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Quote:

Originally Posted by k1052 (Post 5066544)

It will be 20+ years before a 7 train extension to Secaucus could come to fruition. The MTA should focus on Metro-North, LIRR, and improvements to the subways. Leave NJ to suffer the consequences of their own bad choices.

It wouldn't even take a decade to build.

Even the ARC project, which is much more ambitious, wouldn't take a decade.

Much of the 7 train extension would be on the surface, paralleling the Amtrak-NJ Transit line.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crawford (Post 5067065)

Engineering, multiple EIS, alternatives analysis, public hearings, funding agreements, etc...

If all that was in hand at this moment you'd be right, actual construction would only take a few years. But it isn't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by k1052 (Post 5067177)

Again, no, it doesn't take anywhere close to that long.

The ARC doesn't take 10 years.

Even the current 7 train extension is taking about 7-8 years from start to finish.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crawford (Post 5067383)

Again, no, it doesn't take anywhere close to that long.

The ARC doesn't take 10 years.

Even the current 7 train extension is taking about 7-8 years from start to finish.

NJT's own construction timetable was 9 years.

The project itself was first put forth around 1995 and wouldn't have be done until 2018 at the earliest.

Yes , but this plan is short sighted since NJT can't expand its network west and south. I wish Politicians would shut there mouths and think , projects that sound good aren't always good in Real life. :hell:

Quote:

Originally Posted by k1052 (Post 5067533)

The project itself was first put forth around 1995 and wouldn't have be done until 2018 at the earliest.

Early talk ≠ Aggressive planning and preparation

Quote:

Originally Posted by Busy Bee (Post 5067585)

Early talk ≠ Aggressive planning and preparation

We would be at the "early talk" stage of any possible 7 line extension.

7 line extension

According to nycsubway.org, this is not the first time an extension the NYC subway to NJ has been proposed.

http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/erj-1926-njplan.html

Here is an excerpt:

Quote:

Principal features of a comprehensive plan for passenger transportation between communities in the nine northern counties of New Jersey and the city of New York are outlined in a report submitted on Jan. 15 to the Legislature of the state by the North Jersey Transit Commission. A preliminary report presented about a year ago was abstracted in Electric Railway Journal for Feb. 7, 1925, page 222. The ultimate object of the program recommended is the creation of a new electric railway system comprising 82.6 miles of route, and the electrification of 399 route-miles of railroad now operated by steam. As the first step it is proposed to construct an interstate loop line 17.3 miles in length connecting with all of the north Jersey commuters' railroads and passing under the Hudson River into New York City by two tunnels, one uptown and one downtown. A new low-level subway through Manhattan would complete the loop. Construction costs of this preliminary project are estimated at $154,000,000, with $40,000,000 additional for equipment. The cost of power facilities is not included in this estimate.

In developing the plan three separate problems were considered. The first was to furnish rapid transit facilities for the area within 20 miles of New York City and to connect this area with Manhattan by facilities providing service comparable to that of present subways. The second problem was to provide eventually for a commuter or suburban transit service for the area within 40 miles of New York City. The third was to utilize the existing rapid transit facilities, the Hudson & Manhattan, the Interborough and the Brooklyn-Manhattan systems to serve North Jersey more effectively than at present.

As the result of the study of these problems the commission has recommended a program consisting of six principal parts. Listed in the order of their importance, they are as follows: (1) Construction of a new North Jersey rapid transit system. (2) Hudson & Manhattan Railroad extensions in New Jersey. (3) Interborough extensions of its Manhattan lines to New Jersey. (4) Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit system extensions from Manhattan to New Jersey. (5) Extension of north Jersey rapid transit system, listed as part one of this program, to serve a larger area. (6) Electrification of existing steam railroads.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dac150 (Post 5066572)

Am I the only one who isn't digging those new taxi proposals?

I think the consensus is that, with the exception of the Turkish entry which doesn't have a chance of winning, the proposals are very underwhelming. Taxi of the future? Yeah, sure. The only standing American company, Ford, is proposing a slightly modified panel van in the Transit Connect which just recently started sales in the US. The argument is that the NY metro taxi vehicle market and the entire US market isn't large enough to warrant a specialized and purpose built vehicle and the expense factory tooling to manufacture them. I say that's bunk. How and why did Checker do it then and last sooo many years? How to NA transit bus manufacturers who build 500-2000 buses a year do it? What should have occurred here is domestic innovation coming out of the woodwork, including industrial designers and then partnering with major manufacturers. Instead, one US company, who apparently barely made an effort is the likely winner. And the competition was called Taxi of the Future? How hard is it really to change up your body styling and incorporate A/V features like the Turkish bid? It appears they barely got off the couch for this one. A shocking lack of imagination. Pathetic.

10:03 AM
Report: TLC Considers Dress Code For Cabbies
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...de-for-cabbies

Quote:

While riders may not pay much attention to how their cabbie is dressed, the city reportedly wants taxi drivers to take better stock of their own appearance.

The New York Times says the Taxi and Limousine Commission is planning a new dress code for cabbies that would require them to "present a professional appearance.''

The current dress code bans tube shirts, tank tops and bathing trunks -- with fines for violators.

But the revised code doesn't mention specific types of clothing.

TLC chairman David Yassky tells the Times that while enforcement may prove difficult, the new code is more of an attempt to establish standards.

The code changes are expected to be approved next month.

great article in esquire

not really news but here's a great article in esquire on nyc's transportation commisioner:

Quote:

Janette Sadik-Khan: Urban Reengineer
The new city of the future
By Lisa Taddeo

Once there was a man so in love with the road that he held meetings in his limousine. Ribbons of asphalt snaking like moon rays into the horizon made him think of the future, of the forward movement of luxury and dominion. But even more than this man loved the road, he cherished what the road connoted. Speed. Efficiency. Action. Getting from a start point to an end point like a time traveler, with no thought at all to the determents along the way. Way, what way? There is only arrival.

This man, who was not the governor or the mayor or the president, built a city on biblical muscle, for here was a mortal who passed policy like a prophet. Red tape became dead tape in the fury of his creation. For forty long years — from the 1920s to the 1960s — he could not be stopped. Beet-faced officials and pleading villagers came to the base of his ziggurat, holding notices and petitions. Don't raze our homes, begged the villagers, and the officials stomped their wing-tipped feet in indignation. But not a single hair bristled on the prophet's neck. He knew best, but more relevantly he held the keys to the coffers, so he simply figured out a way around the masses. He built right through the wails of their protestation, he tore down their tenements and shot highways through their towns and bridges over their rivers and drove tunnels down deep below their stomping feet. He upended and reassembled their whole world, and the city vibrated forward with the movement of his passion.

