Today’s Headlines

  • Michael Daly: Move Over Jersey; New York Is the New Cesspool of Political Corruption
  • MTA Offers $20K Payoffs to Trim Payroll (News)
  • Do Proposed NJ Transit Cuts Adhere to Civil Rights Laws? TSTC Investigates (MTR)
  • Upper East Side Intersections Lead City in Bus Crashes (Post)
  • Straphangers Finds Subway Service Announcements Improved, But Still Lacking (News, Post)
  • More Fun With GPS Data: East Village Tops Inwood in Yellow Cab Hails 554,000 to 860 (NYT)
  • David Yassky Takes Reins at TLC (City Room); Steve Cuozzo Will Be Watching
  • DOE Nets 1,000 New Teacher Placards Despite Dramatic Drop in Overall Issues (AMNY) 
  • Times Profile Puts Parking Tickets at the Center of Bronx Merchants’ Struggle
  • Gridlock Sam on Avoiding Traffic Citations: Know the Law, and Follow It (News)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Cuozzo makes a good point, for once: that the unpredictability and petty rule breaking endemic to the NYC taxi fleet makes buses and subways more attractive in comparison.

  • Streetsman

    That NYTimes Taxi GPS graphic reads as a map of times and places where public transportation, particularly surface transportation, is sorely lacking. If there were frequent, highly visible buses running directly between nightlife destinations and transit hubs we wouldn’t need so many taxis clogging the streets. The traffic is horrendous around places like Penn Station/Port Authority/Grand Central during the day, or Meatpacking/East Vill/LES at night. The MTA and DOT should be using these maps to plan better surface transit service that connects popular destinations quickly and conveniently without transfers, instead of letting yellow cabs pick up the slack.

  • Boris

    “Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, who represents Washington Heights, said when informed of those numbers. “You caught me by surprise. That’s very, very low. I thought it was higher than that.””

    Just about all of our politicians, including those that represent districts where many people can hardly afford the bus fare, believe that we all drive or take a cab everywhere, and will continue to do so given alternatives.

  • Streetsman – That’s exactly what the Taxi lobby would fight tooth and nail against, just like Pedicabs.

  • I am constantly riding and walking through the intersection of 57th and 3rd. There are NYPD TEAs stationed there at least 12 hours a day but they they do very little to manage the conflicts. The main thing they do is extend the “green” for a given flow of motor vehicle traffic when there is room on the other sideof the intersection to move it to. However, they will do this even when pedestrian cross-traffic has already entered the roadway on the assumption that it is their turn to cross.

    The TEAs have to be told that they are managing not just vehicular traffic, but also pedestrian traffic. That means signaling to the pedestrians and making eye contact with them, and also thinking about the pede4strian traffic flow. Few if any of the TEAs do these things.

  • The purpose of making the list, she said, “is to encourage pedestrians to use extra caution when crossing at these corners because they have been the scene of accidents in the past.”

    Way to go, DOT spokeswoman Deirdre Parker, blaming the victim. How about instead, “The purpose of making the list is to target enforcement at corners which have been the scene of accidents in the past, so that pedestrians can walk around without worrying that a 14-ton vehicle will pin them to the wall like a butterfly.”

  • Mike

    Jonathan – that was an MTA spokesperson.