Archive for February, 2008

Republican Majority in NY State Senate reduced to 1; Democrat wins special election

Published
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Jon
on February 28, 2008
in NY State Politics and Uncategorized
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In a special election to fill an empty seat, Republicans have lost a special election - in a district in which they have a nearly 2-to-1 advantage. From Danny Hakim’s piece on the Times website this morning:

The victory meant that a single Senate seat now stands between the Democratic Party and full control of state government. And many on both sides of the aisle were left wondering: If the Republicans could not win in this district, where they have a 78,454 to 46,824 enrollment advantage, could they win anywhere?

- snip -

Republicans feel they have failed to convince upstate voters that they will suffer if the state is entirely controlled by New York City Democrats — the Senate Democrats are led by Senator Malcolm Smith of Queens.

But persuading voters to hang on to the status quo may not be easy in an election year when voters seem eager for change.

“Obviously, we have no margin for error,” said Senator George H. Winner Jr., an Elmira Republican. “Clearly, our message is not resonating, that it’s important not to have change in this circumstance.”

Republicans in Albany Say It’s Not Over, The New York Times

We used to see Danny Hakim’s byline on articles about the automobile industry, often datelined Detroit. Now they all come from Albany. Perhaps they’re just getting better placement, but our impression is that we’re getting better and better coverage of state politics.

One could draw the inference that an excellent reporter, assigned to cover an aging, anachronistic system, slow to respond to modern conditions, resistant to attempts at transparency, heavily conditioned to manipulate coverage about itself , in a city known for bitter winters, has now been assigned to cover an aging, anachronistic system, slow to respond to modern conditions, resistant to attempts at transparency, heavily conditioned to manipulate coverage about itself , in a city known for bitter winters.

Punishment or reward? Certainly good for us.

OSHA accuses Deutsche Bank building contractors of 44 violations; criminal investigation is pending

Published
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Jon
on February 23, 2008
in Code enforcement and NYFD
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When a subcontracting firm - the “John Galt Corporation” - is named for the protagonist in an anti-union, anti-government-regulator novel (Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead) it is to be hoped that at least one decision-maker would have thought it disturbing to put such a firm in charge of safety. (See David W. Dunlap’s “A Literary Footnote to a Fire: John Galt,” on the Times’s City Room Blog.

John Galt Corporation and Bovis Lend-Lease are accused of safety violations which led to the deaths of two firefighters. William K. Rashbaum and Charles V. Bagli, “Bank Tower Contractors Accused of 44 Violations,” The New York Times, February 20th, 2008. Rashbaum and Bagli report that the staff of the New York County District Attorney’s Office have been presentign evidence to a grand jury.

Melissa Gould’s re-imagined New York Map

Published
by
Jon
on February 20, 2008
in Brooklyn History, Maps and Urban Planning
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Melissa Gould has created a re-imagined map of New York as it might have been had the Germans won World War II.

NEU-YORK is a cautionary meditation, suggesting what the local geographical reality might have been like had victorious Nazis succeeded in bringing the Third Reich across the Atlantic Ocean in 1945. At the same time it is an exploration of psychological transport, place, displacement and memory. This re-imagining of the city plays with comparison and misrecognition, exploring the coexistence of past and present, fiction and reality.

Link to Neu-York, by Melissa Gould.

Fascinating and disturbing. Even more disturbing, I think, because it’s so fascinating.

Persistent rumors of third-party candidacy disturb professional pols

Published
by
Jon
on February 19, 2008
in Containing only small amounts of accuracy
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Campaign pros in both parties are worried that the mysterious Brooklynite publicly known only as “Mister President” may consent to leading a third-party ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg running for the vice-presidency. One observer said that while the mayor was long on practical experience, only “Mister President” had the both the gravitas necessary to lead the free world and the fire in the belly to stop the proliferation of circular projectiles in public parks.

One source, who declined to be identified for the record, seemed to growl at our correspondent: “First, he’s got them all beat on looks and charm, and he knows it. Second, if he weren’t running, how come he’s got the best website of any of his peers? They didn’t design that overnight. The color coordination alone!”

Continue reading ‘Persistent rumors of third-party candidacy disturb professional pols’

Subway station safety in question after collapse — amNY.com

Published
by
Jon
on February 12, 2008
in transportation
. 0 Comments

Marlene Naanes, “Subway station safety in question after collapse,” A.M. New York, dated February 11th, 2008:

After a subway platform edge in Brooklyn splintered beneath a 14-year-old boy’s feet, sending him onto the Q train tracks several feet below, the teen’s family Sunday called for transit officials to take quick action in making emergency station repairs throughout the system.

“I saw the train coming,” said Avi Katz of Borough Park. “I ran to the platform. After a couple tries, I pulled myself up.” the station platform should not have failed as it appears to have done so in this particular incident - Transit Authority spokesman

The boy narrowly escaped being struck in the Jan. 28 incident at the Kings Highway train station, said his mother, Rena Katz, especially since he was alone and the platform light above him was out. Almost two weeks later, Avi remains too scared to ride the subway again, and the station’s 8-inch-wide wooden platform edge remains rotting and disintegrating, said Assemb. Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn).