But finally the man went too far. He proposed one highway too many. The world was changing, the wealthy landowners were starting to hold preservation dearer than innovation, and the man was no longer called a visionary but a destructionist. And so they tore their despot down from his four-wheeled throne in that worst way in which despots can be removed — quietly.

And for the next half century, the building stopped as the city licked its concrete wounds. The roads went cold and quiet. No asphalt was poured, no tunnels dug, no streets reimagined. Instead, the thrum of panicked building was replaced by a system of smug gridlock. Bureaucracy as far as the eye could see, red tape longer than purgatory. The city awoke every morning grappling out of quicksand, dead set, it seemed, on maintaining past inconveniences.

Until one day about five decades after Robert Moses was dethroned, another prophet was anointed. One who wore silk dresses.

She looked nicer than Moses, and she had a new way of doing things — using facts and numbers the way he had used will and force. She seemed gentler, too, but she imposed her way almost as much. And whether or not the new officials and the new villagers agreed with her, the intestines of New York City began to quickly unravel once again.

During three Saturdays this past August, Sadik-Khan closed down several main streets to traffic and sponsored dance classes, running events, festivals, and pop-up pools like these.

At a ribbon cutting in Union Square, New York City's Department of Transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, walks the politician walk, four steps and your arm is grabbed, five more and you are spun into a circle of pearls and L'Air du Temps. The commissioner has Anna Wintour hair, a tight face, and a tan, thin body that does not look fifty but mid-thirties, sexy. She wears wraps over sleeveless dresses and when they fall away during rousing handshakes there is a toned yoga shoulder exposed, brownish and unabashed.

She smiles a lot, half like a lady and half like a man. Today, before her speech in Union Square, she admires one of her trademark swaths of pedestrian play zone. It's a strip of epoxy gravel spotted with metal tables and chairs and slotted between the sidewalk and the street, and appropriately it feels like a hybrid of the two. Repurposed planters with pastel hibiscus protect the pedestrians from traffic, and on the flip side of the cars is part of Sadik-Khan's empire of new bike lanes. The commissioner loves bikes.

The new plaza has been up only a few days and already it's peopled with iPad readers and texters and nearby business employees having their before-work coffee.

"People just right away use new spaces, they don't question them," she says, smiling. "There is such a hunger for open spaces in New York. We want to sate it as much as possible."

A woman seated at one of the tables does not make eye contact but says to Sadik-Khan, "Who's going to maintain this area?"

Sadik-Khan turns, ever smiling, to address the willful dissenter. "The local businesses do, and the city of New York does."

"You don't know that," says the woman.

"Uh, yes I do. It's already happening in Madison Square, and in Herald Square, and in Times Square." These are the other places where she has created pedestrian plazas; specifically in the latter she has entirely closed down Broadway to vehicles between Forty-seventh and Forty-second Streets. No cars on a long and wild strip of Broadway!

"Local businesses are going to lose money if cars have nowhere left to park."

Sadik-Khan nearly laughs in the woman's face. "Quite the opposite! Revenues from businesses in Times Square have risen 71 percent! That's the biggest increase in history!"

Stat! The commissioner dispatches data streams as though from a machine gun, pelting dissenters with a language that is part English and part numerical: Injuries to motorists and passengers in the project areas are down 63 percent. Pedestrian injuries are down 35 percent. Eighty percent fewer pedestrians are walking in the roadway in Times Square.

The dissenter does not speak again. In a city of people who matter and people who don't, the woman at the table does not have the position or the information to pause the forward movement of the new commissioner, and so the dissenter disappears into a statistic. And Sadik-Khan moves toward the green ribbon.

...

Prior to her appointment in 2007, Sadik-Khan was the senior vice-president of Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of the world's largest engineering firms, and before that she was deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration under President Bill Clinton and director of the Office of Transportation under former New York mayor David Dinkins. Somewhere along that résumé she developed the unique superpower of being perpetually right, or at least convincing people of it at data gunpoint. Today she manages forty-five hundred city employees and oversees the safety of New York City's transportation infrastructure, including its highways and byways and bridges and ferries.

...

The boldest and most passionate change she's made is closing down Times Square to traffic and painting a plaza there. The plazas at Madison, Herald, and Union Squares have since followed, and now a whole long stretch of Broadway — two hundred thousand square feet, the size of three and a half football fields — is a pedestrian parkland, tables and flowers and sweating tourists resting their eighty-pound Toys 'R' Us bags while billboards glint commercially above them. In the most elementary terms, Sadik-Khan has plucked the city from under the chassis of the automobile and distributed it, Robin Hood — like, to runners and cyclists and mothers with strollers and large men with small dogs.

In her thrall to expedite Bloomberg's PlaNYC mission to turn New York into a butterfly by 2030, Sadik-Khan is shutting down half of Thirty-fourth Street to traffic, creating Manhattan's first river-to-river rapid bus corridor in 2012, plus striking out the beginnings of an eventual eighteen-hundred-mile master bike plan and sprinkling more car tolls to deter more cars. There will be one million more people in New York by 2030, and big changes have to happen to accommodate that influx. The world's most famous street, well, it just didn't conform to the grid.

"Broadway," she says, "was simply a powerful farmer's precolonial footpath, and the great thing it did was create these wonderful squares." But now she doesn't need it anymore. So she restored the grid by doing the math. There were seventy pedestrians for every ten cars in Times Square, but cars were louder and more catered to, so, "you know, the balance was in the wrong direction." She turned it into a village green, where tourists have room to rubberneck on the sidewalks while busy New Yorkers can zoom out of their way across the plaza. That's a pretty monstrous change, and it happened over a long weekend.

"I don't hate cars," says the commissioner, not pissed, but almost. "It's a matter of balance. Until a few years ago, our streets looked the same as they did fifty years ago. That's not good business, to not update something in fifty years! We're updating our streets to reflect the way people live now. And we're designing a city for people, not a city for vehicles." This is a swipe at the old guard, and a new prophecy. Robert Moses took a city of narrow old roads and tore it down and rebuilt a metropolis for gleaming hoods and raw motor, and Sadik-Khan is going to change it back.

Millions of New Yorkers love the new plazas and walking spaces and bike lanes. But millions of car drivers are pissed off. Their roads are being seized. And this is where Sadik-Khan's stats ride in on their unassailable and nonpolluting white horse. Say you drive your Honda Accord from a subway-starved swath of Queens to your job in midtown. And you've noticed the traffic is worse. Go find Sadik-Khan pedaling her Specialized Globe bike from her home in the West Village to her office downtown. Tell her you know, dammit, that traffic in midtown is worse. She will smile and say, Listen. If vehicles are going more slowly, then that's safer for everyone! She will say that vehicle-related injuries are down a tremendous 63 percent.

