New York City - Transit News

[mrnyc]

well i dont see too many cops around lately —



Fare evaders driving increase in more serious NYPD transit crime, officials say

By Dean Moses
Posted on February 11, 2024


Police brass say fare evaders are doing more than just short-changing the MTA; they’re also responsible for the uptick in reported subway crime.

NYPD statistics release last week, which amNewYork Metro previously reported, showed that more than 70% of all transit crime stems from robberies and grand larcenies. Now, police officials note, those crimes are being largely perpetrated by individuals who hop the turnstiles and then target straphangers.


more:
https://www.amny.com/news/fare-evade...rime-increase/


Police brass say subway crime is being driven by fare evaders who disregard the obligation to pay for their ride as much as they disregard the safety of others.
File Photo by Dean Moses

[mrnyc]

​now everything is on hold 
until they straighten out
congestion pricing — 
 
 
 
February 16, 2024
 
Passenger Report: NYMTA Suspends Contracts for Transit Upgrades as Congestion Pricing Lawsuits Loom
 
Written by Carolina Worrell, Senior Editor
 
 
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has suspended the issuing of new construction contracts for major transit upgrades, “as lawsuits that seek to block congestion pricing work their way through the courts,” according to a Crain’s New York Business report.
 
According to the MTA, congestion pricing is set to raise $15 billion for subway, buses and commuter rail projects, “but multiple legal challenges have delayed the launch date and jeopardized revenue to fund critical infrastructure work,” Crain’s reports. The result, according to the report, “is a pause on projects to improve the city’s mass transit: an expansion of the Second Avenue subway, upgrades to signals for more reliable subway service, disability-friendly upgrades and other initiatives.”
 
“Due to this ongoing uncertainty, while litigation is pending, we will not be issuing any new construction contract solicitations,” wrote MTA Construction and Development President Jamie Torres-Springer, in a Feb. 14 letter to contractors obtained by Crain’s. “[There will be] limited exceptions for emergency work, small business mentoring contracts, and small projects with dedicated Federal funding. We will only initiate procurements we expect to be able to award.”
 
 
more:
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger...lawsuits-loom/


​NYMTA photo

[Nexis4Jersey]

Riding MTA NYC Subway Kawasaki R211T Open Gangway C Train (2/14/24)

• Video Link

[mrnyc]

dopey kids —


https://www.instagram.com/reel/C12jt...g2N3F2a2Njc2hu

[Busy Bee]

Apparently there's no amount decapitations, electrocutions or maiming that will assuage these stupid kids urge to surf. For their benefit and their families I hope they're scared straight.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Apparently there's no amount decapitations, electrocutions or maiming that will assuage these stupid kids urge to surf. For their benefit and their families I hope they're scared straight.

i actually hope its dumb kids, at least they have an excuse in being young, but i kind of think they might be grownazz man-children.

ie., we have a 43yo grown man arrested for multiple subway graffiti incidents in the local news down here in staten just today —


Man, 43, accused of spraying graffiti 20 times; Staten Island Railway trains, businesses tagged

Published: Feb. 18, 2024

https://www.silive.com/crime-safety/...es-tagged.html

[mrnyc]

cruise ships targeted to green up with electric —



Plug it in! NYC lawmakers want diesel-powered cruise ships to connect to shore power or leave

By Ben Brachfeld
Posted on February 18, 2024


Fossil fuel-emitting cruise ships would have to walk the plank and abandon New York City ports unless they plug into clean shore power for energy, should a bill in the City Council become law.

Intro. 4 of 2024, sponsored by Democratic City Council Members Alexa Avilés of Brooklyn and Erik Bottcher of Manhattan, would condition access to the city’s two cruise ports — located in the sponsors’ districts in Red Hook and Hell’s Kitchen — exclusively to operators that both connect to the electric grid instead of burning fossil fuels for power when in berth and create plans to mitigate traffic associated with cruise departures.

