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Most Extreme Commuter Yet

Posted by
on June 15th, 2008 at 6:39 pm

As you might recall, I have blogged about the AMNY feature “Extreme Commuter” which showcases riders who have extreme daily commutes. Today’s extreme commuter in my opinion deserves the championship belt for the most extreme commute if such a belt existed. Marlene Naanes of AMNY has brought us a new extreme commuter today & his name is Kevin Crowley. So why is his commute so extreme? Well lets just say he uses 3 different forms of transportation to get to work & lives about 500 miles away from his job in Queens! Here is Marlene’s report courtesy of AMNY:

Kevin Crowley travels almost 500 miles to work everyday.

The fact that he works for JetBlue helps speed up his lengthy commute from Buffalo to the airline’s headquarters in Kew Gardens. As an employee, Crowley, 36, hops on a plane for free every morning, but his entire commute isn’t that simple.

“I take a car to the airport. I take an airplane down here. I get on a train,” he said. “So it’s trains, planes and automobiles everyday for me.”

For the past four years, Crowley has traveled from Buffalo for his job as a JetBlue safety analyst. He usually begins his commute with a drive to the airport at 5 a.m. to catch a 5:45 flight from Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Once he arrives in the city, he takes the JFK AirTrain to the E train and arrives in Kew Gardens by about 7:30 a.m.

“There’s a lot of people that I work with that commute in from Long Island or that commute in from New Jersey and their commute is almost as long as mine except I live 500 miles away and take an airplane to work,” Crowley said.

While he get to ride on a comfy leather seat and can watch direct TV, read the newspaper or nap on his way to work, storms can exponentially add to his 2-1/2 hour commute. Crowley said he’s been stranded at the airport for up to six hours a couple of times.

He admits that typically by Wednesday, he’s waiting for the week to end.

If his commute was shorter, he could devote more time to his family, remodeling his house, or playing hockey, Crowley said. He keeps his home in Buffalo to benefit from the reduced cost of living. He currently owns a 3,000-square-foot home in a historical district.

“We may not have two professional baseball teams, and two professional football teams, and two professional basketball teams and everything else, but it’s that closer community feeling that you get living up there that’s enjoyable,” Crowley said.

I also suggest you check out the interview with Kevin which can be seen by clicking here.

All I can say is WOW!

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Transit Beauty Tips

Posted by
on June 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

I was viewing the AMNY website & noticed that one of the headlines was “Board The Beauty Train”. I automatically figured the report would contain beauty tips for those riding the subway. The genius that I am was correct & here is that report courtesy of AMNY:

Squeezing zits, plucking grays, going to bed with mascara on — we all know they’re beauty no-nos, but we all do ’em anyway. Add making up your face on the subway or bus to the list. It’s messy, it’s tacky, it’s rude. And it’s unavoidable.

So let’s say subway makeup is a necessary evil, and there’s a right way and a wrong way to get cute on your commute.

We asked makeup artist Ashunta Sheriff, who not only does the fabulous faces of Alicia Keys and Rihanna, she does her own on the F train. Here’s an m.o. for girls on the go, courtesy of New York’s “beauty sheriff.”

DO:

  • Keep a makeup case locked and loaded in your bag. A clear plastic or transparent mesh bag lets you see everything.
  • Choose products that are petite and lightweight with small applicators.
  • Add a clear brow groomer for instant polish and black liner pencil for after-work glamour
  • On the train, look for a corner seat, and take one product at a time out of your case.

DON’T:

  • Use loose powders or liquids on the fly; stick to creams, gels, pencils.
  • File or polish your nails or apply perfume except on the platform. “Spraying scent in the subway car is substance abuse,” Sheriff says.
  • Curl your lashes when the train is moving.
  • Use dark lip-liner. “Leave this look on the graffiti train,” Sheriff says.
  • Even contemplate tweezing brows or clipping nails. “It’s mass transit, not gross transit,” according to our beauty guru.

Call me crazy for asking but shouldn’t these beauty exercises be done before boarding the system to begin with? Besides maybe a quick second to spray a bit of your cologne or perfume so you have the freshest smell to you, I don’t see why the other things can’t be done prior to entering the system.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Ask Gene Conclusion

Posted by
on June 15th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

5 days ago, I wrote an entry about the New York Times City Room Blog having the Straphangers Campaign‘ lawyer & main face Gene Russianoff answer transit related questions in a 4 part series. The series has concluded & I have gone through all the questions & answers that were posted. To be honest, I expected a bit more from this Q&A series.

Unfortunately for Gene, the quality of many of the questions was severely lacking & I’m sure many would agree with me. How could of a question about the air brakes playing something from West Side Story make the cut? This question had to be put in for comic relief right? I also question Sarah wondering about why ceilings are not painted when a station is renovated. While it is not the worst question in the world, I wonder what were the other 2 questions she had that were not answered! Seriously the West Side Story question irked me!

I can only hope that a better organized Q&A session can be done in the future as it is a pleasure to hear from a bright transit advocate such as Gene Russianoff.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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So Which Is It?

