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Streetsblog Continues To Expose David Gantt

Posted by
on June 27th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

As you know by now, a major transportation bill that would benefit bus riders & drivers got defeated by the State Assembly Transportation Committee. The perpetrator behind this was the chairman of the State Assembly Transportation Committee, David Gantt. Ben Fried of Streetsblog has been all over the chairman since this bill was defeated (rightfully so I might add!) & continues to be so with a new report on just how Mr. Gnatt strong-armed the voting process. Hereis a sample of his report:

With last week’s bus camera vote in Albany inspiring calls for Mayor Bloomberg to engage in civil disobedience, Streetsblog has been taking a closer look at how Assembly transportation committee chairman David Gantt was able to bring down a bill that reportedly enjoyed majority support among his members and won approval in the New York City Council by a 40 to 7 vote.

Recall that the bill, critical to the success of the city’s Bus Rapid Transit plans, was scheduled by Gantt for a motion to hold, meaning that a “Yes” vote would table the bill. In the official roll call, six co-sponsors of the bill were recorded as having voted “Yes,” essentially killing legislation they had earlier endorsed. This drew the attention of the Times, which questioned whether Gantt had influenced the votes of committee members.

While Gantt told the Times he doesn’t go around “breaking people’s arms,” multiple sources familiar with the vote told Streetsblog that some co-sponsors sided against bus cameras in order to preserve their relationship with the chair.

The rest of the story indicates why a committee member would want to stay in good standing with Gantt.
Read the rest of this entry »

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NYC Transit Might Get $237 Million

Posted by
on June 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Q Train idled at 21st Street-Queensbridge station during a 2007 general order
Q Train idle at 21st Street-Queensbridge station during a 2007 general order. Resized photo courtesy of Eye On Transit

I strongly emphasize might in the title as there are still some steps to climb before crossing the finish line. The money would come from a $1.7 billion financial aid package earmarked to help mass transit systems around the country lower fares & expand operations. The package known as H.R.6052  (Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008) was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 322-98. The bill must now be considered by the U.S. Senate. Before I get to a brief bill breakdown, here is an article from the Associated Press about the bill:

The House approved financial help Thursday to mass transit systems in New York and elsewhere facing a surge in riders because of high gas prices. But Republicans blocked Democrats from requiring oil and gas companies to drill on the millions of acres of government land and water on which they already own federal leases.

The House voted 322-98 to authorize $1.7 billion over the next two years to lower fares and expand operations as more riders flock to public transit. New York City will get $237 million of that, said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-Manhattan. The transit measure, which must still be considered by the Senate, marks the first time federal money would be used to support local mass transit operating costs.

The oil lease proposal was an effort by Democrats to counter a push by congressional Republicans to lift a long-standing drilling ban on most offshore U.S. waters. Democratic leaders maintained the industry should first go after oil and natural gas in areas where they hold leases.

But the measure was defeated 223-195, short of the two-thirds vote required, with only a handful of Republicans voting for it.

Democrats proposed the failed drilling mandate and the public transit help as lawmakers struggled to respond to public anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline with the July Fourth holiday and heaviest summer driving season approaching. As the House voted, oil moved into record territory at just over $140 a barrel, signaling that gasoline prices are likely to go higher this summer.

Opening the nation’s offshore oil and gas resources has dominated the congressional energy debate in recent weeks. Republicans argue the drilling moratorium, in effect since 1981 over most federal waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico, has kept companies from increasing domestic energy production.

But Democrats counter that the fenced-off waters of the Outer Continental Shelf shouldn’t be opened to drilling, when leases already provided by the Interior Department in other areas, mostly the western Gulf and in Alaska, aren’t being exploited.

“We believe in use it or lose it,” declared Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., a key member of the Democrats’ leadership.

The White House said President Bush would veto the use-it-or-lose-it legislation if it came to his desk, calling “absurd” the claim that, with today’s oil prices, companies are not pursuing all the oil that they can recover economically.

Democrats maintained the existing leases owned by oil companies could produce 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a day. But the Interior Department, which manages the federal oil and gas leasing programs, said it could not confirm those numbers.