Over 1.3 million passengers embarked on cruises out of the Manhattan and Brooklyn terminals last year, bringing in about $420 million in economic activity to the city, according to the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the quasi-public agency that oversees the city’s cruise terminals and ferry landings.


more:
https://www.amny.com/transit/nyc-law...e-ships-power/

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

ie., we have a 43yo grown man arrested for multiple subway graffiti incidents in the local news down here in staten just today —


Man, 43, accused of spraying graffiti 20 times; Staten Island Railway trains, businesses tagged

Published: Feb. 18, 2024

https://www.silive.com/crime-safety/...es-tagged.html

It should come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone that graffiti artists often continue to do illegal graffiti way past their "youth days". I read something a while back talking about how so many 80s and 90s graffiti vandals where becoming active again during the height of the pandemic because it was so easy to do graffiti with the shutdowns and the world "on pause." Some of these guys are in their 50s and 60s.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

dopey kids —


https://www.instagram.com/reel/C12jt...g2N3F2a2Njc2hu

My high school was on two city bus lines, colloquially known as the "east side 'tro" and the "west side 'tro". The guys would remove the roof escape hatch when there was snow on the roof to let all of the snow drift into the interior of the bus.

But I think the lack of people riding on the top of city buses is testament to the ride quality of a city bus versus a subway train.

[mrnyc]

bzzzzt!


https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3Tth...hsZjJ6dmFhbnhk

[Busy Bee]

Barf


Human Leg Found On Jerome Line Tracks


Might turn out to be the unfortunate ending to a surf on the roof.

[mrnyc]

led lit stations on the way —



NYC subway lights to shine brighter as MTA converts stations to LED fixtures by 2026

By EVAN SIMKO-BEDNARSKI | esimko-bednarski@nydailynews.com | New York Daily News PUBLISHED: February 20, 2024


For those with a dim view of subway safety, the MTA has a solution: LED lighting fixtures.

The 150,000 florescent light fixtures throughout the system will be upgraded to new, brighter LEDs by 2026, said NYC Transit Senior Vice President of Subways Demetrius Crichlow.

“This might seem like a small thing for some, however it is huge in terms of the message that we’re trying to convey,” Crichlow said Tuesday under of a bank of glowing LEDs at the C train station at Lafayette Ave. in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“Riders are going to see a difference. It will be brighter — your platforms, mezzanines and staircases will now be lighter and brighter,” he said.


more:
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/02/...tures-by-2026/


MTA officials hope new LED lighting fixtures will brighten the city’s subway stations. (Marc A. Hermann / MTA)

[Busy Bee]

Great news. I hope their implementation also takes care of some of the electrical conduit rats nest in stations. Hopefully they look like the lighting banks they used for the enhanced station inititiative under Byford.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

cruise ships targeted to green up with electric —



Plug it in! NYC lawmakers want diesel-powered cruise ships to connect to shore power or leave

By Ben Brachfeld
Posted on February 18, 2024


Fossil fuel-emitting cruise ships would have to walk the plank and abandon New York City ports unless they plug into clean shore power for energy, should a bill in the City Council become law.

Intro. 4 of 2024, sponsored by Democratic City Council Members Alexa Avilés of Brooklyn and Erik Bottcher of Manhattan, would condition access to the city’s two cruise ports — located in the sponsors’ districts in Red Hook and Hell’s Kitchen — exclusively to operators that both connect to the electric grid instead of burning fossil fuels for power when in berth and create plans to mitigate traffic associated with cruise departures.

Over 1.3 million passengers embarked on cruises out of the Manhattan and Brooklyn terminals last year, bringing in about $420 million in economic activity to the city, according to the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the quasi-public agency that oversees the city’s cruise terminals and ferry landings.


more:
https://www.amny.com/transit/nyc-law...e-ships-power/

It's actually kind of odd that they don't connect to electrical power in port already. I can't imagine it's cheap to keep those huge engines running all the time just to provide hotel services.

[streetscaper]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Great news. I hope their implementation also takes care of some of the electrical conduit rats nest in stations. Hopefully they look like the lighting banks they used for the enhanced station inititiative under Byford.

I wonder how much it would cost to renovate all NYC stations like the Enhanced Initiative ones that were renovated a few years ago. I seem to remember they were about $30 million each maybe (for run-of-the-mill, non-connecting, average-sized stations).

