Subject:

Transportation

  • Blogs

    September 26, 2013

    MTA: The Metro-North New Haven Line is Out of Commission Until Further Notice

    Turns out those wires running above train tracks are really, really important. The Con Edison feeder that supplies power to the overhead wire on the Metro-North New Haven commuter rail line went dark yesterday, shutting down the entire train service. Until further notice, the MTA advises that anyone ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 23, 2013

    The Changes to the G Train Are Actually Going to Happen!!

    Remember when the MTA admitted that the G train needed a serious tuning up, but then slapped a price tag of $700,000 on the needed fixes? We thought that a better G train commute would forever lay just out of reach, but we were wrong! The MTA found an extra $18 million lying around, so the G, and so ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 19, 2013

    Why Is The NYPD Gassing The Subway?

    Today is an airflow study day in the New York subway system. That means that, mixed in with the 4.3 million riders who board the subway on any given day, there will be about 150 researchers conducting an experiment that the NYPD hopes will equip officers with the information they need to respond if ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 16, 2013

    MTA Study Explains Why the G Train Sucks So Much

    Back in February, our friends at the MTA announced they would be conducting a full review of the G line, one that would take stock of the crosstown local's many, many deficiencies. The results, G riders hoped, would eventually offer them some relief from the indignities endured on a daily basis. Yes ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 11, 2013

    New York City's Bus Drivers Are Extremely Tired of Being Punched and Stabbed

    It's really not that hard to pay your fare, sit in your seat, and let the bus operator take you where you want to go. Yet in recent weeks, a number of New Yorkers have made different, more dickish choices, like stabbing the driver of a Bx41 in the hand with a pocket knife. Or punching the driver of ... More >>

  • Blogs

    May 14, 2013

    The MTA Is Raking In Serious Cash From Your Wastefulness

    It's been almost exactly two months since the fare hike for our city's public transportation went into full effect. Overnight, straphangers' wallets were a little heavier, facing a permanent $2.50 per ride fee as well as bumped-up prices for weeklies and monthlies. And presumably, no one was happy. ... More >>

  • Blogs

    April 9, 2013

    The New "On The Go!" Digital Subway Maps Are A Tourist's Dream Come True

    Aside from a subway death solution, a review of the G train and a whole slew of transportation inconveniences, the MTA is also in need of a technological upgrade. Luckily, that'll be arriving shortly (the other issues mentioned... maybe not so much). Two summers ago, the agency installed several ne ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 28, 2013

    What Should The MTA Do With $30 Million From Albany?

    We all know the MTA's wallets are running thin, even amidst record high ridership. The recent fare hike and the fact that major project proposals are tripping over price tags are more than enough indication that the authority is handling the City's transportation on a slim, slim budget. So the news ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 6, 2013

    An Express F Train May Be In The Near Future For Brooklyn

    This past August, the Straphangers Campaign gave the F train a $1.40 grade, which is basically a B or a C-. The score was given based on cleanliness, breakdowns and service - and, for the F train, this grade is sparing. The line between Culver and Jamaica-179th Street is known for its long waits; i ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 25, 2013

    Still Hesitant On A Subway Death Solution? Check Out What Happened Over The Past Five Days

    The growing controversy over subway deaths has stricken all parties involved in the transportation scene. The MTA, stuck with little cash to maneuver, has provided flat solutions, including platform doors and laser alarm systems, that are getting nowhere because, given, the agency can't get past t ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 22, 2013

    UPDATE: The G Train ('Crosstown Local') Will Get Its Full Line Review

    [UPDATE, February 22nd] Looks like the public campaign by State Senator Daniel Squadron and others to refocus attention on the increasingly popular G train worked in the end. According to the Daily News, the MTA has agreed to conduct a Full Line Review of the green line in an attempt to make the ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 12, 2013

    Woman Faints on Subway Platform in Brooklyn, Killed by Train

    NBC New York reports that a woman was struck and killed by a moving train today this morning after fainting on a subway platform at Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue Station in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. This death is but the latest in a barrage of recent subway deaths. Fifty-five p ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 8, 2013

    At Emergency Subway Death Hearing, Transport Union Says MTA Too Cheap to Save Lives

    Representatives from the city's Transport Workers Union say that the solutions to reducing subway deaths are simple, but the MTA doesn't want to spend the money. At yesterday's emergency hearing on subway deaths called by city councilman James Vacca, the MTA unveiled a large-scale public education ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 6, 2013

    Joe Lhota Gave Out A Few Raises Before Leaving; Who Said The MTA's Broke?