The claim that oil companies are “sitting on” potential oil and gas by not developing leases stems from a “misunderstanding of the very lengthy regulatory process” and business considerations involved in offshore oil and gas development, C. Stephen Allred, Interior’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management, wrote to lawmakers.

Meanwhile, GOP efforts to push for an end to the offshore drilling moratorium caused a partisan dustup Thursday during a House Appropriations Committee meeting.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the committee’s chairman, abruptly canceled the meeting after Republicans tried to force consideration of an Interior spending bill on which they wanted to tack a measure that would allow drilling 50 miles offshore on all Outer Continental Shelf waters, even those long off-limits to energy companies.

Republicans have complained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has prevented the offshore drilling ban from coming up for a vote.

Separately, Senate Republicans proposed a revised energy package Thursday that would allow states to petition the Interior Department to lift the federal offshore drilling moratorium off their coasts, 50 miles from shore. States would get a financial windfall, 37.5 percent of the federal royalties.

The GOP proposal, which also would provide incentives for developing plug-in electric hybrid automobiles and lift a prohibition on developing oil shale in the West, has 43 GOP co-sponsors. Senate Democratic leaders, whose own energy proposals were blocked by Republicans last month, showed no interest in the GOP legislation.

The amount in this aid package totals $1.7 billion dollars over 2 years.  Here are a few highlights:

You can view the entire bill by clicking here & then scrolling down to H.R. 6052. I would have posted a direct link to the bill but it expires after a set time.

Lets hope the Senate passes this bill as the money for NYC is desperately needed. Even if you are not in NYC, money benefiting any part of the U.S. transit infrastructure should be considered as a necessity. I hope you contact the senators representing your district & urge them to support this bill/any funding towards our transit infrastructure.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Bus Stop Dispute Turns Deadly

Posted by
on June 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

Yesterday evening, a dispute which started at the bus stop & continued on the Q85 turned deadly. A 15 year old girl was stabbed to death in front of 137-42 Bedell Street in Springfield Gardens. Eric Konigsberg & Al Baker from the New York Times has the story:

It began shortly before 10 on Wednesday night with an accusation that a woman had cut in line while waiting for a bus in Queens. It ended less than an hour and a few miles later with a 15-year-old girl lying mortally wounded on the sidewalk.

In between, according to the authorities, a 39-year-old security guard on his way home from work traded unkind words with passengers on the Q85 bus. Officials said that a group of boys followed him off the bus at his stop in Springfield Gardens, where they were joined by several other teenagers, and that the security guard, claiming later that he had been pelted with bricks and bottles and feared for his life, took out a knife and stabbed one of his tormentors, a girl, in the chest.

Others who were with the girl, identified by the police as Keyanna Jones, held down the man, Winston Alladin, the authorities said, until the police arrived. Keyanna was pronounced dead on arrival at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. She had completed her freshman year at John Adams High School in Far Rockaway earlier that day.

“She was going to that school because she wanted to become a lawyer,” said Dot Jackson, her great-grandmother.

On Thursday, Mr. Alladin was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment shortly before 1 a.m. on Friday, and Judge Robert Raciti of Queens Criminal Court set Mr. Alladin’s bail at $250,000 cash or bond.

An assistant district attorney, Mario Karonis, said at the arraignment that Mr. Alladin’s “self-defense claims were taken into account” by prosecutors when they filed the charges.

Mr. Karonis added that “there are multiple witnesses,” not all of whom “necessarily support the statements made by the defendant.”

The authorities identified Mr. Alladin as an immigrant from Trinidad and said that he was on his way home from his job as a security guard at Takashimaya, a luxury Japanese department store on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, when his path ultimately crossed Keyanna’s. The police said that he had no prior criminal record.

Inside Takashimaya, the head of security, who identified himself only as Joshua, said of Mr. Alladin: “I’ve known him for the last eight years and this person is not a violent person. He’s a good person. He’s not a person who looks for trouble.”

Investigators said Mr. Alladin told them that the stabbing arose from an argument he got into with a woman as he and the woman were boarding a city bus at Archer and Jamaica Avenues.

Mr. Alladin said he accused the woman, who had a child in tow, of jumping ahead of him in the line, the authorities said.