But she won't stop there. After stuffing you full with safety data she'll insist you try a pie of peripheral benefits. One of the reasons GPS units were plugged into all thirteen thousand yellow taxis in New York was so that the DOT could track the performance of the new system. More stats! They found that northbound taxi trips in west midtown were 17 percent faster in the fall of 2009 (after the Broadway shutdown) than in the fall of 2008. And the stats don't lie!

...

The legend of the quick-change artist began in DUMBO, that sexy industrial hangarland of Brooklyn under the Manhattan Bridge overpass. Over one nonholiday weekend, Sadik-Khan transformed a parking lot into a park. She painted a white border, and the space within it green for grass, and then she grabbed some leftover blocks and voilà — instant magic plaza.

"It was a quick way of showing you can transform a space in a matter of hours instead of a matter of years," says the commissioner. It was a powerful message. Thousands of idealists in corduroy pants converged and salivated for more.

In that little park in DUMBO, you can see how Sadik-Khan has managed to get so much done so fast. Yes, she wields data like a weapon to stun the public into submission for the greater, greener good. But she is also a master of other — some might say keen, others dark — political arts. She wants to move fast. Won't get stuck in red tape. Hates it like hell. So like Moses, she's figured out her own way around it.

Whereas most city officials and past DOT commissioners would have insisted on capital funds for something like, say, a bike lane, Sadik-Khan teases them out on the cheap. When you use capital funds for a project, you need approval from a few different places, and it takes months, sometimes years. So she takes a bunch of guys already painting double lines and gets them to dot a bike lane with the extra paint. Where she wants a plaza to swallow a car lane, she convinces abutting stores and the local business-improvement chapter to pay for the cleaning and to take the chairs and tables in every evening and set them out every morning. She tells them that shutting down the street will actually help their business, the way it did in Times Square. She shows them the numbers and where once they may have been against her, suddenly they are footing her bill. She doesn't even need to check in with Bloomberg. Like a high school a cappella group trying to get to Ibiza for spring break, Sadik-Khan finds money between seat cushions. She uses her guile and glamour to get what she needs, craftily but lawfully.

More downright rebelliously, she sometimes circumvents the community by experimenting with test swatches called pilots, like little harbingers of the future. With a pilot change, you don't necessarily need community permission, since the idea is that you may end up just taking it down. For example, with the DUMBO parklet, a past commissioner might have educated the residents first, tried to get them to buy into the plan. But it takes months to convince a neighborhood to agree to a change. Instead, she just painted. She did the same thing in the Meatpacking District, when she drummed up a plaza next to the Apple store, and again on Willoughby Street in Brooklyn. She's figured out a quiet way to get her way without getting the pesky public in her face.

Part of this is psychological warfare. Moses once said, "Once you sink that first stake, they'll never make you pull it up.'' Sadik-Khan has co-opted those words. Under her rule, bike lanes materialize overnight. Sidewalks become pop-up cafés and flowers bloom inside repurposed pots in quick and cowering deference. New Yorkers aren't used to this kind of change. So there they sit at their new café and they sip their Darjeeling, looking rather stunned or drugged and if not pleased, then at the very least seated.

Some love her for it. When overnight she shut down an entire turning lane on a busy avenue in Brooklyn so that pedestrians could cross the street in peace, the community thought she was a saint. But later, when she didn't so much as reply to a letter from Brooklyn Borough president Marty Markowitz asking her to reconsider the addition of a bike lane that could slow traffic considerably, a lot of Brooklyn wanted to lock up her paint cans. But she didn't have to answer to him. She had the power to do just as she pleased.

The bike lane was painted in.

"She has this remarkable speed," says Sam Schwartz, who was the traffic commissioner from 1982 to 1986 and is now a consultant and transit columnist. "A speed the likes of which is unmatched." He readily acknowledges that Sadik-Khan has done more in the past few years than anyone did in the past fifty.

"She's preparing us for a future that will have fewer cars," says Schwartz. This is something that is tough to swallow for many. But Sadik-Khan is using her method to make biking look cooler. If it's such a pain in the ass to drive in the city, then owning a car won't be a luxury. It will be a Members Only jacket. So roads that had four lanes now have three, and three lanes are thinning to two.

Her next passion project is to reconcile the geography of New York, to provide clear Disney signage and let people know, if they are in Chinatown, that Little Italy is a mere six minutes' walking distance from where they are standing. This will drive profits, she says, and make things easier for visitors. SoHo This Way, Gentle Tourist.

The project will be announced this month, but it won't surprise people who know her if she stakes a few signs before it's fully under way, the way she did in DUMBO. If objects are already up, then it only costs more to take them down. Like Robert Moses before her, she removes the debate by negating the question.

But for all that power, there is something soft over something hard. She smiles and says things like, "You know the way Broadway just kisses Seventh Avenue?" There is something of a fairy-tale beguilement here, a traffic dictator disguised in silk dresses. If Moses had owned a pink fingernail of her beguilement, he might have scored a bridge across the Atlantic.

At another event, an evening wine fundraiser to further revitalize Union Square, one of her pet squares, the commissioner has on a brown shawl and a silver dress and brown Mary Janes with a sustainable heel. She does not eat meat but she loves the bigeye-tuna roll at the Blue Water Grill stand. She drinks the exact perfect amount. People stop and thank her and get inside her space. She is a back-of-the-hand toucher and an emphatic and loving nodder. She gives you her whole neck when she laughs. Everything that is pussycat about her is mostly because she has excellent social skills.

...

Force exerted with a smile is the most relevant kind for the times in which we live. She mentions a secret little sushi spot she found by City Hall. One day, former deputy mayor Kevin Sheekey showed up and Sadik-Khan said to herself, No, get out! This is my place! Laughing, she shows her throat, but she means it. Don't go to her fucking place. And right now, in this moment in history, New York City is her place.

But to anyone with a clear enough scent of human ambition, this is about more than New York. At the intersection of visionary and engineer you'll find the personal aspiration that is, often, what drives change like this. New York is a testing zone; Sadik-Khan is using it to show the world — the president — what the world city of the future could look like. "If you can do it here," she says with a smile, "you can do it anywhere."

