/As early? They've been having a difficult enough time getting sufficient federal funding as it is, and if Congress goes Republican in 11 months, the MTA can forget about more fed money coming down the line. Absent that, I just don't see this financially over-leveraged transit agency or its overlords in Albany ponying up the cash on their own. At this rate, the most they might be able to afford in a few years is a handful of flatcars from ACF... Does nobody read the Washington DC section of the newspaper anymore? Have people not learned anything from all the Manchin-Sinema drama of the last few months?

A previous termination that was involuntary will be used by any HR organization, public or private, to stack the deck against a candidate. If they made you disclose the firing upfront on the job application and you didn't provide them with a satisfactory explanation, chances are they could be using that against you. As to the civil summons you received for fare evasion, unless you disputed it and successfully beat that ticket, it counts as a Class A misdemeanor and most likely you will have to disclose it if asked for a background check, unless things have changed. I know that I was required to disclose a similar offense (from when I was an adolescent, no less) when applying for many public-sector, civil-service type jobs, at least for the first few years after I became a legal adult. In the alternative, have you tried applying for a similar job with NYPL, QPL or BPL (the public libraries)? They directly hire custodial staff- good benefits, steady environment.

@jass A big part of the problem with NJT is apathy on the part of most riders. Only a few people here and there will be vocal about service improvements, whereas the vast majority choose (for whatever reason) to suffer in silence. Throw into the mix NIMBYs and suburban Jerseyites who are openly anti-transit, and that's how you end up with a system where people can get from Lakewood to PABT all hours of the day, but you won't find a single regular-service bus that goes from Freehold to Trenton, Pompton to Paterson, or Butler to Newark. What drives me up the wall the most is that each of the random examples I mentioned above used to not just have bus options, but actual rail connections back in the day, some of which are still used for freight. Unfortunately, although NJ has a lot of potential in terms of developing an all-inclusive bus and rail network, instead of 'build it and they will come', too often the Jersey modus operandi (outside of the hub connections to NYC and Newark) seems to be 'destroy it and push them away'.

Not the best use of public resources in my opinion, but par for the course, unfortunately.

Yes, I just pointed the real-life aspect out in another thread today about the whole deinterlining fixation some of them have. They got defensive 😆 "Lionel" is an accurate term for it, very much so. If they took the time to scratch the surface, peel away the layers of the onion, they'd have a moment of reckoning and realize how backwards, corrupt and non-changing the public transportation state of affairs really is, not just in NY or the Northeast, but the US in general. The fact that most small towns in America were better-connected by rail 60 or 70 years ago than they are today, speaks volumes. At this point, the only way I think I'll ever see better transit is by moving. To Europe.

The entire 125th Street section to connect with Metro-North is an unnecessary spur that was forced on the MTA by the suburban Westchester members of the Board. The original plan for the Second Avenue Subway was always to go north into the Bronx, not west along 125th.

It's not a thing at all anymore. No updates from the pols, just Wally beating his horsemeat about a fantasy revived <R> train...

Agree 100 percent with your take on the whole deinterlining thing. It's really refreshing to see actual transit personnel provide solid counterpoints to the transit-planning wannabes on these boards.

Simply put, the trips aren't happening until the dust settles from the ongoing situation. They're not bringing anything back until they get the free-and-clear from the politicians in DC and/or Albany. Read any newspaper and you'll see that public officials are in no rush to relax coronavirus restrictions anytime soon.

Yeah, I wouldn't count on fantrips coming back anytime soon. Not as long as all the current restrictions on everything remain in place.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who sees through the MTA's bad-faith excuses, smokescreens and outright bullshit regarding the Bx1/2/10 routing in the Jerome Park area. In it's current form, it doesn't work and frankly never has. You would think with all the people ditching mass transit for cars in droves now, the agency would be trying to attract people to its services, not push them away. Choosing to fix something that is very much broken is not progress- it's malaise. @Via Garibaldi 8@MysteriousBtrain I don't know where you two get off lecturing me on a route that I rode nearly every day, east of Broadway, for over 10 calendar years. The vast majority of the riders who stayed on the bus past Broadway were trying to get to the , or employees of the medical facilities east of Jerome. Having the Bx10 go straight to Mosholu station instead of making that awkward detour to Bedford would have made the morning commute a lot easier for us working folks. A bunch of AARP busybodies and helicopter parents shouting at a hearing is not representative of the entire community. You think the rest of us sat tight and did nothing? You have any idea how many of our letters received canned responses or were flat-out ignored? Or the turds the agency was squeezing out when people in Spuyten Duyvil were practically pleading with them to fix the Bx20? Same nonsense as when I was growing up in Queens. The Q38 sucked performance-wise and made no sense routing-wise (two very related issues). The only people happy with it were senior citizens with too much time on their hands. Everyone else hated dealing with it, but had no other choice.

Except Dinowitz was proposing increasing the Riverdale-Broadway short turns, not fixing the circuitous Bx1/2/10 routing mess near the reservoir, east of Broadway and west of Jerome Avenue. Also, his absence at that press conference tells me all I need to know. Not that 30 minutes of political windbags stroking their own egos makes much difference, in the grand scheme of things. And what exactly are you trying to say about people not wanting to lose access to the schools? Bronx Science is one block from Mosholu Parkway, Lehman College is two. The under-30 crowd can easily walk that distance; what would senior citizens have to do with it? If some people are resisting change solely for resisting change, that's another issue. What I do know is that as someone who rode the Bx10 every day for over a decade, most regular riders were pissed about the winding, non-direct route to the , as well as the delays the poor routing helped create. I didn't see anyone shouting to keep that route as-is.

