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Authorities take down NYC commuter train heroin ring

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.co...0&h=480&crop=1

Quote:

They put the “H” in Hudson Line.

Authorities busted a major heroin ring involving dealers who used Metro North trains packed with commuters to transport drugs upstate from New York City.

Officials said unsuspecting train riders on their way home from work were sitting next to dealers and couriers who were carrying bundles of heroin on trains from Harlem to Beacon before meeting with other dealers across the Hudson River in Newburgh.

“Members of the ring were also transporting drugs on Greyhound buses from the Port Authority to Pittsburgh for distribution,” state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.

According to an indictment, 13 people were charged for their alleged roles in a heroin distribution network, and were hit with a total of 179 counts.
The investigation, dubbed “Operation Iron Horse,” was the third major drug bust in as many weeks.

The 13 defendants were charged with conspiring to distribute heroin from New York City to Orange, Sullivan and Nassau counties and Pittsburgh.

“We have these men on public transportation sitting next to families, to tourists, carrying huge quantities of deadly drugs and dirty money. They clearly thought no one was the wiser, but our investigators were watching and listening.”

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http://nypost.com/2015/03/26/authori...n-heroin-ring/

Citi Bike Gets a Software Update Ahead of Planned Expansion

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/i...0330163324.jpg

Quote:

Citi Bike got a software upgrade last weekend, the latest step in an overhaul promised by the new operator of New York City’s bicycle-sharing system.

The back-end software’s replacement prompted the company that runs Citi Bike to take the system offline from Friday night into Saturday afternoon.

The outage was shorter than expected, but the Citi Bike operator’s chief executive nonetheless apologized on Monday for the short notice given to riders. He said the update was a prelude to a larger-scale improvement for the system.

“We are creating a Citi Bike for New Yorkers that is up to the demands of New York,” said Jay Walder, a former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who now runs Motivate, the company formerly known as Alta Bicycle Share Inc. “There’s no excuses anymore.”

Mr. Walder said the software would allow a new mobile-phone app the company unveiled over the weekend to offer more accurate, real-time information to riders looking for bikes or docks to park them. He said the information would be updated every 10 seconds.

Mr. Walder, who was speaking at a news conference at Motivate’s warehouse in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, offered what amounted to a status update on fixes to Citi Bike’s technology, hardware and operational issues.

Ever since its launch in May 2013, Citi Bike had been bedeviled by software prone to malfunction; at one point, a bankrupt supplier; and a cash crunch. Riders have complained about difficulty finding bicycles or even places to park them at about 330 docking stations in Manhattan, generally below Central Park, and parts of Brooklyn.

As Motivate’s predecessor company struggled, city transportation officials prodded it to secure new financing and a plan to expand in New York City. The result was a takeover of the company by outside investors who installed Mr. Walder as CEO as a part of plan announced last year to double Citi Bike’s footprint to 12,000 bikes by 2017.

Mr. Walder said the company had overhauled 4,253 Citi Bikes as of Monday morning and would fix its entire 6,000-bicycle fleet by summer.

The bike-share’s individual docking stations would also get new software and hardware in the next few months. And as Citi Bike expands, about 90 new stations are expected to come this year to neighborhoods including Long Island City in Queens and Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.

Mr. Walder said Citi Bike’s expansion would begin in the latter half of this year, but he said he wasn’t able to offer a more precise date. He also declined to say where Motivate would get bikes needed for Citi Bike’s expansion. Bike-shares around the country have been hobbled in part by suppliers’ inability to provide bikes for the systems.

“We are in the process of developing a new bicycle, and we will have more to say on that in a little while,” Mr. Walder said, adding: “We need to be a company that can supply bicycles as a bicycle company.”

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http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2015...n/?mod=WSJBlog

A New PATH Station West of Journal SQ?

http://hudsonreporter.com/view/full_...e=latest_story

^That could lead to some very interesting developments, given the activity happening at Journal Square right now.

yesterday i saw this new east side access vent i guess on roosevelt island in front of the subway entrance

http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1ebzqzrr.jpg

http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/...psflwltjqs.jpg

this ny daily news editorial spells it out well enough and its so true, but we all know this. the questions are what to do about it:

Aaron M. Renn: Billions of infrastructure bucks burned in NY

Another boondoggle in cash suck city

Ten billion dollars — for a bus station. And if other projects are any guide, this price tag for a Port Authority Bus Terminal replacement is only going up from there.

