Frog in a Boiling Pot

    It’s official. NYC will be transitioning to a new side-loading garbage truck. According to Mayor Adams, lucky Manhattan Community Board 9 (Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, and Hamilton Heights) will be the first CB  with 100 percent of its trash containerized and serviced by next year.

 

 

(Image courtesy of The Official Website of the City of New York)

 

    This is all happening four years ahead of the Mayor’s own previous schedule, which is not a case of grandstanding by a Mayor who had his phones seized by the FBI and is the subject of at least three criminal investigations including an investigation into the mayor’s former buildings commissioner that is expected to yield bribery and mob-related charges against several people who helped raise money for Mayor Adams. Nor is it a public relations ploy to distract from the lowest mayoral approval rating (28%) recorded in the over 25 years Quinnipiac University has been polling.

 

    We won’t look askance at the whopping influx of funds needed for the re-fitted Sanitation Industry in these currently lean years of austerity budgets where almost everything but Sanitation has been earmarked for cuts. Still, a fleet of new trucks for our infamously Italian-cuisine-loving Mayor with a mechanized side loader made from superior Italian technology may be more costly than we realize. In addition, there is the maintenance of said trucks, worker training, new signage and much more that will rack up additional costs for this giant overhaul. We won’t mention these concerns because everyone knows Rats are a real problem in NYC, at least from a human point of view.  

 

    What about the rats’ needs? This program is designed to reduce the rat population by starvation. The program champions proudly inform us these containers will effectively deprive rats access to food. Is that fair? Have we completely forgotten about the rats’ right to live and breathe? Sure, they can’t embarrass us on X or GoFundMe, but what if they did have a voice? Will PETA come to their aid citing cruelty and torture? What news outlets or action groups are taking up their cause? Is this the one species that has no right to live or just another species that can’t afford to live in New York City?

 

    Some Paleontologists believe that a small rat-like mammal is the first known creature belonging to the evolutionary line that led to human beings. Its fossil, uncovered in China, is evidence of the earliest “placental” species, an ancestor of all placental mammals (mammals that diverged from other mammals) like us. To assert our Manifest Destiny over rat territory we may be starving to death part of our own ancestral heritage.

 

    So, let’s assume we do effectively begin to starve out the rats. What recourse will rats then have? Will they go quietly in underground rat hospices surrounded by equally emaciated rat friends and family? Will they fight and cannibalize each other to the bitter end until there is nothing left but a few rat bones to pick over? In the course of history, when the means of sustenance runs out, animals have adapted their food source, migrated or gone extinct. I, for one, have had rats chew through my car wiring on four different occasions over the years disabling lights, hindering transmissions, you name it. Apparently, the insulation is yummy, but they go right through the copper strands as well. I no longer park overnight near restaurants. With this new program, will any distance from our finer food sources be safe? Any New Yorker can tell you what rats do to our streets when heavy rains or a broken water main floods their burrows. It’s the quotable “sinking ship.”

 

    Here I think our Mayor and City Council practice the wisdom of the Frog in a Pot. Not to be confused with the Frog in a Blender, this story is if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in lukewarm water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. It’s a parable that has been used to explain everything from the Nazi rise to power to deniers of global warming and the unraveling of democracy around the world. The plan is to eradicate the rodents before they know it.

 

    In today’s world what would people do if they were systematically denied the very food they need to survive? Say it was a group of people on a flight and the stewardess announced there would be only enough food for first class and the plane will never land.  I suspect it will land with a crash. Or imagine a crowd of people waiting for Walmart to open on Black Friday were suddenly told there would be only half as many sales items this year. They’ve made movies about that one. Safe to say humans would not go quietly. Will our great aunt/uncle ancestor, the rodent, go any quieter?

 

    A Dept. of Sanitation (DSNY) report estimates that the new extra wide trash containers will take up between 10% to 25% of curb parking on any given block. That would mean once this becomes a citywide program, it could result in the loss of up to 150,000 parking spaces. Chalk it up to the ever expanding list of citywide initiatives (too many to mention) to systematically choke off street parking and drive it (and us) to ultimate extinction. 

 

    Once again, the middle class, who can’t afford a garage, who need to park our cars on the street, are treated like rats.