Transit workers nailed a wooden plank over the spot where Avi fell, causing a tripping hazard, Hikind said. The light above is still out, Hikind said, and the teen’s yarmulke, which fell off his head in the ordeal, remains on the track.

“This time we were lucky but next time we may not be so lucky,” Hikind said.

A transit spokesman said the station is considered safe and is already slated to be rehabbed. It’s unclear what’s in store for the wooden edge, called a rubbing board.

Also unclear is how many stations have wooden rubbing boards. Officials constantly warn riders not to stand on the rubbing board or the edge of any platform, New York City Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said in an e-mail.

“That said, the station platform should not have failed as it appears to have done so in this particular incident,” he added.

“Subway station safety in question after collapse”: amNY.com

Pneumatic Tubes: Bringing Them Back

Published
by
Jon
on February 10, 2008
in Pipelines, Traffic, Urban Planning, transportation and underground systems
. 0 Comments

The Postal Service first used pneumatic tubes between New York and Brooklyn in 1897; the system expanded to connect individual post offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Similar systems were used in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago in the United States, and in Europe, Prague, London, Paris, and Russia. Pneumatic Tube Canister National Postal Museum


At its peak, New York’s pneumatic tubes carried 10 million letters a day

At its peak, the New York system had 27 miles of pipes, and carried 10 million letters per day. In “You’ve Got Mail,” an Op-Ed piece published in the Times on December 2, 2007, Henry E. Nass proposes that we return to using the tubes. He makes a strong case that the tubes would reduce vehicular traffic, speed mail and parcel deliveries, and reduce pollution.

Exactly why the system was mothballed is puzzling. According to Nass:

The pneumatic tube system continued to operate, carrying about a third of the city’s mail, until the end of 1953, when amid a political fight over the post office’s lease with the company that ran the network, it was decided that the system was too expensive to operate and that it was more efficient to use trucks.

The calculation that tubes, unimpeded by traffic, needing no gasoline or repair, and never being involved in accidents, could be less efficient than trucks, seems grossly incorrect, even without the environmental and health costs accounted for. Michael Wofsey, writing in Wired, reported that the Post Office’s abandonment of pneumatic tubes may be similar to Los Angeles ending its streetcar system.

In 1953, the post office’s higher-ups decided to abandon the system, letting the tubing decay into an underground Grand Prix for the city’s rodent population. Arthur E. Summerfield had been appointed postmaster general under President Eisenhower and had claimed that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could save the tube system. He insisted that the city’s mail could be delivered more cheaply with trucks than with compressed air. Conspiracy theorists allege that the pneumatic tube system was dismantled primarily to sell a new fleet of General Motors delivery trucks to the city of New York. As evidence, they point out that Summerfield owned a profitable GM dealership and that Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson - appointed alongside Summerfield - was on the GM board of directors. “They had us shut down the tube systems,” said one postal employee who worked with the tubes 50 years ago and still wishes to remain anonymous. “And then all of a sudden we started getting GM delivery trucks.”

Michael Wofsey, “Back to the Future,” Wired 2.05.

Here’s some other information about tube-delivery systems that illustrates their utility:

In the 1980’s, William Vandersteel patented a non-pneumatic tube system which could carry freight on pallets. SUBTRANS rendering by Wm Vandersteel via US DOT The United States Department of Transportation evaluated Vandersteel’s SUBTRANS system - but it doesn’t seem to have gained a constituency.

As of 1994, according to the DOT, the following systems were in operation:

Nippon Steel Corporation and Daifuku Machinery Works Ltd., using an early license from TRANSCO of Houston, Texas, have built a 0.6-m- (2-ft-) diameter, 1.5-km (0.9-mi), double line to move burnt lime in Nippon Steel’s Muroran Number 2 steel plant. (8) This elevated line (figure 3) was built in the mid-1980s and uses capsule trains (two cars per train) to move 22,000 metric tons (24,266 short tons) per month. This system is called AIRAPID.

Sumitomo Cement Co. built a similar system in 1983 to move limestone 3.2 km (2 mi) between a mine and their cement plant. (9) The 1-m- (3.2-ft-) diameter pipe carries three car capsule trains delivering 2.2 million metric tons (2.43 million short tons) per year. This system was originally based on a Russian license but was considerably redesigned by the company.

A number of tube systems, called TRANSPROGRESS systems, for moving crushed rock are being used in the former Soviet Union. (10) An 11-km (6.8-mi) line for garbage was built in 1983 from St. Petersburg to an outlying processing facility using TRANSPROGRESS technology. This technology has also been applied to intraplant systems.

PUBLIC ROADS On-Line (Autumn 1994): Tube Freight Transportation.

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