That’s after we’ve committed: $4.2 billion at the PATH World Trade Center station; $1.4 billion for the Fulton St. subway station; $11 billion for the East Side Access project; $4.5 billion for just two miles of the Second Ave. Subway, and $2.3 billion for a single station extension of the 7-train.

Having grown numb to multi-billion price tags for building almost anything, New Yorkers might not know just how messed up all this is. In any other American city, even just one of these fiascoes might well have sunk the entire town.

For example, former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley attempted to construct an underground “superstation” in the middle of downtown for an express train he hoped to build to O’Hare Airport. Mothballed when the shell was complete after blowing the budget, this was one of his biggest boondoggles. But it still only cost his city $200 million — lemonade-stand money by New York standards.

New York even looks bad in a worst-case comparison with London’s $22 billion Crossrail project. For that money, London is getting a 73-mile train line, including 26 miles of new tunnels, and service at 40 stations, including 10 brand new ones.

Why do New York’s projects cost so much? Disturbingly, no one actually knows.

We know some of the possible culprits. A combination of factors such as Buy American rules, union featherbedding, unique rail standards, excessive environmental review requirements for transit and our litigious culture all play a role. Fragmented governance and a lack of accountability may be keys as well.

None of this has stopped our leaders from promising more and more big transportation projects, often based on shoddy research. Facing a $15-billion, five-year hole in the MTA capital plan, Gov. Cuomo out of the blue announced a dubious LaGuardia airtrain nobody was asking for.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie flushing $600 million down the drain before he unilaterally pulled the plug on badly needed new rail tunnels under the Hudson. Not only was that project overpriced, it wouldn’t have connected to existing rail lines but instead dumped passengers at a deep new station 180 feet under 34th St.

Also unable to work and play well with others, the LIRR is building its own deep station underneath Grand Central for its East Side Access project, this one 140 feet (about 12 stories) below ground.

How does New York get away with this level of foolishness?

Money covers a multitude of sins. Gotham’s powerhouse economy spins off oceans of cash. This makes it all too easy for politicians to pretend to fix immediate problems by throwing more money at them.

New York is also so desirable that people are willing to put up with a lot to live and do business here. That includes overcrowded trains and subpar airports, not just high rents and taxes.

But not even this region can make bad decisions forever without reaping the consequences. New Jersey commuters face two years of pain to repair Hurricane Sandy damage to the lone pair of Hudson rail tunnels. The MTA has a huge hole in its capital plan and troubling levels of debt. Declining subway service levels and over-packed trains are a reality today.

Make no mistake, New York needs to spend money on its transit system — especially to keep basic service at a high level. But wasting billions upon billions of dollars on a half-dozen high-profile projects gets us no closer to that crucial goal.

Mayor de Blasio just went to Boston to join other mayors in calling for more federal transportation spending. But how can New York demand Congress do its job if the city and region won’t take care of its own by doing its part to stop this insanity?

Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a contributing editor at its quarterly magazine City Journal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrnyc (Post 6978873)

But how can New York demand Congress do its job if the city and region won’t take care of its own by doing its part to stop this insanity?

This right here sums it up nicely. I agree that the US needs to spend far more on transportation, but if NYC doesn't have the political will to reign in the NIMBYs, unions and other special interests then how can they expect Congress to trust them with Billions of dollars in federal money? Better to spend that money somewhere that CAN actually get projects built on time and on budget. Every time a project like the 7 line extension gets delayed with no good explanation and every time a project like ESA gets a billion dollar price increase with no good explanation it makes all the Tea Party people in Washington look more and more right and makes it less and less likely that Congress will approve more money for projects like these. As the old quote goes, "success breeds success" and if NYC can actually get a project done successfully on time and on budget (or at least close) then it will greatly increase their chances of getting more money in the future.

^ aaaaand right on time, on top of that stuff there is this:

Whistleblower alleges pay scam at Second Avenue Subway project

A Second Avenue Subway subcontractor filled its job site with cheap apprentices, then billed at a much steeper rate, a former worker charges.