What she's doing in New York is trickling across the nation. Parklets are popping up in San Francisco. Portland, Oregon, the outdoor hipster capital of the country, was inspired by New York City, of all places, to have protected bike lanes — an idea Sadik-Khan lifted from Copenhagen, where the bike lanes are protected from traffic by a single-file line of parked cars.

Next on her list is another idea from Copenhagen, a public bike share. There would be stations in lower Manhattan and midtown and Brooklyn to start. You could pick up a bike after touring City Hall and drop it off on Forty-second before you see The Lion King. She's a little reticent to discuss it, but the fact that she's mentioning it at all means she knows she'll keep pushing until it comes out a yea on the other side. And then there is her dream to get all city workers a Zipcar membership, so no one will actually own his own city vehicle. This could halve the city's fleet of sixteen thousand passenger cars. True to form, she has already begotten a pilot of this plan. Since Labor Day, three hundred city workers have been using twenty-five cars, whereas they had previously been using fifty. It is the New York City of the future. It is, most likely, the Everycity of the future.

...Sadik-Khan has shown that it's still possible in 2010 for a government official to get things done as quickly and efficiently as Moses did, but with different and greener results.

This evening the Union Square restaurants have laid out tastes of their kitchens beside gourds and haystacks. Fried chicken wrapped in paper and roasted-corn soup with crab and ham in short plastic cups. A country band is playing on the stage beneath the white tent. Bloomberg is not here, so Sadik-Khan is the most fetching political celebrity in the square. Back by the tuna rolls, she is a conspiratorial leaner-in. Like a good officeholder, she knows how to make you feel like you're with her, likely not next week, but definitely tonight, and maybe a lucky window of tomorrow.

Yet the personality part of her accomplishes something more divine. A local barbecue place has an offering of ribs, huge joints of meat glossed in Chinese spare-rib red. To the meatless, they are grotesque, like car-related injuries. The commissioner reaffirms her passion for the tuna and leaves when desirable people leave, early enough to be missed, having stayed long enough to be remembered. It isn't until she is completely out the door that the people who were in her midst converge upon the ribs, with red wine and enterprising incisors. They are not entirely ashamed, but almost.

Back in her West Village bedroom, the commissioner dreams in futuristic pastoral, the Cross Bronx Expressway melting down into benches, joggers in ponytails loping across lime-green plazas, and bicycles, many thousands of them, as far as the eye can see.

for full article and pictures: http://www.esquire.com/features/brig...adik-khan-1210

As usual, Esquire has excellent writing.

It's exciting to think that American cities now are changing more than they have for fifty years. Instead of playing catch-up and responding to crisis after crisis, leaders are now being proactive and guiding the development of their cities. We're in a building era, which should be extremely exciting to those of us who disagree with the status quo and/or want to participate in the rebuilding effort.

Agreed. And nicely put.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYC4Life (Post 5058765)

WABC-TV New York

7 line extension an alternative to Hudson tunnel?
Updated at 07:39 AM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...cal&id=7793480

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/59/76932619.jpg

Copyright ©2010 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.

New York is in rare company I suppose here - I can't think of a single extensive heavy rail rapid transit system that doesn't at least service streetcar suburbs, even in the US. Chicago, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco - even Philadelphia - all have subways that go to the suburbs, but not New York. Interesting that all that iron stays in town.

Quote:

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar (Post 5072406)

Thats because we have the PATH , which will block this like it blocked this back in the 80s. This won't solve the bottleneck issue , it won't make it worse either. But its a short sighted idea , without much thought put into it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

New York is in rare company I suppose here - I can't think of a single extensive heavy rail rapid transit system that doesn't at least service streetcar suburbs, even in the US. Chicago, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco - even Philadelphia - all have subways that go to the suburbs, but not New York. Interesting that all that iron stays in town.

New York just had the advantage of having massive boundaries from the start, enclosing a good 305 sq. miles and five entire counties. When the subway system was built, the termini were way out in the farm fields. It had enough room to contain almost all of its own growth within city limits until Levittown in the 50s. Most of the subway termini are several miles from the city boundary in Queens, so clearly it was never a matter of "build up to the line, but never past it".

Chicago only has 227 sq mi, and it continuously annexed streetcar suburbs, so it grew incrementally along with transit. The fact that rapid transit service extends into a few suburbs is only because the city tried and failed to annex those suburbs (Evanston, Oak Park) or because the rapid transit is merely a remnant of the regional interurban network (Skokie, Forest Park).

Philly has some odd geography that puts the suburb of University City just across the river from Center City, so of course rapid transit would go there - it's too close to avoid.

Boston was a tiny city to begin with, and it was never able to annex its suburbs the way other cities did.

Quote:

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar (Post 5072406)

Probably because outside the downtown core of other cities it would be considered suburban but most of NYC is pre-war dense within it's city limits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 5072489)

It will reduce the ridership on PATH, though, since Midtown-bound commuters can take the 7 down 42nd instead of NJT to Hoboken, transfer to PATH to Herald Square.

That means PATH can run less trains, lay off some drivers and mechanics, and greatly reduce their operating expenses. Or they could reallocate their service to run more off-peak trains and capture more choice riders.

New York just had the advantage of having massive boundaries from the start, enclosing a good 305 sq. miles and five entire counties. When the subway system was built, the termini were way out in the farm fields. It had enough room to contain almost all of its own growth within city limits until Levittown in the 50s. Most of the subway termini are several miles from the city boundary in Queens, so clearly it was never a matter of "build up to the line, but never past it".

Chicago only has 227 sq mi, and it continuously annexed streetcar suburbs, so it grew incrementally along with transit. The fact that rapid transit service extends into a few suburbs is only because the city tried and failed to annex those suburbs (Evanston, Oak Park) or because the rapid transit is merely a remnant of the regional interurban network (Skokie, Forest Park).

Philly has some odd geography that puts the suburb of University City just across the river from Center City, so of course rapid transit would go there - it's too close to avoid.

Boston was a tiny city to begin with, and it was never able to annex its suburbs the way other cities did.

University City isn't a suburb. It's been part of the city since 1854.

When was the last time Chicago annexed land (apart from anything related to O'Hare)?

Quote:

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar (Post 5072880)

University City isn't a suburb. It's been part of the city since 1854.

When was the last time Chicago annexed land (apart from anything related to O'Hare)?

Oops... sorry about University City. For some reason I thought everything west of the Schuylkill was outside the city.

Chicago annexed O'Hare in 1956, and along with it came large parts of the Far Northwest Side. In the current O'Hare expansion, the city has bought land that is properly within the communities of Des Plaines and Bensenville, but those portions do not fall under city jurisdiction currently. Annexation of the new airport land itself is likely, although I'm not sure about peripheral areas (such as those required for road and rail relocation).