The dispute continued on the bus, where, Mr. Alladin said, three boys converged on him and began to harass him for speaking disrespectfully to the woman, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

When the woman got off the bus at her stop, Mr. Alladin and the boys stayed on. The boys continued to taunt Mr. Alladin, the police said he told them.

When Mr. Alladin disembarked in Springfield Gardens, the three boys followed him and were joined by a larger group of youths, including Keyanna. The entire crowd, which numbered at least 10 at this point, trailed Mr. Alladin, he told the police.

Mr. Kelly said that according to Mr. Alladin’s account, Mr. Alladin walked into a nearby backyard and asked the residents for help. “He asks someone to call 911,” Mr. Kelly said. “They actually tell him to get out of the yard.”

Shortly afterward — as the crowd continued to surround him, according to Mr. Alladin’s account — he pulled out a folding knife, which the police said he used to stab Keyanna in the chest.

The police said that the stabbing occurred in front of 137-42 Bedell Street in Springfield Gardens. They arrested Mr. Alladin at 10:34 p.m. They gave his address as 137-46 Bedell Street.

At the arraignment, Mr. Alladin’s lawyer, Stephen Bilkis, said Mr. Alladin told him he was attacked based on some “issues” stemming from the fact that he and his fiancée were the only Trinidadians living in the neighborhood.

Before the stabbing, Mr. Bilkis said “there was name-calling, there was rock throwing.” He added: “My client was calling for help. No one was responding to him.”

The police said late Thursday afternoon that they were still trying to find the woman with whom Mr. Alladin had the initial dispute. They were also tracking down the driver of the bus and the people who had placed calls to 911.

A law enforcement official said that the police had interviewed the three boys who had confronted Mr. Alladin on the bus, and that their accounts differed somewhat from his.

According to the official, Mr. Alladin told investigators that as the crowd of youths was closing in, they pelted him with bottles and bricks, then rammed him with a shopping cart. The police said that some of the calls to 911 corroborated that claim.

But the boys, a law enforcement official said, claimed that the objects were hurled only after Mr. Alladin stabbed Keyanna.

Also, Mr. Alladin said that he was merely holding his knife in front of him and swinging it back and forth as an attempt to hold the crowd at bay, but some of the youths who spoke to investigators told them that he was the aggressor, the law enforcement official said.

Mr. Karonis, the prosecutor, said that Mr. Alladin “told detectives he ‘pulled a knife from his gym bag and swung it at the crowd, and the girl got cut.’ ”

Mr. Kelly described the victim’s wound as a “direct entry into the chest.”

One of the three boys, Ronald Wilson, 15, said on Thursday outside the 113th Precinct headquarters that Mr. Alladin had used racial epithets against the woman on the bus. Mr. Wilson, a cousin, Michael Simpson, 10, and a third boy had been interviewed at the precinct station.

But Mr. Kelly said the police did not believe that racial bias was a factor in the case. “Mr. Alladin is from Trinidad and the three initial assailants, as described by him, are American blacks,” he said. “I have no information as to the language that was used and whether or not there were racial epithets used.”

Outside Keyanna’s house on 183rd Street, a few blocks from the stabbing, her great-grandmother, Ms. Jackson, sat with dozens of the girl’s friends and relatives. Her lips trembled as she said, “She was a good girl, a sweet girl. I loved her and he stabbed her in the heart.”

While the investigation is still ongoing, I have to say my initial instinct is to believe Mr. Alladin’s version of the story. I have seen my share of incidents where a group of people gang up on 1 person. In situations like that, they don’t have much choice but to bring out a weapon if they have one. Plus why would he randomly go into a neighbor’s yard & ask them to call 911.

What annoys me is how everytime an incident like this occurs, we always hear how much of a good kid/person the victim was. Seriously what are the odds that every person really is? Also who told her to randomly join a situation she was not even a part of. I am not one to feel sorry for acts of stupidity as that just encourages the continuation of such acts. I am curious to see where this investigation goes as I will try my best to keep on top of it.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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The Mack Strikes Again

Posted by
on June 27th, 2008 at 4:55 am

Just when you thought the controversial 15 minutes of fame were up for MTA Board Vice Chairman David S. Mack, yet another controversy strikes. It seems our favorite MTA Board member likes to role play as a state trooper as well. William Neuman of the New York Times has the story:

David S. Mack has turned in his free E-ZPasses. Now the State Police want him to turn in his badge.