“There’s a common saying down there — the MTA is the ATM. You get money if you’re standing,” disgusted whistleblower Alexander Maack told The Post about contractors’ attitudes toward big projects. “Just show up for the day and you make the boss a profit.”

The MTA Inspector General’s Office confirmed that it is investigating the allegation.

more:
http://nypost.com/2015/04/06/whistle...avenue-subway/

So, what are the odds that this will stall the SAS project even longer?

I really don't like calling for people to make less money, but at the same time it seems pretty hard to justify a mechanic making over $90/hr. Since we are talking about Federal funding I'm not sure most people in the country are going to have a good feeling about making $25/hr and having their tax money go to someone making so much more than them. I know NYC is expensive and all, but it's not THAT much more expensive. The cost of union labor in NYC is the single largest reason why projects there cost so much more than in other places. NYC politicians need to take on these unions before they start asking for more money.

EDIT: Also, if people are proven to have been defrauding the city like is suggested in that article then those people need to go to jail. It's so stupid in our country how people get arrested all the time for stealing a few bucks, but nobody ever gets prosecuted when millions are stolen.

A Detailed Track Map of the NYC Subway System...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...s-842miles.pdf

L Train's 5-Weekend Shutdown Begins Next Week

Quote:

WILLIAMSBURG — The L train will still be running from Williamsburg to Manhattan this weekend, with a five-weekend shutdown starting next week on April 18.

The MTA will shut down the train for five weekends, from April 18 to May 18, between Bedford Avenue and Eighth Avenue, as the agency plans to do construction and maintenance work on the line.

A shuttle bus will run between the Lorimer Street stop, with a stop at the Bedford Avenue stop, and the Marcy JMZ stop for service to Manhattan.

The L train is also not running Tuesdays through Fridays between 12:01 am. and 5 a.m.

Despite a petition from local business owners to delay the weekend shutdown until August, the MTA has said the shutdown cannot be rescheduled due to work on the J, Z and G lines planned for later this year.

The MTA previously told various media outlets that the L train would stop running on weekends on April 11.

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http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/2015...gins-next-week

Would it be too much to ask for some text giving your opinion of the video?

Quote:

Originally Posted by electricron (Post 6990044)

Would it be too much to ask for some text giving your opinion of the video?

What do you mean my opinion? I thought it was a nice video....:D

Harlem Torn About Expanding Bus-Only Lanes on 125th Street

http://assets.dnainfo.com/generated/...JPG/larger.jpg

Quote:

Harlem is torn between the Department of Transportation’s plan to expand bus-only lanes on 125th Street west to Morningside Avenue.

Bus-only lanes on 125th Street currently run between Lenox and Second avenues. The DOT plans to expand them westward later this summer, a department spokesman said.

West Harlem City Councilman Mark Levine supported the expansion, citing faster bus times as a community benefit.

“If you ride the bus you kind of plod along in traffic if you are moving around the western half of the street — actually buses have been timed at 3.5 miles per hour which is slower than walking,” he said.

“When you get to Lenox Avenue things pick up because you have a bus-only lane. We want the same benefit a little bit farther out in our neck of the woods.”

[...]

On Thursday, West Harlem’s community board was ready to support the expansion plan but only as long as its Central Harlem counterparts did. The board's transportation committee had drafted a letter of support.

“Essentially what the letter says is that we support it provided Board 10 supports is because it would be ridiculous to have one lane dedicated bus and then no lanes of dedicated bus until you got to Lexington Avenue when the dedicate bus lanes begin again,” said Ted Kovaleff of Community Board 9.

However, the committee withdrew the letter to allow the DOT to look into some of the concerns raised by Community Board 10. The concerns, some of which Community Board 9 shares, include parking, safety, and enforcement of double-parked vehicles, said CB9 Chair Georgette Morgan-Thomas.

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http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/2015...n-125th-street

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey (Post 6983389)

A Detailed Track Map of the NYC Subway System...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...s-842miles.pdf

That takes me back...I used to pore over the track maps on NYC Subway Resources back in the day. A lot of services lit up on that map weren't in use when my nerdom was its peak...Chrystie Street Connector, Broadway express tracks, Queensbridge connector...

Newer Subway announcements to reduce dwell times at stations...I think they sound horrible...

• Video Link

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