2:12 PM
New Jersey Owes Federal Government $271.1 Million For Scrapping Tunnel
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beat...apping-tunnel/

Quote:

New Jersey will have to write a pretty big check to the federal government to cover work already completed on the Trans-Hudson Tunnel before the project was scrapped last month.
The Federal Transit Administration says it sent an invoice to the state on November 24th for $271.1 million. New Jersey has 30 days to pay.

In October, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie killed the project, saying the state could not cover expected cost overruns.

The idea of extending the Number 7 train under the Hudson River has been raised as an alternative. That proposal is currently being studied.

This is no surprise

WABC-TV NEW YORK

LaGuardia Airport ranks last in quality survey
Updated at 09:33 AM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...ork&id=7816124

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/images/wa...75_600x338.jpg
Planes taxi on runways at LaGuardia Airport, Monday, Sept. 8, 2008 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Quote:

QUEENS (WABC) -- Zagat's annual survey of airport quality once again ranks LaGuardia dead last.

Of the 30 U.S. airports in the survey, on a scale of 0 to 30, LaGuardia scored just 6.18 points, down from 6.75 last year.

It is the fourth year in a row the Queens airport has scored the least points.

"The best thing probably to do is to knock it down and start over," Zagat CEO Tim Zagat told the New York Daily News. It's not easy to get around, and it's outdated."
JFK came in 26th place, with a score of 9.57. Newark, the best New York-area airport, placed 24th with 11.72 points.

The passenger favorite was Portland International Airport in Oregon, scoring 22.47 points.

To see the full results for airports, as well as airlines, CLICK HERE.

WABC-TV NEW YORK

Roosevelt Island aerial tramway reopens
Updated at 12:19 PM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...ork&id=7814086

Quote:

ROOSEVELT ISLAND (WABC) -- The Roosevelt Island tramway is back in business.

A ribbon-cutting in the morning capped off a multi-million-dollar overhaul that's expected to give riders a safer and quicker commute.

It took nearly nine months and $25 million, but the new state-of-the-art tramway is once again taking riders across the East River.

The estimated two million people who use the tram each year can expect several improvements, starting with a quicker commute.
The new tram is said to be capable of making the trip between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in just three minutes, which is about a minute less than before the renovation.

Engineers also designed the cabins to be more stable in high winds, and there's more window space to make for better views during crossings.

The new tram carries fewer people at a time, 109 passengers compared to 125 previously. However, two gondolas can leave at the same time from the same side, which should help ease demand during rush hour.

The new tramway is also said to be less susceptible to mechanical failure and breakdowns, problems that left dozens of riders hanging back in 2006 when a power outage stranded them for hours on above the East River and the East Side of Manhattan. Rescuers had to use an emergency gondola to get them down.

About 10,000 people live on Roosevelt Island. It's a 2-mile-long, 800-foot-wide strip of land in the river between Manhattan and Queens. It's also accessible by bridge and subway.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)

MTA New York City Transit Adds Service for the Holidays and Runs Nostalgia Specials

http://www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=152

http://www.mta.info/news/stories/images/R9.jpg

Quote:

If you're planning on taking advantage of all of the great things the City has to offer this holiday season, including the shopping, sightseeing and visits with friends and relatives, MTA New York City Transit will be offering more frequent weekend service along several subway lines. Riders will also have the opportunity to ride a vintage bus or "nostalgia train" to add to the holiday cheer.

NYC Transit provides subway service to meet demand and careful monitoring of past holiday travel trends shows that the number of subway trips rise during the peak holiday season. The numbered lines in Manhattan see significant ridership increases which are driven largely by trips made by holiday shoppers.

‘This is an extremely busy time of year for weekend travel and we are increasing our scheduled weekend service in areas of historically high ridership," said NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast. By adding extra trains we are able to increase capacity and also shorten the wait time for riders."

The service increases will be in place the weekends of December 4th and 5th, 11th and 12th, and 18th and 19th. During these periods, customers using the No 1 and No. 6 will see scheduled wait times drop from eight to six minutes. Combined, No. 2 and No. 3 trains will arrive every five minutes instead of the regularly scheduled six. No. 4 and No. 5 trains are also scheduled for an increase in service from every five minutes to every four.

Three of the lettered lines will also benefit from increases in scheduled service during these December weekends. E trains are scheduled to run every 71/2 minutes instead of every 10 minutes on Saturday evening and Sunday. E service is already scheduled to arrive at 7 1/2 minute intervals during the day on Saturdays. F train riders will also see trains scheduled to arrive every 7 1/2 minutes instead of every 10 minutes on Saturday and Sunday. Q service is scheduled to run every 7 1/2 minutes instead of every 10 minutes.

Just in time for the holidays, NYC Transit is also running buses and subway cars from its historic fleet. Bus customers will once again have the opportunity to ride buses from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and this year, the nostalgia fleet will operate along routes in all five boroughs. Vintage buses will operate along the B1 and B65 in Brooklyn; S61 in Staten Island; Q13 and Q46 in Queens; M34 and M42 in Manhattan and the Bx7 and Bx30 in the Bronx.

Subway customers may also take a ride back in time between Queens and Lower Manhattan along the M line through the holiday season. The "Nostalgia Train" is made up of subway cars in service from 1932 until 1977. Ceiling fans, padded seats and incandescent light bulbs were state-of-the-art when these cars were first placed in service.

Many New Yorkers bear fond memories of the trains, which served the lettered lines throughout the system. However, with the cars having been out of service for more than 30 years, many New Yorkers have never experienced the charm of wicker seats and ceiling fans. The holiday "Nostalgia Train" will operate on Sundays only, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., from November 28th to December 26th.

http://www.mta.info/news/stories/images/R9-2.jpg http://www.mta.info/news/stories/images/vintage.jpg

UPDATED 12:10 PM
MTA Unveils New Jay Street/MetroTech Station In Downtown Brooklyn
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beat...town-brooklyn/

Quote:

Straphangers in Brooklyn are getting a new connection at a busy subway station today.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority held an official ribbon cutting ceremony this morning to open the Jay Street-Lawrence Street transfer connector in Downtown Brooklyn – allowing riders to transfer from the A, C, and F lines at Jay Street, to the R line at Lawrence Street.

Riders previously had to leave the subway and walk a block above ground to transfer.

The $160 million project includes a complete renovation of the Jay Street/Borough Hall Station, in addition to the new passageway.

Riders say the extension will help them avoid the sometimes treacherous winter sidewalks.