Even before Mr. Mack, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority vice chairman, made headlines this month by declaiming loudly (although briefly) in favor of free travel perks for the authority’s board members, he was being sought by the State Police, who had a rather unusual request.

It seems that Mr. Mack, a wealthy Long Island construction executive, is something of a police buff. So much so that in 1995, a few months after George E. Pataki became governor, Mr. Mack was made an unpaid deputy superintendent of the State Police.

The post came with a badge and gave him the right to wear a state trooper’s uniform, which he often did while attending ceremonial events like police academy graduations.

But Mr. Mack’s appointment was seen as political — he and other members of his family have long been major donors to Republican candidates, including Mr. Pataki — and shortly after Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, became governor, in January 2007, the governor’s office told Mr. Mack that his association with the State Police was over.

A State Police spokesman, Lt. Glenn R. Miner, said that Mr. Mack was sent a “letter of termination” dated Jan. 19, 2007, signed by William F. Howard, an aide who was later involved in the scandal over Mr. Spitzer’s reported use of State Police travel records to discredit the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

After David A. Paterson became governor this year, he asked the attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, to begin a broad investigation into the State Police and into whether political considerations interfered with the workings of the department.

As part of that investigation, officials learned that Daniel Wiese, a former trooper who had been close to both Mr. Pataki and Mr. Spitzer, had maintained a relationship with the State Police after he retired in 2003, and had also been allowed to keep his badge.

According to a state official, Mr. Cuomo’s investigators asked the department if there were other people not on the force who had State Police badges — and Mr. Mack’s name surfaced. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the attorney general’s investigation is continuing.

A check revealed that Mr. Mack had not turned in his badge, as he was supposed to have done when he was terminated.

Mr. Miner said that the department left a phone message for Mr. Mack last week but did not immediately receive a response. He said that Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt finally spoke with Mr. Mack earlier this week and that Mr. Mack agreed to return the badge — a gold-colored metal shield that is typically carried in a wallet. He said that Mr. Mack also agreed to send in his uniform.

“Everything is being returned,” Mr. Miner said. He said that it was not clear whether Mr. Mack had been told that he had to hand in the badge when he was terminated.

Mr. Miner said that during the time that Mr. Mack was associated with the State Police, he served as an advisor on real estate issues like the lease or purchase of property for police stations. Mr. Mack did not return phone calls from a reporter to his home and office on Thursday.

Mr. Mack has also had a longstanding relationship with the Nassau County Police Department.

Detective Lt. Kevin Smith, a spokesman for the department, said that Mr. Mack has served as an unsalaried assistant commissioner since at least the mid-1980s.

Mr. Smith said that Mr. Mack consults with the department on its real estate transactions. He said that Mr. Mack was issued a police badge by the department but did not wear a uniform.

Mr. Mack, who lives in Nassau County, retained his position with the Police Department there after his State Police position ended.

Mr. Mack created a furor last week in his role as a vice commissioner of the transportation authority when he opposed limiting lifetime free travel perks given to board members and said that he might not ride the Long Island Rail Road if he had to pay. (He said, however, that he had already turned in six free E-ZPasses that he had been given.)

His support for the perks was criticized by Governor Paterson, and Mr. Mack quickly reversed himself, agreeing to a change that would allow board members to use free E-ZPasses and subway, bus and commuter rail passes only while they were on authority business.

The board voted on Wednesday to make that change.

The loss of his E-ZPasses was also prompted by Mr. Cuomo, who told the authority last month that the perks violated a law that board members serve without compensation.

Geez Mack, maybe you should take a vacation & get away from New York for a bit.

xoxo  Transit Blogger

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Security Cameras Not Coming Anytime Soon

Posted by
on June 27th, 2008 at 4:41 am

Yesterday, New York Times reporter William Neuman posted a story about the new delays the MTA faces in their attempt to install high-tech surveillance cameras in & around the subway and commuter railroads. Here is his report:

Aging fiber-optic cable in Brooklyn and Queens has become the latest obstacle to a planned high-tech system of surveillance cameras meant to safeguard the subway and commuter railroads, according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials.

