— 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.
Brooklyn comedian Tom Sibley talks to NYCTracks.com about his popular, but controversial, blog Subway Douchery.
The site exposes riders who violate the subway courtesy code. Sibley’s iPhone has captured people clipping their toenails, dropping food on the train floor, and even lounging shoeless across the train benches.
For many New Yorkers, it has become an outlet for their public transit frustrations. But some take issue with the site, calling it an invasion of subway riders’ privacy.
The posters, created by the Working Families Party, criticized the MTA and Mayor Bloomberg for allowing the agency’s financial problems to be passed on to riders, in the form of service cuts and rumored fare increases.
That controversy, partnered with unused ad displays on trains, fuel questions about how well the transit agency is capitalizing on potential advertising revenue. Cash from posters and signs hasn’t kept up with ballooning expenses, according to MTA budgets.
Ad payments are categorized with miscellaneous revenue sources in the MTA budget, making it difficult to know exactly how much money comes from advertising. However, the “other revenue” category – which is largely composed of ad sales – is budgeted to fall by 6 percent this year.
(“Other revenue” also includes property leasing, trademark licensing and equipment sales.)
If the 2010 budget stands, the MTA’s expenses will have risen 41 percent since 2005. Revenue from taxes and government subsidies will have risen at least that much.
But “other revenue” will have increased by just 26 percent.
The transit agency has tried to expand advertising dollars, but those efforts have been “very much harmed by the economic downturn,” said spokesman Aaron Donovan.
The City Council’s transportation and education committees held a joint hearing to question the MTA on the elimination of free student MetroCards. The audience was surprisingly sparse, considering the passion witnessed at previous hearings on the MTA cuts. But some of the council members were riled up. We have a three-minute video summary of the two-hour meeting.
The New York Transit Museum is hosting an exhibit of archeological artifacts found during construction of the new South Ferry Terminal. The exhibit, which will open in the Transit Museum’s Annex at Grand Central station on March 18th, should help give a picture of life in lower Manhattan during the 18th and 19th century.
The museum will display a myriad of clay pipes (a common household item before the cigarette became popular), household crockery, wall tiles and various other artifacts associated with New York long before the MTA. The artifacts were discovered during the construction of the new South Ferry Terminal. The new station was built while the original 1905-era South Ferry Terminal was still in use, which created the need for an enlarged construction foot-print, which in turn led to the discovery of the artifacts.
–Christopher F. Schuetze
Posted in Hidden TracksComments Off on Archeology of the South Ferry Terminal
But riders that we spoke to at the 72nd Street station say that’s not the only reason. Columbia student Tyler Kim says he’s been taking taxis more often because he doesn’t feel safe on the train at night.
Still, most riders say they’re sticking with the MTA. In New York City, what choice do you have?
Take a look at what riders told us turns them off about the tracks and what keeps them coming back. Then let us know what you think about the system.