Kudos to NYC Transit for its frankness about the overcrowding crisis on the subways. As any rider of the L train or the numbered lines knows, the system is straining at maximum capacity -- and, NYCTA says, it's not just that the trains themselves are full; so are the tracks.

“From my point of view, this is scary,” said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board. “This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we’re several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We’re constrained.”

I've written a lot in support of congestion pricing, and I continue to support it. But the Transit Authority's report is a clear reminder that the need to couple congestion pricing with serious capital investment in mass transit upgrades is far from academic.

Among Charlton Heston’s wonderful, awful movies is the lesser-known "The Agony and the Ecstasy", in which he plays Michelangelo to Rex Harrison’s Pope Julius II. The movie revolves around the seemingly interminable painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (it actually took Michelangelo four years to finish the job). A running joke in the movie is the Pope constantly asking when it will be completed. His increasingly frustrated question, “When will you make an end?” is always answered, “When I’m finished.”

After spending the last 19 years riding the #7 train, and being delayed by the seemingly interminable track work, I find myself wanting to ask the workers, “When will you make an end?”

Since 1988, scarcely a week has gone by without some track work being done on one mile-long stretch of track, from just outside the Hunter’s Point station to the 33rd Street station. Near the end of this past winter, service was shut down for six consecutive weekends, but the real problem is during the weekdays, when trains are slowed or stopped due to the work crews doing … well, who knows what they’re doing?

Mayor Bloomberg won’t allow 311 operators internet access because he’s afraid they’d shop at work.

The 311 non-emergency government information system is a program Mayor Bloomberg loves to brag about, touting it as among his greatest accomplishments during the 05 campaign.

311 operators’ mission is to help citizens navigate the often confusing government agency maze. Theoretically, 311 could duplicate much of what the Public Advocate’s office is charged with doing as the people’s ombudsman. But that’s theory. In reality, 311 is not much more useful than 411 directory assistance operators, with 311 often referring callers back to the agency whose non-responsiveness or unavailability, if the problem arises after the agency is closed, prompted the 311 call to begin with. One reason for the department’s relative uselessness, is their lack of internet access.

It blows my mid, that in 2007, 14 years after the web became a mainstream information resource, that New York City won’t allow people whose primary responsibility is to provide information, internet access.

I love the snow. Absolutely love it. Grew up in Southern California, so I went camping in the snow but never LIVED with snow.

My first experience with LIVING with snow was, ironically, a White Christmas in Kyoto Japan. GORGEOUS! Japanese architecture seems designed to look gorgeous in the snow. Walked all over snow covered Kyoto that first snowfall in a place I lived.

Most New Yorkers I know hate it when it snows. They say the snow gets dirty too fast and it becomes impossible to walk and all the people who refuse to clean up their dog's shit leave frozen little presents for pedestrians to step on weeks later when the snow melts. All true, but by and large I love looking up at the snow falling through the light of the street lamps, love hearing the snow hitting the window as I sleep and love seeing the snow on the ground before anyone steps on it.

But today, NYC SUCKED in the snow, culminated in iced over stairs at train stations that no one was willing to deal with despite the fact that it made the stairs almost impassable.

First off, in NYC the corners of intersections get all the snow from the streets piled up, making it hard to cross the street. Fine, the road is clear, but the drains are now covered, so the street floods, and pedestrians can't cross without great effort. I used to see that as a minor irritant, but you try pushing a stroller through NYC city streets after a snow. It is terrible! I can only imagine what it is like for someone in a wheelchair or an elderly person. What's with NYC? Can't they figure out how to clear the corners? It's not like no one walks here. I understand that after one day you can't expect them to be cleared. But there are times they don't get cleared away for weeks, except for that tiny path hordes of people have to squeeze past that are formed by the pedestrians wading through themselves.

Are you are like me, constantly irritated that subway service declines even as rate hikes pile up...and the MTA keeps two sets of books, one to plead poverty so they can increase our fares, one to plead plenty so they can pat themselves on the back, and who knows which is true? Well, your perception of the declining subways may be true.

According to the Straphangers Campaign, subways have gotten dirtier for the second year in a row.

The number of clean subway cars decreased for the second year in a row, according to the eighth annual “subway shmutz” survey by the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, released today. The survey was conducted on 2,200 subway cars on 22 subway lines between September 2, 2005 and January 5, 2006.

Campaign surveyors rated 47% of subway cars as “clean” down from 61% of cars rated clean in a survey released in the spring 2005. This continued to reverse an earlier trend of improvement found between 2000 and 2004, with the percentage of clean cars going from 32% in the campaign’s 2000 survey, to 47% in 2001, to 59% in 2003, to 66% in the 2004 survey.

Cars on 15 of 22 subway lines saw significant deterioration since last year’s survey (2, 7, A, B, C, D, E, G, J/Z, L ,M, N, R, V and W), while cars on only three lines grew better (1, 3 and 4). Cars on the remaining four lines were largely unchanged (5, 6, F and Q.)