"I'm really actually happy because it’s very unsafe. They don't really salt, because these are side streets from Jay Street to Lawrence Street, the businesses don't really salt too well, so it's very dangerous,” said one rider. “So actually this is much better than going outside."

The MTA has two other transfer projects in the works around the city. The Court House Square transfer in Long Island City will allow underground connections from the Number 7 train to the E, M, and G trains starting in February.

In November, another passage will connect riders on the uptown 6 train at Bleecker Street to the Broadway-Lafayette station a block away.

^ The R-train connection at Jay Street is really for the benefit of riders going towards the rest of Brooklyn. The R is really not much different than the F or A/C going towards Manhattan and Queens.

The 7 transfer to the E/G/M at Court Square technically exists, but it costs a Metrocard transfer (meaning you can't use the transfer for the bus afterwards; you'll need to pay another fare).

The new uptown 6-F transfer at Broadway-Lafayette/Bleeker is one of those "it's about fucking time" moves. It was always weird that you could only transfer to the downtown 6 from the F.

WABC-TV NEW YORK

LIRR suspends service as snow buries Long Island
Updated at 12:39 PM today

Quote:

LONG ISLAND (WABC) -- Travel problems are piling up with the snow on Long Island.

Long Island Rail Road service remains completely suspended Monday morning, and officials expect trains to be out well through the morning commute.

The LIRR plans to operate on a holiday schedule Monday if service ever does resume.

On the eastern end of Long Island, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said that workers would be plowing the roads through the night, but that snow was accumulating quickly.
"All we can do is try the best we can to make tomorrow's rush as tolerable as possible," Levy said. "But it's going to be extremely problematic."

Forecasters issued a blizzard warning for Long Island through Monday.

Some areas of Long Island recieved upwards of 20 inches.

More than 275 Nassau County employees were prepared to clear the streets over the next two days.

Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano urged people to stay off the roads.

"Strong winds bring an additional concern of downed power lines, which make a dangerous condition and slows down the clean up time," he said. "This is a storm that we are very concerned about."

Mangano said the storm also created a double whammy for the local economy because not only are they bringing in people to work overtime on Sunday, but a big post-Christmas shopping day is also lost.

WABC-TV NEW YORK

Mass transit officials to commuters: Stay at home!
Updated at 12:22 PM today

Quote:

NEW YORK (WABC) -- You might think mass transit is the way to go if you have to get around town, but it's a mess out there.

LIRR:
The Long Island Rail Road has suspended passenger service system wide in both directions due to the current blizzard conditions. NYC Transit is honoring LIRR tickets at Penn, Atlantic Terminal and Jamaica. The LIRR is continuing to operate equipment trains to clear snow from the tracks, and is planning to operate on a holiday schedule once service resumes. However, it is not expected that the LIRR will resume service during the morning commute.

METRO-NORTH
Metro North Train Service on the Hudson, Harlem and New Haven Line is temporarily suspended in both directions while officials inspect tracks and switches in the Bronx. The MTA is urging its customers to stay home if at all possible.

SUBWAY
Subway service was suspended on as many as 13 lines at one point. And due to the continued harsh weather and icing conditions, service on some subway lines remains suspended, and though employees are currently working to clear stalled trains, service along several of the lettered Lines in Brooklyn will probably not be restored at any point during the morning rush.

The Transit Authority is "urging people to stay home if at all possible."

Q Line service is suspended between Stillwell and DeKalb Avenue. F Line service is suspended between Stillwell and Jay Street-MetroTech, and there is no N service between Stillwell and 59th Street. Flushing Line service is suspended between Times Square and Main Street, Flushing. D service is suspended between 36th Street and Stillwell. There is no A train service to the Rockaways. L service is suspended between Eighth Avenue, in Manhattan and Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn.
In fact, the No. 7 train and the G train are currently the only lines operating with good service.

For the lastest on MTA service information, visit MTA.info

NEW JERSEY TRANSIT:
North Jersey Coast Line service was restored with the 9:05 a.m. departure from Long Branch and the 9:07 a.m. departure from New York.

Rail service is operating on an enhanced weekend schedule on all other lines except the Atlantic City Rail Line. Atlantic City Rail Line service will follow a regular weekday schedule. Service on NJ TRANSIT rail lines is subject to 15-30 minute delays due to weather conditions.

Hudson-Bergen Light Rail service is suspended systemwide due to weather-related operating conditions.

Bus service remains suspended systemwide until further notice. There is currently no estimate on when bus service may be restored.

Newark Light Rail is operating on a modified schedule with trains every 20-30 minutes.

River Line is suspended between Walter Rand Transportation Center and Waterfront Entertainment Center stations due to snow accumulation. Service is operating normally between Walter Rand Transportation Center and Trenton. Access Link paratransit service is suspended on Monday, December 27.

Access Link paratransit service is suspended on Monday, December 27.

Visit NJTransit.com for schedule details.

PATH:
Service is only operating from Grove Street to 33rd Street via Hoboken in both directions and Grove Street to World Trade Center in both directions.

Bus service is operating with delays due to weather conditions. Limited-Stop bus service has been suspended, instead all buses will make local stops.

LONG ISLAND BUS SERVICE
Service is running on or close to schedule, with scattered weather related delays.

STATEN ISLAND RAPID TRANSIT
A train with mechanical problems at the Eltingville Station, has caused a suspension in Staten Island Railway service along the entire line in both directions between the St George Station and the Tottenville Station.

9:16 AM
TLC Proposes More Rule Changes For Cab Drivers
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beat...r-cab-drivers/

Quote:

More rules changes are reportedly being proposed for city taxi cab drivers.
The New York Times says the Taxi and Limousine Commission plans to eliminate a requirement that drivers inform passengers about tolls at the start of a trip, essentially forcing riders to ask if certain crossings include a toll, and if an alternative route is available.

Another proposed rule calls for cabbies to inspect their trunks after a trip to the airport, and take any lost property to a nearby police precinct.

Last month, the TLC proposed updating its rules on dress code by requiring cabbies to present a “professional appearance,” eliminating dated references to specific types of clothing.

The proposals are expected to be taken up by the commission on January 20th.

9:10 AM
Track Work Causes Service Changes On G, F Lines
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beat...on-g--f-lines/

Quote:

Straphangers in Brooklyn will soon have to deal with some changes to the F and G lines.
Beginning Monday morning, some stations will be closed for major renovations.

Court Square-bound G trains and Jamaica-bound F trains will skip the Fort Hamilton Parkway and 15th Street - Prospect Park stations.