    These stories aren't limited to Wall Street. In a Daily News exclusive yesterday, writer Pete Donohue learned that Mr. Joe Lhota, the MTA-chief-turned-mayoral-candidate, handed out a few raises and buyouts before he stepped out of office this past December, totaling about $253,000 in cold, hard, mu ... More >>

  • Blogs

    January 23, 2013

    NYC Councilman Wants To Get Serious About Subway Deaths

    All power to him. Yesterday, City Councilman and Transportation Committee chair James Vacca called for an "emergency hearing" on a problem that cannot escape the headlines: the increasingly high tendency of straphangers to, either purposefully or by matter of coercion, come to their deaths on the s ... More >>

  • Blogs

    December 18, 2012

    A Month And A Half After Sandy, The R Train Returns To Full Service By Friday

    If the 12/12/12 concert last week told us anything, it was that Paul McCartney's Nirvana fill-in was something we should talk about more as a society. And that, a month and a half later, there's still a ton of work to do in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.When the storm hit two days before Hal ... More >>

  • Blogs

    November 15, 2012

    Give It a Few Weeks Before the R Train Returns

    Yesterday, we reported on the MTA's no-refund policy enacted in the aftermath of Sandy. Although no reason was given, the situation provided enough explanation: the agency was out a significant amount of cash flow and paying back all those fares definitely wouldn't have helped. So straphangers are f ... More >>

  • Blogs

    November 8, 2012

    MTA: L Train Back in Action, 14th Street Tube Dry

    Good news on the public transportation front: As of 3 p.m., the L train is running between Brooklyn and Manhattan. "L trains resumed through the 14th Street tube at 3 p.m. with 10-minute headways returning service to stations from Eighth Avenue to Broadway Junction," the MTA announced moments ago.Th ... More >>

  • Blogs

    October 26, 2012

    MTA's "Hurricane Plan" Calls For "Orderly Shutdown" If Frankenstorm's Winds Top 39 MPH

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) just sent us its plan for what it will do if the storm that's predicted to basically be the storm to end all storms hits New York City.For now, the MTA is suspending construction on almost all subway construction projects it had planned for the weekend ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 20, 2012

    MTA Wants To Raise Tolls (Or: MTA Wastes $800,000 a Year on Idling Vehicles)

    The Metropolitan Transportation Authority claims to be strapped for cash and plans to pass its money problems onto consumers by raising subway and bus fares in March. It also hopes to increase the toll on the Verrazano Bridge from $13 to $15. So how could an agency with a 2012 operating budget of $9 ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 19, 2012

    Ads Calling Jihadists Uncivilized "Savages" To Appear in NYC Subways. What Could Go Wrong?

    There's a reason you see an army of law-enforcement officials armed with semi-automatic weapons in New York City's subways: Public transportation in New York City is a prime target for terrorists who want to blow us up.So where better to place provocative ads insulting Muslim jihadists than New York ... More >>

  • Blogs

    August 31, 2012

    MTA's Brilliant Plan To Prevent Subway Trash: Fewer Trash Cans

    We'll just go ahead and call a spade a spade: the MTA's plan to prevent litter in the subways by removing trash cans from subway stations is the stupidest idea we've heard since Mayor Mike Bloomberg thought banning Big Gulps in restaurants would somehow solve the obesity epidemic -- which it won't.T ... More >>

  • Blogs

    June 10, 2012

    Is The L Train Running? Yes, Much Better Now Actually

    Every straphanger knows about the L train. The (in)famous line that connects the 14th Street corridor of Manhattan with its parallel neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick and many other Brooklyn neighborhoods has its stories. For some, it is the public transportation reason why Brooklyn has r ... More >>

  • Blogs

    May 9, 2012

    LIRR: Smooth Operator or Rife With Problems?

    The Long Island Rail Road isn't just fraught with fraud: Looks like the MTA's plan to hook up the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal might be delayed a third time, the New York Post reports. What this means? The long-awaited, $7 billion connection wouldn't be complete until 2019, four years after the ... More >>

  • Blogs

    May 3, 2012

    Will Subway Stations Soon Have Wifi?