Posted by
on June 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Over the last few days, conflicting reports have come out about New Jersey Transit (NJT, NJ Transit) service on the Raritan Valley line. One report stated how local & state officials were meeting to discuss the possibility of creating train service from Easton, Pennsylvania to New York City. Here is that report courtesy of The Morning Call:

State and local officials from Pennsylvania and New Jersey met at Lafayette College on Thursday to discuss the possibility of providing train service from Easton to New York City.

Officials who attended the meeting were quick to describe the plans as ”preliminary” and ”informal.” But they said such train service is much more plausible today thanks to high gas prices driving up demand for public transportation, along with New Jersey Transit’s plans to build a new tunnel into Manhattan that would double the number of trains going in and out of the city.

‘This is not something that’s going to happen soon, or without a lot of work, but I think people are optimistic and are willing to give it a try,” said Michael Dowd, a vice president with the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and a Northampton councilman. He said any plan is still ”years away.’

Roughly 30 people attended the meeting, including Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr., Phillipsburg Mayor Harry Wyant, state Rep. Bob Freeman, D- Northampton; and representatives from the offices of state Sen. Rob Wonderling, R-Montgomery; U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, R-15th, and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Dowd said.

Panto and Freeman deferred all questions to Dowd. The meeting also included officials from New Jersey Transit, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission and Lafayette.

Officials interviewed Thursday said they did not discuss specific details, such as the cost of the project. Instead, they focused on potential obstacles and strategies to hurdle them.

Dowd said officials agreed they must form a commission to help identify funding sources and show that NJ Transit support is unified.

Among other things, he said the commission would look at getting NJ Transit access into Pennsylvania, environmental and right-of-way issues and determining which tracks can be used and which need to be repaired or built.

The majority of the meeting was spent discussing a strategy that would help link Phillipsburg with New York City, Dowd said.

”If we don’t get the train to Phillipsburg, we are not getting it to Easton,” Dowd said.

In September, NJ Transit’s board approved a $1.2 million study of public transportation improvements in the state’s Raritan Valley and Interstate 78 corridor. Among other things, the study — to be completed by the end of the year — will look at the viability of providing train service from Phillipsburg to existing lines at High Bridge or Hackettstown.

”Pending the results of the study and funding resources, we will then decide what the best course is to take,” said NJ Transit spokesman Joe Dee.

The study does not look at possibly expanding service to Easton, Dee said. Extending the line across state borders will not be easy, he said.

There was a time when passenger train and trolley services connected the Lehigh Valley with New York. Direct passenger service between New York and the Valley ended in 1961.

NJ Transit is also considering introducing a train line along the Interstate 80 corridor from Scranton to Hoboken, N.J., and then to Manhattan. NJ Transit officials said the timeline for construction of that line will depnd on available funding.

Now onto the conflicting report which talks about service cuts that were approved this past Wednesday at New Jersey Transit Board of Directors meeting. The report is courtesy of the Asbury Park Press:

Rail advocates blasted NJ Transit officials at Wednesday’s board of directors meeting for train service cuts scheduled to take effect in August.

The changes, to start Aug. 3, include:

Consolidation of some off-peak and midday North Jersey Coast Line trains. However, shuttle train service between Bay Head and Long Branch will be available.

Consolidation of “a pair of trains” on each of the Morris and Essex branch lines in the off-peak hours.

A switch to bi-hourly service on the Raritan Valley Line on Sunday morning, with parallel service on the No. 113 bus route from Dunellen offered as an alternative.

NJ Transit Executive Director Richard Sarles said the changes are being made to shift equipment and resources to where the demand is. He said the changes will provide 8,000 more seats, in conjunction with more new, multilevel rail cars entering service, allowing the redeployment of single-level cars.

“What you’ll see is . . . there is increased demand on service to midtown New York and we’re using our resources to meet it,” Sarles said after the meeting. “We want to get the capacity to where the demand is.”

Sarles said the cuts were made on trains with low ridership and low demand.

But advocates charged that NJ Transit created the conditions for those declines by targeting off-peak riders with a 25 percent fare increase in 2005. That caused ridership to drop, said David Peter Alan, chairman of the Lackawanna Coalition, a nonprofit commuter-advocacy organization.

“When NJ Transit eliminated half of the weekend trains to and from Hoboken without notice in 2006, I predicted further service cuts. When management raised off-peak fares in 2005, I predicted they’d use the ensuing decline in ridership as an excuse to eliminate service,” Alan said. “That was 20 months ago. You’ve removed our mobility.”

Some Coast Line riders have voiced concern to the Asbury Park Press that they’ve been told they’ll lose their NJ Transit connection to Hoboken, meaning they’ll have to make additional connections between the New York City subway and PATH trains to get to work.

“These are off-peak and reverse-peak trains,” Sarles said of the Coast Line changes. “We are trying to match capacity to demand.”

Alan told the board that NJ Transit violated state law by making service cuts without holding a public hearing first and called for the changes to be rolled back until such hearings are held for riders to comment.

