Today’s Headlines

  • NJ Legislature Strikes Deal on Road Funding As ARC Remains in Jeopardy (Transpo Nation 1, 2)
  • Michael Daly to NYPD: Where Are The Quotas For Stopping Deadly Speeding? (News)
  • Clyde Haberman to MTA: Fare Hikes Aren’t Your Fault, But Start Sweating the Small Stuff (NYT)
  • Behind Every Planning Decision, You Always Find NYC EDC, Says Tom Angotti (Gotham Gazette)
  • Bloomberg Responds Cautiously On Parking Meter Lease (Post)
  • Chelsea Subway Stations to Get Cell Service Next Year, AT&T and T-Mobile on Board (News)
  • Jay Walder Loves Real-Time Info — Next Up Are Digital Screens Across City (Post)
  • Second Avenue Merchants Blame Subway Construction for Economic Woes (NYT)
  • After Brutal Assault, Union Wants More Protection for Traffic Enforcement Agents (Labor Press)
  • NYC Inspires D.C. to Look at Ped Plazas, Bike Infrastructure, BRT (TheCityFix, GGW)
  • In Real Life, Pete Campbell Rides the Bus and Isn’t So Uptight (NYT)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Mike

    Headline here is wrong. T-Mobile is on board; Verizon isn’t.

  • Glenn

    I believe in the last episode of Mad Men Pete Campbell responded to a job offer at another agency to work on an Italian car account with the line “I don’t drive”. Because he lives in 1960s Manhattan where public transit was good, clean and he can afford cabs to get around short distances.

  • There is an interesting story in today’s NY Times about a radical, left-wing, hippy-flake faction within the United States government is trying to rely less upon fossil fuels and more upon renewables.

    It’s the military:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/science/earth/05fossil.html?hp

  • Anon

    Instead of Atoms for Peace, now it’s Solar for War.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Republicans running for Governor are promising to give back money for high speed rail their states won in the stimulus package.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/us/05rail.html

    As with ARC, New York’s response should be to ask that the federal (and Port Authority) money be moved over to projects over here.

  • Sign Kartheiser up for Streetsblog! This guy has great quotes:

    To go downtown where “Mad Men” is filmed, he takes either the Red Line or two buses. He reads, does crossword puzzles and goes over his lines. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “Instead of driving and being stressed out about traffic, you can work your scene, you can do your exercises or whatever on the bus. Everyone’s got their own deal.”

    or

    “They’ve done a study and they’ve found that people under 30 no longer view cars as status symbols or even positive things,” Mr. Kartheiser said. “They look at them as pollutants.”

  • David K, on Thursday another leader said we should stop wasting fossil fuels (I found out about it through a tweet from Aaron Naparstek).

    Looks like everyone gets the urgency of the problem except for nationwide and Republican leaders, and local Democratic machine politicians.

  • J:Lai

    Yes, we need to hoard the remaining stock of fossil fuels until the battle for Antarctica.

    I say we just use em up now, as nobody is going to take conservation or alternative energy sources seriously until we actually run short of oil and gas.

  • Peter from Stuy Town

    @Glenn: I loved the Times’ Vincent Kartheiser article, but surely you’re being sarcastic about mid-Sixties Manhattan public transit being good and clean? If not, you’re engaging in some revisionist fantasy. Check out the Lindsay exhibit at the Museum of the City of NY.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “Surely you’re being sarcastic about mid-Sixties Manhattan public transit being good and clean? If not, you’re engaging in some revisionist fantasy.”

    A matter of timing. Lindsay took office on January 1, 1966. The transit strike began that day. The MTA was formed in 1968 — Lindsay agreed to the 20/50 pension just before turning over New York City transit and the TBTA. The Beame Shuffle raids on capital funds for the MTA started after 1973.

    In 1965, the subways were good and clean, despite a few years of deferred maintenance under the Wagner Administration. It may be the equivalent of 1965 right now.

  • Peter from Stuy Town

    I’ll take your word for it – I was a baby then.

    I’d always been under the impression that the subways fell into bad disrepair starting in the Fifties.

  • Glenn

    My parents tell me the subways were clean and safe throughout the 1960s but things really went downhill in the 1970s with the city budget crises, cuts in Federal funding, lack of police patrols, etc. I remember the early 1980s and having no love for Manhattan at all. It was ugly.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “I’d always been under the impression that the subways fell into bad disrepair starting in the Fifties.”

    I was a baby as well, but I’ve seen asset databases and read books on the subject. Deferred maintenance started in the late 1950s, but conditions were still good by the mid-1960s. Then the serious raids by all concerned began, leading to the conditions you probably remember in the 1970s and early 1980s.