If the number I remember is correct, 500 stations (rounding up to account for for some bigger interchanges) x 30 = $15 billion

Let's call it $20-25 billion.

I think it's totally worth it to pause/delay the expansion/start of other infrastructure projects to invest money in Enhanced-Initiative makeovers and thus into making our stations places people don't want to avoid at all costs.

[Busy Bee]

^ I really don't know but with anything transit construction in NYC the per station reno costs seem extraordinary high. I know there's a lot of unseen and unknown repairs -often major structural - that's also involved with these major renovations but still. The ESI stations done under Byford look fantastic, I just wish that they were accomplishable for 6,7,8 million per station instead of more than twice that. Equally frustrating is NYCT having to farm out design for renovations that should be just intuitively handled in-house by a competent MTA architectural department. Why is it that a fancy architecture firm needs to be hired to make NYCT understand that sophisticated staggered oblong stone floor tiles that look like a million bucks and actually hide dirt, grime and gum is better than mauve vomit colored 12x12 tiles that they were using for station renovations as recently as 15 years ago?

[Busy Bee]

Another station lighting article (Gothamist):

MTA to install bright, white lights in every NYC subway station


By
Charles Lane and
Stephen Nessen
Published Feb 20, 2024



Brighter lights are coming to New York City’s subway stations as part of a change that transit officials believe will make the system safer.

The MTA on Tuesday announced plans to install LED bulbs in all 150,000 of the subway’s light fixtures by the end of 2026. The new bulbs emit a bright, white glow and are touted as being more energy efficient than the old, orange-tinted fluorescent lights they’ll replace.

The brighter bulbs — which have become the standard for the city’s streetlights over the last decade — are intended to brighten dark corners of subway stations, said Demetrius Crichlow, NYC Transit's vice president for subways, during a news conference.

“Customers feel safer as the areas are lighter,” said Crichlow. “It also lightens the areas for our cameras. Our hundreds of thousands of cameras that we have throughout the stations will be able to get better images when things happen and occur in our system.”

The MTA announced in 2021 that surveillance cameras were installed at all of the city’s 472 subway stations, and Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022 said security cameras would be in place on every subway car by the end of 2025.

The rollout of the new light bulbs comes as Mayor Eric Adams continues to surge NYPD officers into the subway system, where the number of felony assaults hit a 27-year high in 2023.

The new LED lights have already been installed at the Bergen Street and Carroll Street stations on the F and G lines, and the Lafayette Avenue station on the C line. Officials said the lights will next be added to the Clinton-Washington station on the C line.

Rest of story




I can only imagine how many inventoried fluorescent T bulbs they have in warehouses that they will essentially lose all their sunk investment cost on. I mean who is buying fluorescent bulbs anymore?

Also, I'm pretty sure NYCT doesn't have "hundreds of thousands" of cameras in stations LOL. Did he mean to say hundreds or thousands? IDK

[sopas ej]

Kinky!

Subway Surfers Take Unsafe Sex to the Next Level

BY JOSE MARTINEZ
FEB. 14, 2024, 4:22 P.M.

Here’s a death-defying twist on the no-pants subway ride.

Cheeky social media images that outraged MTA officials show three subway surfers on top of the No. 7 line — including one daredevil who bared his backside as the train was above the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens.

The post to X (formerly Twitter) by an account that bills itself as “Transit Workers against corruption” purports to show two snapshots of X-rated action of men who “appear to be having sex” last Friday at 1:20 p.m. and asks “What is the MTA doing about this?”


Two people appeared to be getting intimate atop a 7 train. Credit: Via Jonathan Eli/Instagram

[...]

Link: Subway Surfers Take Unsafe Sex to the Next Level

[Busy Bee]

Just when you thought you've seen it all.

Maybe its time to install literal hurdles to eliminate this. Train sized croquet hoops would do a good job of making this hooliganism impossible.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

It's actually kind of odd that they don't connect to electrical power in port already. I can't imagine it's cheap to keep those huge engines running all the time just to provide hotel services.

it must have been cheaper and easier to use their own fuel, but now they will be forced to plug in.