“I don’t know what’s worse, the severity of the cuts or that it was done in secret,” Alan said. “It makes no sense making midday cuts when the price of gas is so high.”

Alan said these cuts affect riders who either don’t have a car or can’t drive for medical or other reasons and are dependent on NJ Transit. Some of them ride the train to and from work in the reverse direction of the rush-hour crowd, and now face a longer wait, he said.

“We are making sure that service is maintained for transit-dependent riders,” Sarles said.

Sarles said increased ridership has helped NJ Transit keep up with rising prices of diesel fuel, but said it still has to manage its budget.

I will be honest, my experience & knowledge of New Jersey Transit operations is severely limited compared to that of the MTA so I tend to seek out analysis from more experienced NJ Transit riders. I decided to check out Subchat to see if any discussion was going on about the issue & there was. I must say one particular post in the thread about these reports caught my eye. According to poster “Chris R16/R2730”, racism was the reasoning for these cuts. Here is his full response:

Nope, racism.

Look at the services they are cutting. Off peak. Weekend. Reverse peak. Intermediate. I’ve ridden enough NJT trains to know that on many lines, especially on the M&E and RVL lines, the bulk of this traffic is not caucasian. NJT officials only care about those who ride peak trains between points in Jersey and Manhattan.

I am not sure what to think, I mean could racism be the reasoning for service cuts? I will admit that the reasoning seems extreme at first but I am not blind to the fact that racism is still going strong (unfortunately!) in our world today. I do admit that I could definitely believe that they are more concerned about riders between New Jersey & Manhattan. In all honesty, every form of rail transit in the tri-state area is bias towards commuters going to & from Manhattan.

I would love to hear more about the possibility of racism being a driving force or even just somewhat of a force to these cuts. Talk about opening a pandora’s box if that could ever be proven. In the meantime, here is the link to the thread if you want to read the comments from others on both reports.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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MTA Plans To Meet Residents’ Demands

Posted by
on June 15th, 2008 at 10:40 am

Over the last number of years, residents of the Bay Ridge Towers have been fighting to get something done about the fencing problem around the property. The property which is located at the northern end of Bay Ridge, has train tracks that go under & around it. The issue concerning many residents is that there is a hiding space for homeless people amongst others underneath the propertys’ deck. The space is easily accessible due to a hole in the chain link fence. After years of battling, a new & stronger fence is being put in place. Jake Mooney of the New York Times has more on the story:

FOR at least four years, Barbara Grebin and fellow residents of Bay Ridge Towers, a pair of 30-story co-op buildings at the northern tip of that Brooklyn neighborhood, have been fighting to seal off access to the train tracks that run under the complex’s parking deck and alongside its foundations.

The space under the deck, they and local officials say, is a cavernous hidden shelter for groups of homeless people, easily accessible by climbing through a hole in a chain-link fence and descending a rocky slope. There is ample room under its high ceiling to sleep in a dark corner or make a fire.

But the Long Island Rail Road, which owns the tracks, has always maintained that their security is the responsibility of the private freight company that leases them. That company disagreed, the fence around the tracks remained inadequate, and the homeless people kept coming. Which is why Ms. Grebin was not expecting much from a meeting at the co-op on the subject in May.

“I’m thinking, here we go again — I’m going down there, I’m going to hear a whole lot of nothing,” she recalled.

What she got, to her surprise and delight, was word that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which controls the L.I.R.R., would meet residents’ demands by putting up a new, stronger fence and increasing patrols of the area. The shift was announced in a news release from Gov. David Paterson, who cited concerns about rail security.

The president of the railroad, Helena Williams, in a letter to the local community board, insisted that the tracks were the freight line’s responsibility. But the agency will make the changes, she added, because it “strives to be a good neighbor.”

Regarding the territorial disputes, she said in an interview, “From the community’s perspective and the railroad’s perspective, these issues are secondary to the fact that we need fencing.”

Residents of neighborhoods along the railroad’s tracks frequently request fencing, she said, but she described the circumstances at Bay Ridge Towers as unique. Efforts to find homeless people under the buildings and persuade them to go elsewhere had failed, she said, and the site is tricky, from a security perspective, because it is both next to New York Harbor and on top of the Buckeye Pipeline, a conduit for aviation fuel that federal authorities said was the target of a failed 2007 terrorist plot.

“If the homeless have access,” Ms. Williams said, “then other unauthorized people can have access.”

According to Josephine Beckmann, district manager of Community Board 10, the organization that arranged the May 13 meeting, some residents greeted the news with a standing ovation, and one woman cried with joy.

Ms. Grebin, a 66-year-old retired administrative assistant, said she was “astounded” at the agency’s about-face, adding, “I was delirious that day.”

Now, she said happily, she is wondering if there is another cause she can focus on. “We’re a co-op,” she said, “and if something’s going on that we don’t like, we make a stink.”

Lets hope the new fencing will be installed in a timely manner & helps keep trespassers off the property & tracks.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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