The Bridge or the Tunnel

Ever wonder when starting out on that much needed vacation which tunnel to take? The George Washington is farther away, but it’s almost rush hour and the bridge might be faster. Wouldn’t it be nice to know before you get in the car what traffic is like to the stadium? If you have access to the web, you have access to the NYC Dept of Transportation’s Real Time Traffic Cameras (see screenshot above) and you can see current traffic flows all over the city for yourself.
In the above screenshot, I have selected the Lincoln Tunnel camera which opened the Lincoln Tunnel window (with the camera view) on the right. Note: when you rollover a camera icon with your cursor, a panel pops up to identify the camera’s location.
As mentioned before in these pages, this DOT site offers a lot of easily accessible and useful information from parking sign locations to bike rack maps and every New Yorker, and especially every inner city driver, should pay a visit at least once.

Give Thanks for Thursdays or 5-3-5-4

This Thursday Alternate Side Parking is suspended for "Immaculate Conception." Now everyone knows Thursdays are lucky days, but do you know why? Is it because the weekend is almost here? Is it because it was named after the planet Jupiter, the King of the Gods? Even more impressive than these, it’s because Thursdays that are lone Alternate Side Parking Suspended Days have the longest stretch of days possible without the required moving of your car. I know those of you who have to take your car out every day wince when you hear from us who only take the car out for recreation or for transporting in-laws out of town, but we also pay New York City’s higher registration fees, taxes, inspection and insurance, not to mention suffer the whims of the DOT, the PVB, up the WXYZ. So we have to celebrate when Monday we can move the car to the Tue/Fri side and not think about moving it again until next Mon.
Now some may say “OK, sounds lucky,” but what is the 5-3-5-4 in the title? The combination to your gym locker that you keep forgetting, the latest college football genius defense on show this Thanksgiving weekend, or the rest of that girl’s telephone number that rubbed off? None of these.
It is the results of the parallelspaces.com very sophisticated, very state of the art Best Alternate Side Suspended Days Test Formula Numbers Array! Hey, we take parking pretty seriously. Of course, it’s a little too complicated for those of you without an engineering degree, but I can explain it to you laymen (and laywomen) something like this.
Start with the Mon, Tue, Thur., or Fri (Typical Alternate Side Days) just previous to the single suspended day you want to test. Then count the days until your car will no longer be legally parked. For example, this Thursday Street Sweeping is suspended for Thanksgiving. So once you move the car to the Tue side, you don’t have to move it for Wed (1), Thur (2), Fri (3), Sat (4) and Sun (5). That rates a Thur Only Suspended Day as a 5. Tue Only Suspended Days are a 3 and Fridays a 4. While it’s true Mondays are also a 5, the tiebreaker is long weekends almost always involve taking the car somewhere. Yes, just about all of us will take the car somewhere for Thanksgiving, but think last Veterans Day (11/11) and you get my point.
So Thursdays are officially crowned King of the Alternate Side Suspended Days and we thank the King of the Gods for it!
But that’s for single days. What about combinations?

Fight Tickets Online

The DOT announced this week that it is now possible to contest a parking ticket online. The plan is you can present your defense online and have it reviewed by the same Administrative Law Judges that hear cases in person. The site enables you to state your case and even upload pictures and other evidence for your defense assuming you have and understand that kind of technology. Of course, many are skeptical of a nameless, faceless web personality with the authority to discharge or claim your debt by showing less emotion than a slot machine, but the truth is this is probably a very good thing and a logical step in the continuing transmigration of our lives onto the internet.
With this new tool you can contest a ticket that either because of a fear of hostile PVB judges, even more hostile postal workers, or losing half a day’s work, you might other wise just pay. And if you’re wondering if this kind of internet gambling is legal in this state, why worry? Is it really gambling if you never had much of chance of beating the ticket anyway? Fact is unless your evidence is irrefutable, and even when it is, your chances are not that good.
We all know this and no matter how loud we raise our voices, no one is going to officially acknowledge it. At least with this online service you have another, faster way to put up a fight against a bad ticket and, moving on, better live with yourself. Maybe, along with enough others, you will bring attention to a shady ticket agent, or, if no one’s really even listening, join up with a few hundred thousand others and crash the system.
You can still fight tickets in person which is usually the most convincing defense, or in the mail. This is just another, more convenient way to cast your vote against the injustice and still show up at work on time.
The scary part of the times article (paper version) is the merging of this announcement with news that the Parking Fines Reduction Program is going to come to an end as if somehow this spanking new online hearing system (really only a postage stamp away from the existing mail system) would render a good old fashioned fine reduction unnecessary.
The online fine reduction which everyone has read about here has been a staple of this unlegislated, municipal taxation the city calls "parking fines" for about 5 years and is an important option for people who are seriously looking for a financial break or who just happen to read this blog. No one but city government wants this last dollop of forgiveness to go away, so please click on the Contact the Mayor link to the right and make your opinion count in favor of continuing fine reductions.