Except nobody from west of Broadway would be losing access if the Bx10 went to Norwood via Mosholu from Sedgwick- it would actually make the route faster and more direct.

That whole area southwest of Gun Hill Road, east of Bailey Avenue, and west of Jerome-Concourse has always been a paragon of poor planning. The roundabout route to Bedford Park Boulevard, and the and duplicating each other makes a person think the routing was just drawn up at random. If anything, the Bx10 should be serving the at Mosholu, and either the Bx1 or the Bx2 should be heading south down Sedgwick and Reservoir to Bedford Park.

He was on these boards? What was his handle?

Ah, CBTC. Wave of the future, my ass.

Amen to that. In a similar vein, I applied for a civil service job once where I met both minimum qualifications, but was rejected because they said "you need to meet either qualification, you can't meet both". In their world, 1+1 doesn't equal 2, it equals 0. Narrow-minded, petty bureaucratic idiots. I feel that. Especially now when a lot of the public-sector jobs list minimum qualifications, but emphasize "preferred qualifications".

Personally, I wonder what will happen up north across the border; Greyhound Canada went under several months ago and nobody has stepped in yet to fill the void.

Going to have to disagree with you on those points. There are regular heritage steam operations elsewhere (England, Germany, even Poland) and they have no problems with access to usable coal. Likewise, they don't attach diesel locomotives to the train, not for braking, not for anything. In other places, it's a non-issue. Only in America do people hem and haw about this stuff. The heritage railroading scene in this country is a joke compared to Europe. The fact that nobody in the government has had the nuts to challenge CSX on their steam ban is case-in-point to me.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/10/20/7-years-after-laquan-mcdonald-was-murdered-chicagoans-protest-rahm-emanuel-as-he-vies-for-ambassadorship/ "CHICAGO — Seven years ago, police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on the Southwest Side. It was more than a year before footage of the teen’s death became a global flashpoint for police violence and nearly four years before Van Dyke was convicted for murdering him. To mark the anniversary of McDonald’s murder Wednesday, organizers rallied Downtown to honor the slain teen and protest former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose administration tried to block the release of videos showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald. Speakers from progressive and abolitionist movements spoke near a poster of McDonald’s high school graduation photo. Many said they’d woken up on the anniversary of his killing feeling unwell and disturbed. Hours before their demonstration, Emanuel sat before senators in Washington, D.C., in hopes of being confirmed as the ambassador to Japan. If he’s confirmed, it will be Emanuel’s first major government role since he decided not to run for re-election as mayor in the wake of the McDonald scandal. For some Chicagoans, the former mayor’s attempt to return to a high-profile role is hard to swallow — particularly as their fight against systemic racism and police violence continues. Organizers said Emanuel is being “white washed” by a Democratic White House. “He failed our city. He covers up the murder of a 17-year-old,. He closed 50 schools on the South and West sides. He closed mental health clinics throughout the city of Chicago,” Calloway told the crowd. “You think that’s the best qualified candidate to represent the United States as an ambassador? Say that ain’t right.”

Here's a random thought: in the beginning, I was skeptical about Penn Station Access for both Hudson Line (via West Side) and New Haven (via NEC) trains, but after coming around to the idea of Hudson trains running down the West Side into Penn, I now also realize New Haven trains to Penn make sense because it would take pressure off of the Harlem Line, especially during rush hour. Perhaps getting New Haven trains off the Harlem Line would open up the door for restoring commuter service to Chatham? Only other major issue I can think of is what would become of the New Haven stub between New Rochelle and Wakefield. Maybe a case could be made for extending that westward somehow, either to the Hudson Line or the Putnam Branch...

I was thinking the other day about how the MTA's tunneling costs are so out of control, and how full elevated line construction over residential areas is a political non-starter in NYC, which leads me to the question: has the MTA produced any in-depth studies at what the Bronx extension of SAS would look like? Specifically, was the NYW&B right-of-way north and south of East 180th ever looked at as a potential route for a Second Avenue extension? I was looking at a map and came around to the notion that the path of least resistance for a Bronx extension would simply be an el connecting the Eastchester Line south from 180th, over the New Haven railroad tracks (similar to how the Culver El ran above SBK freight tracks), to the Pelham Line north of Whitlock Avenue. That would limit tunneling to an SAS Phase 2 connection from Third-138th under the Harlem River to Second Avenue in Manhattan. The Pelham Line west of Elder Avenue could then be extended six blocks west and tied into the /. 5 goes to 241st or 238th, T goes to Dyre, 6 runs along Westchester all the way to 149th-Grand Concourse. Perhaps a case could even be made for a short trunk line branching off and running along the old Port Morris right-of-way? Sure, it's all just a pipe dream, but even so, I think it's no more hare-brained than MTA Capital Construction's budget-busting, deep-bore tunneling projects...

They get what they pay for, I guess. When corners are cut, there are certain effects. If anything, this would actually vindicate the practice agencies had back in the day of splitting up orders into multiple contracts, with different manufacturers. Placing a large order with one manufacturer is essentially putting all your eggs in one basket.

Few years ago, the Access-A-Ride services started auctioning off their retired Crown Vics. Extended wheelbase, just like the yellow cabs, but a lot less beat up than the regular taxis. Had an opportunity to get one at the public auction for a great price, but ultimately didn't act on it. Idiotic that I didn't, because at this point (10 years after the car went out of production) the chances of me finding a deal like that (on the LWB version, no less) are next to none.

Time will tell; until then, who knows...