The Jamaica-bound F trains will also skip the Smith-9th Street station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will be replacing tracks and switches at both elevated stations.

Go to mta.info for alternate routes and updates.

NYC Tries 'Rapid' Buses in Bid to Cut Transit Costs

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01...-co-71909.html

Quote:

The city's much-maligned bus system is getting a face-lift.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) surprised commuters on Manhattan's East Side last fall by launching shiny stretch coaches to replace old grimy buses on the route that links the island's southern tip to East Harlem. The new buses cruise 90 percent of the route in a new "bus only" lane marked by signs warning motorists that they face $115 fines for parking or driving in the path.

The M15 Select Bus Service (SBS) is New York City's version of "bus rapid transit," a Latin American innovation that's being copied around the world. The Manhattan route runs along 1st and 2nd avenues and was first seen as a stopgap measure until a new subway line could be completed, but the city's Department of Transportation says the service is likely here to stay.

As with bus rapid transit in Curitiba, Brazil, and Bogota, Colombia, New York's Select Bus requires passengers to pay prior to boarding to speed up the trip. With ticket in hand, riders can board through any door, instead of all lining up single file at the front to pay their fare one by one.

The buses themselves resemble light-rail trains, and they move in their own lanes. Federal grants are helping to pay for the improvements, even after MTA budget woes forced the agency to cut dozens of regular bus routes early last year.

Despite fits and starts, New Yorkers seem to be quickly taking to the new concept. Though no studies have been undertaken yet to see how things have improved on the M15 route, anecdotally, riders estimate the trip to be at least 50 percent faster than before.

"It's a lot faster," said Daniel Hernandez, a Brooklyn resident who rides the bus to work daily in Midtown Manhattan. "The best part is you can board through the back door. That speeds things up a lot."

..............

I rode this today from 14th street to 125th. I didn't time myself but it was much faster. Still not as fast as a subway train but it was a nice alternative since there aren't any trains that far east until the 2nd ave subway is completed some time around the apocalypse.

I've ridden the M15 Select, too. Overall, it's a pretty fast, cool experience compared to the typical bus route. The MTA really needs to do something about getting crosstown, like on the M23 and 34.

01/13/2011 10:42 PM
Subway Rider's "Rat" Awakening Caught On Tape
By: NY1 News

Quote:

Every subway riders' worst nightmare recently became a reality for one rider.

A fellow rider caught a rat on video crawling freely through a subway car on the Number 4 train, and posted the video on YouTube.

The rat then momentarily crawls up a sleeping man's body before being shooed away.

When reached for comment, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it routinely cleans station platforms and track areas, but also asks customers to dispose of their trash properly.

• Video Link

WABC-TV NEW YORK

City council blizzard hearing questions MTA
Updated at 06:04 AM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...ork&id=7897343

Quote:

NEW YORK (WABC) -- MTA officials will feel the heat Friday as the City Council opens another hearing into the transit mess during the holiday blizzard.

The City Council held a meeting earlier this week in which the Bloomberg administration came under fire. This time, it's the MTA's turn. Union leaders will be at the meeting to tell holiday blizzard horror stories. Many blame the MTA for not stepping up during the storm.

"It's too much snow, and you gotta wait for the bus," one New Yorker said. "It's mad bad out here, and they ain't clean the snow."

And transit riders get to revisit those experiences today, when the City Council transportation committee looks into MTA foul-ups and meltdowns during the storm.
The blizzard clobbered drivers and riders on every branch of mass transit. Buses were stranded, trapping passengers for hours, and subways seemed even worse.

Eyewitness News covered the A train episode in which people spent an entire night trapped on a freezing train in sight of a station.

"Everybody's stuck out here, even the buses," one resident said. "There's no bus to Far Rockaway, Rockaway Park. Nothing's working."

City Council members want to know why it took so long for the MTA to activate its emergency plan and rescue passengers.

For the commuter lines, Metro-North barely struggled through the storm. But the Long Island Rail Road suffered the worst service collapse in its history.

Trains stopped running, and it took days to restore real service. The MTA's own inspector general is reviewing how the agency prepared and responded to the storm. But the City Council wants these committee hearings to give it an outsider perspective. And commuters could give them one.

The hearing is set to start at 10 a.m.

That's a nutty video of a rat inside a train! But I've been riding the subways day and night since 1999 and I have NEVER seen a rat inside a car. I've seen plenty of rats on the tracks and on the ends of the platform going for the garbage piled up or under the doors where they store the trash. Never in a train.

I think the MTA is doing an abysmal job in almost every respect (they abandoned the south bound kiosk at my station a few months ago and several people have been robbed). But I see many fewer rats than I used to see.

I have the suspicion someone put that rat on the train for the purpose of filming it. Maybe not, but the rat did not seem like it wanted to be there nor did it seem deranged. It just wanted out.

The only other explanation is that train was sitting at terminus and was not properly cleaned, and drove off with a rat stuck inside eating trash carelessly thrown away in the car by a human.

If you don't throw f'ing chicken bones on the floor, there is no reason a rat will enter (most NY'ers should understand my point).

they said on the news that the rat video may be a hoax. who knows?

A Light Rail Extension for Staten Island?

January 17th, 2011

By Yonah Freemark

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/w...s/New-Logo.jpg

Read More: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2...staten-island/

Quote:

When it opened in 1931, the Bayonne Bridge was the longest steel arch span in the world. Today it remains an impressive work of infrastructure, its magnificent girders visible from throughout the New York metropolitan region. The Port Authority-controlled link, which allows commuters to get to and from Staten Island and New Jersey, is an important connection in the regional road network. With cargo ships getting bigger and bigger, however, the bridge has become an impediment: Its roadway hangs too low to allow for the easy passage of new Panamax-class ships readied for an expanded Panama Canal now under construction. Without clearing the way through the Kill Van Kull — the waterway over which the bridge runs — the Port of Newark will have trouble accommodating more commerce. For the region’s continued economic strength, that could be a major problem.

Thus the Port Authority has begun studying options for its replacement; right on cue, transit advocates have stepped in, arguing that the new structure could allow for better transit between the Island and the mainland. The major possibilities include lanes for bus rapid transit or an expansion of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Line, which will be extending a few blocks south to 8th Street in Bayonne on January 31st. Trains could cross the new bridge, then potentially run south towards the West Shore Expressway, in whose median a 14-mile light rail line has previously been proposed. This would ensure rail transit operations on both sides of the island (the eastern half is already served by the Staten Island Railway). Running the line along the North Shore, where a 5-mile abandoned rail right-of-way is ready to be reused, is also a possibility.

