— Some persistent reporters got to the heart of what motivated t-shirt vendor Lance Orton to report the smoking car in Times Square last week.

Turns out we can thank the MTA.

“See something, say somthing,” a media-weary Ortiz mumbled, as he escaped the horde in a taxi Monday. Check out the Wall Street Journal‘s video:

— Gothamist says the Pace University student who carried cyanide into the subway tunnels last week has been formerly charged with trespassing and will receive a psychiatric evaluation. Subway workers feared he was a terrorist. But news reports say it was a suicide attempt.

— The 37-year-old Staten Island Railway cars are among the many capital projects that got the axe in the MTA budget cuts, SILive.com reports. The cars have a lifespan of 40 years, but the MTA noted that those cars recently received $11 million in maintenance work.

— HollabackNYC, the group that combats sexual harrassment on streets and public transit, is raising money to create an iPhone application. The app would allow users to snap pictures of their harassers and instantly send them along with time and location information to a central database. Check out last month’s video piece on public transit harassment. For more info on the app, check out this video report for the New York City News Service.