A survey conducted by the Straphanger's Campaign shows that as the MTA slowly does technology upgrades on various subway lines, announcements on subway cars become more frequent and intelligable. Some of the key findings:

For all lines combined, adequate basic announcements increased from 73% in 2004 to 77% in 2005, a statistically significant improvement. Of the 23% rated inadequate, no basic announcement was made at all 36% of the time and announcements were inaudible or garbled 64% of the time.

In 65% of delays and disruptions experienced by our raters, there was either no announcement - or an inaudible, garbled or incorrect one. Of the 65% inadequate delay or disruption announcements, 45% were not made at all; 13% were inaudible or garbled; and 42% were rated “incorrect,

New York City area commuters are all too familiar with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's disrespect for its riders: the MTA hid its budget surpluses to justify a fare increase and, in a time of growing concern about security, has reduced the presence of knowledgeable personnel in trains, stations, and elevators.

Likewise, taxpayers throughout New York State are acquainted with the MTA's lack of consideration for the public's money as the MTA tried to sell publicly-owned real estate it controls for hundreds of millions less than its true value.

Now we see that the MTA has no more regard for its employees than it does for riders or taxpayers. Members of the Transport Workers Union, whose last contract was negotiated in the depths of recession, have asked for things like negotiable wage increases, more reasonable leave policies, and the right to take bathroom breaks without receiving a citation.

But the MTA has been intransigent. Knowing its employees would face tremendous penalties if they were to exercise their most effective bargaining tool and refuse to continue working, it has demanded concessions on pension and health benefits and refused to budge.

But part of this picture is missing. The MTA is a state public authority, primarily controlled by NY Governor George Pataki. Governor Pataki starved the MTA's budget, appointed real estate developer/GOP donor Peter Kalikow to head the MTA and selected the majority of the board that runs the Authority.

Yet Governor Pataki gets let off the hook. We let him dodge accountability, and say: "This is not something where politicians at the last minute ride in on a white horse." That's an unacceptable response from the man who has been the official ultimately in charge of the MTA for the last ten years.

If the MTA continues to stonewall its employees and we all find ourselves unable to get to work one morning -- an outcome that looks likely at this moment of "partial strikes" -- Governor Pataki is the one to call with our complaints.

www.dmiblog.com

Recently a pro-Bloomberg poster on Daily Gotham claimed that New Yorkers have not lost any rights under Bloomberg. I, of course, pointed out the detentions during the RNC that violated the time limit a person can be held before a hearing and the blanket arrests of Critical Mass bicyclists and the fact that simply publicizing Critical Mass is illegal. But the newest abuse of our rights is the searching of bags in the subway. One question is: is it an effective deterrent? I would argue that this is irrelavent legally beacuse, quite simply, these random searches seem very definitely to be a violation of the Bill of Rights.

Here it is:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Let's repeat the key part there:

"...no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Bloomberg's random searches of our backpacks does not fulfill these requirements! Where is Betsy Gotbaum? Isn't it HER JOB to speak out against such abuses?

The NYCLU released a statement this week detailing their concerns over the searches imposed on NYC straphangers after the July 7 bombings in London:

[via NYCLU: NYCLU calls decision to conduct random searches of individuals on New York's subways unconstitutional]

The NYPD can and should investigate any suspicious activity, but the Fourth Amendment prohibits police from conducting searches where there is no suspicion of criminal activity. One of the dangers of random searches is that they can invite the possibility of racial, ethnic or religious profiling. The plan is not workable and will not make New Yorkers more secure but will inconvenience them as police go about finding a needle in a haystack.

So what do the journalistically innocent editors over at The Daily News write?

[via New York Daily News - Home - Editorials: Earth to NYCLU: We're at war]

If this can be the case in heavily guarded London, what does it augur for New York, where transit officials haven't yet troubled to spend most of their security funds and managed only yesterday to figure out how many stations are equipped with recording surveillance cameras. The answer is 76, more than previously known but far, far, far fewer than in London, where cameras have zeroed in on suspects, such as the one in Thursday's attack who was wearing a sweatshirt with "New York" chillingly emblazoned across the chest.

[via New York Daily News - Breaking News - Cops to check bags in NY subway]

Police will begin conducting random searches of packages and backpacks carried by people entering city subways, Mayor Bloomberg announced Thursday after a new series of bomb attacks in London.

Authorities said the system for the checks is still being developed, but the plan is for passengers carrying bags to be selected at random before they have passed through turnstiles.

Random searches? OK. So the Patriot Act gives them the ammunition they need for these random searches; can someone please tell me how profiling is not going to be put into place? I ask because I have never, ever been not profiled --and my Irish American husband should attest to that fact.

Why wouldn't profiling be put into place for this? How will it not be, when more than 4 million people use our public transportation system on a daily basis?

There are 468 subway stations in the system, most of which have multiple entrances, and during rush hours, the flood of humanity in and out of key stations can be overwhelming.

Asked whether the searches might create a bottlenecks at subway entrances, Kelly suggested the searches would be of a small enough sampling of passengers that only individuals, rather than whole crowds, would be delayed.