Archive for the 'Traffic' Category

NYT: Brooklyn Boy, 11, Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver

Published
by
Jon
on July 19, 2008
in Children, Code enforcement and Traffic
. 0 Comments

Christine Hauser and Kathryn Carlson reported in yesterday’s Times - online editions, in any case, that Rondell Grant, eleven years old, was killed last Saturday by a hit-and-run driver. Brooklyn Boy, 11, Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver. Grant was apparently killed after two cars sped past him - he then stepped into the street and was hit by a third car. This suggests that the three cars may have been travelling - and speeding - together.  And that Rondell Grant’s death may have been entirely unnecessary.

Grant lived at 505 East 43rd Street in East Flatbush; he was struck and killed in front of 608 East 42nd Street, between Foster Avenue and Avenue D.

Time, we think, to consider speed bumps.

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.

Good Samaritan killed on Prospect Expressway

Published
by
Jon
on August 25, 2007
in Crime, Hazards and Traffic
. 1 Comment

From the Times’ “Metro Briefing” on Thursday, page B4 of the print edition, link to online archived version here

A man who stopped to help a driver in a disabled car on the Prospect Expressway early yesterday was killed when a drunken driver in a third car smashed into his car and the broken-down vehicle, the police said. The police said the victim, Rafael Rafailov, 50, stopped to assist a vehicle that was stopped in the middle southbound lane about 1:20 a.m. Mr. Rafailov and the driver of the disabled car were outside their vehicles when a car driven by Alexey Bushuyev, 22, of Brooklyn, struck their cars, the police said. Mr. Bushuyev and the driver of the disabled car, who was not identified, suffered minor injuries. Mr. Rafailov was declared dead at the scene, the police said. Mr. Bushuyev was charged with driving while intoxicated.

This is, of course, quite disturbing, and sad.

I’d like to know how this fatality is reported in the Times. Is its newsworthiness becasue it involves a crime (drunken driving) and a death? My impression, as a reader of the Times for longer than I’d like to admit, is that a story either one of those elements - but not both wouldn’t make it into the paper - and the sine qua non is not the fatality - but the arrest. Which is likely generated via NYPD press release.

And if this is all the information we’re getting from the paper of record about traffic safety on the Prospect - what we’re seeing is a narrowly selected grop of trees - but not a cue about the size, shape, color, or age of the forest.

Cross-posted on www.catonstratford.com .

Why we need a blog

Published
by
Jon
on July 31, 2007
in Crime, Energy, Polar Bears and Traffic
. 3 Comments

Because many of us are having conversations about the same subjects - and this blog might help in aggregating those little conversations - to find consensus and a larger, clearer voice. Here are the issues that I find myself discussing, often, with neighbors:

  •  traffic on Caton Avenue
    • noise
    • safety
    • pollution
  • Green energy issues -
    • solar paneles
    • insulation
    • other  ways to save money, and make the neighborhood a nicer, healthier place to live (and to stop global warming, which will eventually cause us to be overrun by polar bears)
  • crime
    • this seems - at the moment - more an issue for people on the (eastern)?) end of the parade ground - Parade Place, etc.
  • Environmental health and safety issues
    • the fuel pipelines which are underneath us
    • the possibility of a breast cancer cluster in Kensington

So - I think that’s a starting point.

Jon

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