M.T.A. Approves Smaller Fare and Toll Increases
As part of a financing deal approved by the State Legislature last week, the base subway and bus fare will rise from $2 to $2.25 on June 28 — instead of $2.50 — and the authority will avert layoffs. Commuter railroad fares will rise on June 17.
… The cost of a 30-day MetroCard will rise to $89 (instead of $103) from the current price of $81.
Obviously, I’d rather keep the current prices, but this is much better than the original price hike.
I tried to go to the Brooklyn Bacon Takedown last night, but it sold out quickly, leaving a long line of disappointed (and hungry) bacon lovers.
New York City overlaid on various American cities. Love that walkability.
M.T.A. Increases Fares and Cuts Services
The fare hikes on the subway and buses, including an increase in the base subway and bus fare to $2.50, from $2, will take effect May 31.
Commuter rail fares will increase June 1. Tolls on the authority’s bridges and tunnels will also go up, with the increase taking effect in mid-July.
The service cuts are far reaching. They include the elimination of 35 bus routes and two subway lines, the W and Z. Off-peak and weekend subway, bus and commuter rail service will also be cut back.
Deconstructing the Missing Weeks of a Teacher's Life
“I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance,” the woman said several months later in describing her ordeal. “It was like 10 minutes had passed. But it was almost three weeks.”
On Aug. 28, a Thursday, a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Hamilton Heights named Hannah Emily Upp went for a jog along Riverside Drive. That jog is the last thing that Ms. Upp says she remembers before the deckhands rescued her from the waters of New York Harbor on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16.
NYC making parts of Broadway pedestrian-only
The plan calls for Broadway to be closed to vehicles from 47th Street to 42nd Street. Traffic would continue to flow through on crossing streets, but the areas between the streets would become pedestrian malls, with chairs, benches and cafe tables with umbrellas.
Seventh Avenue would be widened slightly within Times Square to accommodate the extra traffic diverted from Broadway.
Below 42nd Street, Broadway would be open to traffic, but then would shut down again at Herald Square, from 35th Street to 33rd Street. Then, below 33rd, it would open again.
Yay!
The Professional Panhandling Plague
But over the last several years, the urban resurgence has proved an irresistible draw to a new generation of spangers. And while New York City’s aggressive emphasis on quality-of-life policing under two successive mayors has kept them at bay, less vigilant cities have been overwhelmed. Indeed, panhandling is epidemic in many places—from cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Memphis, Orlando, and Albuquerque to smaller college towns like Berkeley. “People in New York would be shocked at what one encounters in other cities these days, where the panhandling can be very intimidating,” says Daniel Biederman, a cofounder of three business improvement districts in Manhattan, including the Grand Central Partnership, which grappled effectively with homelessness in the city’s historic train station in the early 1990s. “Panhandling has gotten especially bad in cities that have a reputation for being liberal and tolerant. They have tried to be open-minded, but now many of them see the problem as out of control.”
I’ve definitely noticed this. Not a day went by in Seattle without at least one person asking me for money. Here in New York, it happens at most once a week.
Anecdotal surveys by journalists and police, and even testimony by panhandlers themselves, suggest that begging can yield anywhere from $20 to $100 a day—though police in Coos Bay, Oregon, found that local panhandlers were taking in as much as $300 a day in a Wal-Mart parking lot. … In Memphis, a local FOX News reporter, Jason Carter, donned old clothes and hit the streets earlier this year, earning about $10 an hour. “Just the quasi-appearance of being homeless filled my cup,” Carter observed.
(via Marginal Revolution)
Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes
In a surprising reshaping of the urban landscape, the city is creating a public esplanade along a portion of one of its most prominent streets, Broadway in Midtown, setting aside the east side of the roadway for a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters.
The esplanade, which the city is calling Broadway Boulevard, will run from 42nd Street to Herald Square. Scheduled to open in mid-August, it will change that section of Broadway from a four-lane to a two-lane street.
I love, love, love that the city is doing this. I hope it catches on and we see more Manhattan streets converted. (via kottke)