The Hudson-Bergen light rail line currently runs north to Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen, via the “Gold Coast” business centers in Jersey City and Hoboken where thousands of jobs have been created over the past decade. Plans to extend the route northwest to the Meadowlands, southwest to the Hackensack River, and north to Tenafly are also afoot. The light rail line is destined to serve an increasingly important role as a north-south connector on the west side of the Hudson River. But just how useful would an expansion into Staten Island be?

.....

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/w...d-Main-Map.jpg

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/w...All-Island.jpg

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/w...-Locations.jpg

Sigh , Yonah has be getting slopping with his maps....he keeps leaving out key plans in his maps. The North shore line will extend into Elizabeth and the SIR will extend over to Perth Amboy. For the most part hes good with his maps , but leaving stuff out like this annoys me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey (Post 5136971)

What plan calls for this to happen? To me this seems like it would be extremely expensive (particularly the Perth Amboy SIR extension) for something that would be a low priority. Why would somebody ride the SIR from Perth Amboy when they could just hop on a NJT train? I suppose if they had a destination in Staten Island it would make sense, but that's gotta be a pretty small market...

Hey, I was just wondering if anyone could tell me the logic behind MTA eliminating the FunPasses? I was in town last weekend and was dismayed to discover that they were no longer available (in addition to learning that the fares had now gone up to $2.25). After doing the math, the closest replacement to the FunPass came out to equal five trips for the price of four - I suppose MTA figures the average tourist isn't riding the subway much more than that in a day. Of course, it does leave NYC without a dedicated one-day pass for tourists and the like, simply a discount regular MetroCard. What was their reasoning?

Quote:

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar (Post 5137150)

Actually, fares have been $2.25 for a while - the fare hikes only changed the bonus you got back from each purchase (from 10% down to 7%).

My guess of the reason behind demise of the FunPass: for most cities, the one day unlimited card partially serves as a tool to attract tourists who may otherwise be apprehensive about visiting the city because of the lack of decent transportation. The transit networks in those cities might not be the best, but at least the tourists don't need to spend a lot for their transportation needs, as they would for rental cars. In addition, the transit networks would most likely stop at the key tourist destinations.

The MTA probably believed that getting rid of the FunPass wasn't going to be a make-or-break issue for tourists, who won't need a financial transportation incentive as a reason to visit NYC. Tourists will always come to NYC no matter what. So the MTA figured that they might as well get as many people to use the regular-fare Metrocards instead, since they receive the greatest per-fare revenue from those. They also got rid of the 14-day Metrocard as well, probably because nobody actually bought those.

I can say for certain that they chased me away from buying monthly Metrocards, which have gone up from $89 to $104.

Quote:

Originally Posted by orulz (Post 5137012)

I saw it in the Borough's office or building.... Theres a huge job hub on the Jersey Hub , hench why there extending the NS into Elizabeth. Woodbridge and Edison are huge job hubs in NJ , it would actually go to Bound Brook and intersect 2 NJT lines.

UPDATED 11:40 AM
Alternate-Side Parking Rules Back In Effect
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...back-in-effect

Quote:

For the first time since January 20th, alternate-side parking regulations are back in effect.

Tickets are being handed out today to violators.

If you waited to dig out your car, Mother Nature helped out a bit over the weekend, as milder temperatures melted some of the snow and ice.

But as many drivers know, it's not just the digging out that poses a problem, it's finding a place to put the car once you get it out.

"It's a big problem because the snow is still here and you can't go anywhere," said one driver. "It's difficult because we have to get into work and we lose time. I got stuck behind a sanitation truck and it's murder. At least 25 minutes of going around, trying to find a spot."

"It should be suspended for awhile because there's no space to find parking," said another.

"It's ridiculous around here. To get a spot, it takes me an hour," said a third.

There's another challenge for drivers who make it out of their spots – potholes. The Department of Transportation says 40 crews are working to fill 2,000 potholes a day.

9:44 AM
Traffic Fatalities Remain Low In 2010
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...in-low-in-2010

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8168/97090983.jpg

Quote:

Transportation officials are touting another low total of traffic fatalities in the city.

According to the Department of Transportation, there were 269 traffic fatalities recorded in the city last year. While it’s a slight increase from 2009, it still makes 2010 the second-safest year on record to be driving, walking or biking in New York.

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is crediting improvements to street design – including islands on wider avenues.

Bike-related crash deaths rose last year to 18 from 12 the year before.

The city is making changes to further reduce traffic deaths including installing countdown clocks at intersections and reducing the speed limit in some areas.

9:50 AM
Details Set To Be Released For New Proposal To Build Trans-Hudson Rail Line
By: NY1 News

Quote:

More details are expected to be released today about a new proposal to build a rail tunnel from New Jersey to Manhattan.

This time, Amtrak is reportedly along for the ride.

The plan is being proposed by New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. It follows New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's decision to scrap plans for a similar trans-Hudson rail tunnel because he said cost overruns had made it too expensive.

It's not yet clear how this new tunnel would be paid for, but the Obama administration has made expanding high-speed rail service a priority.

New York City is also exploring the feasibility of extending the Number 7 train into New Jersey.

WABC-TV NEW YORK

Metro-North New Haven line reduces schedule
Updated at 12:19 PM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...fic&id=7936817

Quote:

NEW YORK -- Metro-North railroad is now using a reduced winter schedule on its New Haven line due to weather-related equipment shortages.

The line has been hit hard by the repeated snowstorms in the New York metropolitan area.

The railroad said previously that snow and extreme cold had left about 40 percent of its New Haven line cars out of service.

Almost 70 percent of its electric fleet is over 40 years old.
The reduced schedule is in effect through March 4. It means that weekday morning and evening peak service will be reduced about 10 percent.

Metro-North says it has been working round-the-clock to repair train cars.

Schedules are available at ticket offices and on the Metro-North web site.

Online: MTA.info

Quote:

Originally Posted by NYC4Life (Post 5154888)

Metro-North New Haven line reduces schedule
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...fic&id=7936817

Makes one wonder if NJT's operating scheme is more correct than MTA's? Meaning eliminating most EMU trains in favor of trailer railcars powered by diesel or electric locomotives. It seems NJT has had an easier time keeping their trains operating, although not necessarily on time, but actually running on the tracks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by electricron (Post 5154951)

No , not really ...they break down just as much...not in the winter. Our problem is the summer heat , the MTA handles that better....

Here's a recently released rendering of the interior of the new 7 extension station:

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/files/a-jose-no7_0.png

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/articl...om-improvement

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