Comments on: Today’s Headlines

By: ke

ke — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:08:46 +0000

The Eric Morris post on Freakonomics is great stuff. I especially love this bit: “Think of Soviet shoppers spending their lives in endless queues to purchase artificially low-priced but exceedingly scarce goods. Then think of Americans who can fulfill nearly any consumerist fantasy quickly but at a monetary cost. Free but congested roads have left us shivering on the streets of Moscow.”

Where was this a year ago?

By: donnie jeffcoat

donnie jeffcoat — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:24:50 +0000

Dear bikers,

Please stop being so obnoxious to pedestrians. I know most of you aren’t, but some of you REALLY are. We’re on your side against the cars and we don’t stand in your way as much either. So please just calm down and stop resorting to heckling and profanity when you need to pass me. It doesn’t help your image. We’re all in a hurry, and we’re all equally important. Okay?

Thank you.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:03:20 +0000

Re. booth closings, one general comment and one specific.

Generally speaking, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’d rather pay more for better service than have them pander by trying to keep fares low and make major cuts.

Specifically speaking, shutting the booth at High Street is a bad idea. That area is deserted late at night and the station itself is fairly spacious and isolated. There aren’t a whole lot of places I feel unsafe getting off the subway late at night (certainly not at Bergen or Carroll since there are always people on Smith Street) but that’s one of them, even WITH the staffed booth.

By: Rhywun

Rhywun — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:58:32 +0000

The other day I half-jokingly wondered whether someone who kills a pedestrian while driving illegally would get jail time, because y’know, I thought it was a no-brainer. Naturally, the actual result is that the driver gets off scot-free. I should have expected nothing less.

By: Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:43:18 +0000

To really get pissed off you have to read the second comment in the Daily News story of the auto-murder on Cross Bay Blvd.

By: BicyclesOnly

BicyclesOnly — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:18:15 +0000

Cutting MTA booths: In addtion to the safety impact, unstaffed station entry points allow no means of getting a bike in or out of the subway. Moreover, MTA does not always notify you at the entry to the stairs whether or not there is a staffed, bike-accessible entry available at the bottom (or top) of the stairs. So you end up lugging the bike up or down only to have to lug it back again. This also occurs under the new “roaming policy,” where the booth attendant leaves the booth with a sign stating they are in the station wearing a burgundy vest, but they are nowhere to be found so you are stuck with the bike and no way to enter through a supposedly staffed entrance.