Today’s Headlines

“Michael Gomez, 13, Injured by Maspeth Curb-Jumper, Dies in Hospital”. If the Post’s version of the story is right, his death had nothing to do with the crash, which would make the Streetsblog headline severely misleading, even if technically true. Given the context, the first thing I thought was that he died from his injuries after spending days in the hospital, not that he died of an asthma attack after having been treated for minor injuries one week ago and released the same day. Tragic coincidence, or post-crash-induced asthma attack?

David Yassky has done an excellent job in his brief tenure at TLC, shepherding through the five-borough taxis and taxi of tomorrow and beefing up enforcement. The idea that he should be fired after a big improvement in service to the public is nuts, and a clear sign de Blasio is bought by medallion fleet owners.

David Yassky has done an excellent job in his brief tenure at TLC, shepherding through the five-borough taxis and taxi of tomorrow and beefing up enforcement. The idea that he should be fired after a big improvement in service to the public is nuts, and a clear sign de Blasio is bought by medallion fleet owners.

Thanks, I appreciate the response, and the difficulty of encapsulating all the nuances in a headline.

I agree the headline was misleading. But worth pointing out that asthma, like the Maspath injuries, is another cost that drivers disproportionately inflict on the rest of of us.

The Taxi of Tomorrow will have sliding doors which is extremely beneficial in terms of reducing dooring to cyclists.

Pneumatic tubes? Someone at an agency that won’t spend a cent on light rail wants to blow billions of dollars on pneumatic tubes? Evidently garbage is more worthy of punctual transport than humans.

He’s ahead in the polls, let’s hope he doesn’t pander like that. Esp considering the lives her work has saved.
But I agree with your cynicism.

Having a mayor who didn’t hire and fire appointed city officials based on campaign donations sure was nice while it lasted.

We can barely perform basic subway repairs, at great expense, while maintaining service. How in the world do you think you’re going to get freight movements scheduled?

And how do you actually move the freight in and out of the system? Sounds like might not have ever tried taking the subway with something as light as a stroller!

There are lots of things we CAN do, but sometimes there are simply bad ideas.

This is a really bad idea.

The overnight period is necessary for maintenance on the subway system. O&M costs for New York City Transit already come at a premium because the system operates 24/7.

Not to mention this doesn’t meet any real need or have any financial viability. Streets and highways have plenty of free capacity overnight too. Goods movement planners have been trying to get more night deliveries, and NYCDOT has done some good work with a pilot project, but it simply does not work for many businesses.

Then add the additional handling, and there is no merit here at all. Let’s say shippers drive their truck to a subway yard, because they might be able to pull up alongside the train car that will run in the subway. Let’s employ that “can do” attitude, and suppose they have specially-designed containers that can be lifted off the truck and placed on a rail chassis. Ok… but that has to be scheduled and will require time to get through security, make the transfer, etc. In reality, the truck could be done with its deliveries by the time it’s entered, made its transfer, a train has been assembled, and finally departed the freight yard. Then, when you actually want to make a delivery, you have to pay for the extra labor – with a shift differential for late-night work – to lift everything out of the subway stations? Seriously, you need to think this stuff through!

Sorry, but this idea just does not work on the most basic level. Financially infeasible for freight deliveries and logistically impossible for a busy, aging system that already has difficulties scheduling repairs while it is in continual operation.

I’m confused; why would Sanitation ever spend a cent on light-rail?

Pneumatic tubes already work well on Roosevelt Island. I don’t see any reason to write this off. The piles of stinking bags that tear open on the sidewalks are one of the worst aspects on NYC. The big, dangerous trucks that pick them up are another. And so are the obscene costs of performing all that work with manual labor.

Less smelly, less wear and tear and traffic impact on our streets, potentially more cost-effective… where’s the problem?

This seems somewhat more plausible, and I give you credit for the idea.

But I still feel like it would undermine the basic, critical service provided by the subway. I’m also very skeptical it has any viability. It seems too much like a solution searching for a problem.

The existing garbage trains are a very small amount of traffic, and I believe they only handle the trash collected in the stations themselves.

I don’t want to imagine the effects of bringing large amount of foreign garbage through subway entrances and then storing it in the stations awaiting pickup. If you’ve ever stood next to one of the bins where the MTA stores its own limited volumes of garbage waiting for pickup, that can be putrid enough.

Perhaps the garbage scheme could generate extra money for much more cleaning of the system (which would be welcome!), although that is questionable, depending on what could actually be charged for the service and the cost of operating it. It also seems like it would be impossible to mitigate the experience of having more heavily laden and more frequent garbage trains passing through stations with passengers on the platform.

Anything that increases the frequency of late-night trains would still have a negative effect on system maintenance, which will always be a costly strain for a 24-hour operation of this type.

I don’t really see what’s in it for the businesses to choose this service over curbside collection, either. The labor costs to transport the garbage to the stations seems very high. Plus, you’re probably still introducing an additional handling step (I don’t think the subway connects directly to any waste transfer stations, and probably has little potential to do so).

I’m thinking here of something along the lines of waste chutes above the subway station which drop trash bags into a container on the subway platform. You access the chutes with an ID card (to prevent people who don’t pay for the service from using it), and perhaps you get billed based on the volume or weight of trash. The containers would preferably be closed to prevent odors/vermin. They can easily be loaded onto specially designed trains for quick, fast pickup. In fact, with a closed container system you needn’t restrict the hours businesses can dump off trash to only night time.

Certainly this might be advantageous to businesses in that they can dispose of their trash as they generate it, rather than having a foul-smelling dumpster in back which attracts vermin. Naturally, I only expect such a system to be useful to businesses located within close proximity of subway stations, perhaps within a few blocks. That still covers a lot of businesses in the densest parts of the city where rotting garbage and vermin generate the most problems.

Certainly such an idea merits study. It’s good for people to think outside the box and generate new ways of doing things. Maybe out of 100 ideas, 90 will be shot down right away on obvious practical or cost grounds. 10 might merit further study. 1 or 2 might actually be put into practice. I think since we seem to be short of money to build new infrastructure (actually, it’s misplaced priorities rather than a real money shortage, but that’s another topic entirely), we should look into ways to utilize untapped potential in existing infrastructure. The subways are primarily to move people, but I think the excess capacity can be put to use for other functions. As for maintenance, usually they shut down tracks for that, so any garbage trains would just go on active tracks as they do now, along with passenger trains.

I don’t know offhand if the subway has direct connections to any waste disposal sites. However, if the trash is containerized, transferring it to railroads which do should be trivial.

Yasky’s hearing officers don’t know squat about bicycle traffic law. I will be happy to see the back of him.