    Subway fares might be going up, The MTA's capital plan might be funded by debt, and the city's mass transit lines might be overrun by rats but hey, commuting in New York might not be all bad. Boingo and Transit Wireless will start hooking up wifi in the city's subway stations over the next five yea ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 29, 2012

    Occupy Wall Street Affiliates Chain Subway Gates Open For Fare Strike

    A group calling itself the "Rank and File Initiative" claimed credit yesterday for opening up more than 20 subway stations throughout the city for free entry. Chaining open emergency gates at stations on the F, L, R, Q, 3, and 6 lines during rush hour yesterday morning, the anonymous activists post ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 6, 2012

    Long Live the G-Train? New Petition Tries to Preserve Park Slope Extension

    Well, here are four words we never thought we would type: Save the G-train? Brooklyn's straphangers, known to love the looping line as much as they hate it, are now rallying in support of the G: District Leader Lincoln Restler has organized a petition to keep the MTA from cutting off full Church Av ... More >>

  • Blogs

    March 1, 2012

    Transportation Advocates Fight Planned MTA Fee Increases

    The MTA will increase fares again in 2013 -- meaning that riders will be hit with the fourth such fee hike since 2007. While this isn't exactly breaking -- the New York legislature long ago gave the green light to transit rate increases every two years -- what's worth mentioning is that transporta ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 14, 2012

    MTA Plans 59 More Nights of Subway Closures This Year

    Brace yourselves -- MTA plans at least 59 more nights of subway closures this year under its new FasTrack program. In total, that adds up to 413 hours of limited service on certain subway lines. Every month this year (except August and December) will see at least one major line shut down for repairs ... More >>

  • Blogs

    February 8, 2012

    New York's Ugliest Rat Calls Seventh Avenue Station Home

    via Rat Free Subways​Let's face it -- as New Yorkers, we have certainly seen our fair share of ugly rats. They're in the parks, in the subway, and if you're particularly unlucky, in your apartment building. But this rat -- this rat is the ugliest, at least according to the Transit Workers Un ... More >>

  • Blogs

    January 6, 2012

    The NYC Subway from Birth to Now, in One Gif

    It's been a good few days for subway nerdists -- earlier in the week we were all agawk over the "Lost Subways" map of NYC, which showed the subways that would have been but weren't. Yesterday we saw what happens when people stop being real and start being polite (even friendly!) on the subway. Today ... More >>

  • Blogs

    January 6, 2012

    The MTA's Evening Shutdown of 4, 5, and 6 Trains For Track Repair Starts Monday

    Back in November, it was announced that the MTA would implement a new measure, which they're calling "FASTTRACK," in order to repair lines that are constantly running and, it seems, constantly in need of fixing in some way or another (some of them have been around a long time, you know!). They said ... More >>

  • News

    January 4, 2012

    Air Safety on the Cheap

    They're responsible for airport security but contractors still make poverty wages

  • Blogs

    December 12, 2011

    How Happy Is Your Subway Stop?

    The L train = happy by day, happier at night. ​Making us happy today is a project called HappyStance, recent winner of Hack Day and "a mashup of Twitter geo-location API data and sentiment analysis research," reports the New York Times. Essentially, it's an app, created by Jeff Larson, Al Shaw ... More >>

  • Blogs

    December 1, 2011

    M50 Bus Wins "Slower Than a Lawnmower" Acclaim

    According to this year's annual "Pokey" award, the slowest local bus route in New York City is the M50, which travels crosstown on 49th and 50th Streets between First and Twelfth Avenues, clocking in at just 3.5 miles per hour at noon on a weekday, according to Straphangers Campaign staff and volunt ... More >>

  • Blogs

    November 14, 2011

    MTA to Start Doing Weeknight Subway Line Repair Closures

    ​The latest coolest thing the MTA is doing: closing the subway on weeknights. According to NY1, the MTA has plans to close some lines for repairs for up to five consecutive weeknights from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. This is a shift from the MTA's usual M.O., which is to shut down lines on the weekend ( ... More >>

  • Blogs

    October 25, 2011

    We're Really Freaking Happy With the Subway, Apparently

    ​Despite our own Steven Thrasher's harrowing experience on a smoke-filled 4 train last night, the MTA believes that we are mostly happier with New York City transit than we used to be (and apparently we do, too). According to the results of their just-released 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey ... More >>

  • Blogs

    October 4, 2011

    Transport Workers Union Denied Injunction Against City's Use of Bus Drivers to Transport Arrested Protesters; Suit Not Dismissed

    Today the Transport Workers Union, which last week voted unanimously in support of Occupy Wall Street, went to court to fight against the city's use of city bus drivers to transport arrested protesters. Following the Brooklyn Bridge arrests on Saturday, the Union said the NYPD had commandeered numer ... More >>

  • Blogs

    October 3, 2011

    In 2012, You Will Love the L Train a Little More (or Hate It Slightly Less?)