The system, which is expected to cost at least $450 million, is a crucial component of a larger program to thwart terrorist attacks on the region’s transportation network, but it has met repeatedly with technical problems and delays.

On Wednesday, the authority’s board authorized the replacement of 84,000 feet of old fiber-optic cable, which was installed in the late 1980s. The replacement will cost $5 million and is being done as part of a separate project to build out the subway’s data network.

According to a board document, tests on the cable showed that it had “many broken fibers unsuitable to carry the high bandwidth required” to transmit large amounts of data, which hindered the surveillance camera project. The document did not say how long it would take to replace the cable.

The authority’s board received a lengthy closed-door briefing on the security project on Wednesday and was told that it continued to face significant problems, including delays and increased costs, according to an official who attended the meeting.

“It is clearly significant,” the official said, referring to the severity of the problem.

Plans for the surveillance system were announced in August 2005, when officials said that they expected to have it up and running in three years. The system, which is being built by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is to include at least 1,000 surveillance cameras and 3,000 motion sensors, mostly concentrated at major travel hubs and high-volume stations, like Grand Central Terminal, as well as in tunnels and other areas.

It is also supposed to combine several advanced technologies and packages of software that could integrate information collected across the region’s vast transportation network.

But officials now acknowledge that the original schedule was far too ambitious.

“Any I.T. person will tell you,” another authority official said, referring to information technology experts, “that a contract like this could not have been done in the time they allotted. They couldn’t do it in three years.”

The official estimated that it could take two or three more years to complete, although some aspects of the system could be in operation sooner.

The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of the security measures, said, however, that they had not been told when the authority expected to have the system finished.

Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the authority, said that he could not comment on security matters.

A report released in January by the New York State comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said that the surveillance camera project was behind schedule and was scheduled, at that time, to be finished in December 2009. The officials said on Wednesday that they did not know whether the date had been pushed back further.

The comptroller’s report also said that the surveillance project had been scaled back because of problems adapting the cameras’ software to conditions in the authority’s facilities.

One of the officials who spoke on Wednesday said those problems involved the cameras’ ability to spot an unattended bag or briefcase left on a train platform or other busy area and then alert law enforcement to the possible hazard. That capability had originally been promoted as a major feature of the system, but the official said it had failed in tests.

“There are too many people, too many things moving around in the system,” the official said.

The damaged fiber-optic cable is mainly on elevated portions of the J and Z lines, running from the Broadway Junction station in East New York, Brooklyn, to the Sutphin Boulevard station in Jamaica, Queens, and then along the E line to the Union Turnpike station.

Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit, the arm of the authority that runs the subway, said that the because the cable was outdoors, it had deteriorated faster than similar cable in tunnels underground.

The replacement cable is being installed as part of a $200 million project that is separate from the security program, to create an up-to-date fiber-optic network throughout the subway system.

That project was expanded last year to include a $21 million upgrade to add technology that would allow larger amounts of data to move along the network. The extra capacity was needed to accommodate the surveillance camera system. However, the board document said the damaged cable could not handle the larger volume of data.

Officials refused to say how the Brooklyn-to-Queens segment of the fiber-optic network fits into the surveillance camera system. When it is complete, the surveillance system will send images and other data to a control center beside the Sunnyside railyard in Long Island City, Queens.

The comptroller’s office has issued periodic reports highlighting delays and increasing costs in the authority’s security program, which was conceived after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The program includes the surveillance system as well as other projects to improve the security of bridges, tunnels and other facilities.

I am not surprised that this project is facing a delay. I will admit that I am not saddened by it as I do not support the installation of these camers inside railroad & subway cars. I find them to be an invasion of privacy although some argue that we are taped just about everywhere. While that maybe the case, it never has gone as far as subway cars in NYC.

Someone has to draw a line between our rights & the bullshit safety that comes with the installation of these cameras. These cameras are not going to prevent an attack no matter what they tell you. I hope they scrap the installtion of these cameras inside cars completely.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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