    ​According to a statement today released by State Senator Daniel Squadron, the MTA will be improving weekend service on the L train, with more frequent trains expected starting in mid 2012. Squadron had requested a review back in July of the service; the results show that the much-maligned lin ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 29, 2011

    Transport Workers Union Votes Unanimously to Support Occupy Wall Street

    Occupy Wall Street is in its 13th day, with support growing among factions veering from the "grungy unemployed hippie stereotype." There's the event led by two CUNY professors to protest the treatment of the protesters at the hands of the NYPD (Critical Mass has written they'll join in this rally, w ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 27, 2011

    Hurricane Irene Cost the MTA $110 Million; Fare Increases Still Planned for 2013

    ​The MTA is out $110 million, reports the New York Post, thanks to Hurricane (later, Tropical Storm) Irene. That breaks down into $50 million to fix Metro-North's damaged Port Jervis line, $10 million spent on shuttle buses that ran as the line was down, and $50 million in operating costs, inc ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 24, 2011

    Weekend Subway Service Has Gotten A Little Better, But That Won't Stop Us From Complaining

    ​One of our favorite things to do on the weekends is gripe, bitch, and generally complain as much as we possibly can about how shitty the subway service is. A lot. But new data reported in the New York Post shows the bane of our existence actually made a small step toward becoming less of a b ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 16, 2011

    MTA Introduces New Subway Map to Make You Less Angry on Weekends

    A portion of one of the new Weekender maps​Have you heard of "the Weekender"? No, it's not this. It's a new online mapping system that the MTA hopes will help make you less angry on weekends! Basically, this is the MTA's admittance to you that, yes, they mess up a lot of your plans on weekend ... More >>

  • Blogs

    September 9, 2011

    MTA Bus Drivers Create Their Own Sexy Calendar

    via​The FDNY has long done it, so why not the MTA? A group of rather fit, if we do say so, MTA bus drivers from the Jackie Gleason Bus Depot in Brooklyn have formed a group called Men Taking Action/United Transit Employees. And now they are putting together their own calendar. Michelle, or "Mu ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 27, 2011

    MTA's New Financial Plan Shows Fare Increases in 2013, 2015

    ​The MTA Board met this morning to present and discuss its newest financial plan for 2012 through 2015, a plan still in its preliminary stages. To everyone's likely dismay, it projects fare increases, but also promises no service cuts based on the budget. "[The plan] presents at least a fragil ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 16, 2011

    MTA Weekend Follies, Again: An Investigation

    ​This should absolutely not come as a surprise, but anyone who uses the New York City subway system will experience some trying times this weekend. Do you take the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, A, C, D, E, F, G, L, N, Q, or R trains? Sorry 'bout that. For us Williamsburgers, this is par for the course. Th ... More >>

  • Blogs

    July 11, 2011

    New Yorkers Demand Use of Subway on Weekends, Now

    Not quite like Tokyo -- yet.​An article in the New York Times today alerts us to something you've probably known about, at least anecdotally, for a while. Good to have it proven, though, if only so your complaining can be official! Despite New York subways frequently having longer waits, screw ... More >>

  • Blogs

    June 28, 2011

    Astorians Mourn Departed Bus and Subway Lines, Want to Bring Back the QM22

    ​Politicians, civic groups, and commuters gathered yesterday by the Astoria-Ditmars subway stop to mark the death-iversary of their dearly departeds: the W train and the QM22 bus line. One year ago, the MTA eliminated the W and V trains and dozens of bus lines, and reduced services throughout ... More >>

  • Blogs

    May 19, 2011

    9/11 Flight Numbers Will Be Retired Forever

    ​United Continental will "permanently retire" flight numbers 93 and 175, Bloomberg reports, in honor of the flights hijacked on September 11, 2011. Over the past decade, the numbers have not been in use, but an error earlier this week caused them to pop up again, much to the chagrin of pilots' ... More >>

  • Blogs

    May 9, 2011

    Charles Schumer Proposes No-Ride List for Trains

    ​It's been a busy couple days in train news, what with the PATH and Second Avenue subway tunnel breaches, plus that mishap on the PATH that injured 30. There's also a new call from Senator Charles Schumer to increase rail security, which comes after reports that Osama Bin Laden may have been p ... More >>

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