Pedestrians, Cars, and Bikes, Oh My!

The Bloomberg initiative of shoehorning bike lanes into city avenues is becoming a difficult reality and battle lines over our shrinking share of prized NYC pavement are being drawn. So far, they are an incomplete solution for bicyclists, deprive drivers of parking spaces, hurt small businesses and bog down our already congested automobile traffic. Oh, but that is one of the points. One of the least funny quotes I have heard out of the Dept. of Transportation recently is in the context of the new bike lanes controversy, the benefits, and the backlash. The benefits would seem to be a kinder, gentler city life with couples casually strolling alongside bicyclists breezily flowing by and the occasional B-R-R-R-I-N-G! B-R-R-R-I-N-G! to warn of their passing.
I am sure Bermuda is very charming at this time of year, but we are talking about New York where competition for parking is fierce, unemployment is high, money is tight, small business needs their delivery trucks close and their customers’ parking spaces closer, bicyclists still have a host of dangers to contend with, harried pedestrians now have an extra obstacle to overlook, and traffic is worse than ever by design. That’s right the DOT has openly admitted that they are trying to forcefully constrict traffic patterns with these new bike lanes in a little exercise they have adorably labeled “traffic calming” (New York Times Article). No matter what you may think about the forced importance of bicycles as a principle form of transportation, deliberately causing traffic snarls in the name of “traffic calming” sounds more like a comedy sketch than public policy which begs us all to ask the obvious question, REALLY, Mr. Mayor?
REALLY? Does anyone in this administration actually drive their own car in this city or even drive their own car? Do they live in the neighborhoods where their theoretical “traffic calming” is being so rudely felt. Have they heard the yells, the car doors slamming? Have they noticed the very bikes they are promoting weaving around the blocked traffic like a pinball bounced by each startled pedestrian or car bumper scraped? REALLY? Have they ever tried to parallel park a car in a “Floating Parking Lane” that pushes them out into the high speed rapids of a major tributary of city traffic. Even my 9th grade daughter knows that the entire Greek Tragedy of Oedipus got started as a road rage because Oedipus’ carriage could not get past his father’s (unknown to him) carriage. He killed his father on the spot and married his mother and the rest is high school English. Of course, education isn’t a high priority for the DOT or for our always business Mayor, it seems.
REALLY, Ms Sadik-Khan? Have you or policymakers of your Dept. of Transportation ever been near a tunnel or bridge (or a dozen other “calmed” traffic byways) at rush hour. The horn blowing on a traffic calmed rush hour evening is like a daily New Years Eve celebration gone bad. Stuck in a perpetual crawl, you would like to think that the drivers would accept their fate (it was their choice after all) and lay off their multi-decibel alarms, but, in case members of this administration haven’t noticed, drivers in this city don’t accept “No” as an answer. Hey, Americans don’t like it much anywhere. So they let their determined ways temporarily destroy the peace of entire neighborhoods. They vote with louder and competing distress signals, rowdy protests internationally manufactured by Toyota, Audi and Ford. Whether it’s the self proclaimed “emergency,” the bus lane cheat, or the claustrophobic panic, or just the need to vent, traffic constriction does not make for quiet, “calm” drivers. "Traffic Calming"… REALLY?
Such tea room patter amongst people who have a huge impact on our daily lives would be funny if it wasn’t so callous and makes me wonder what else they don’t know about their constituents and fellow citizens. The backlash is being felt. Some communities have organized and bike lanes have been removed in Staten Island and Williamsburg and others are being reviewed. This Thursday the City Council will hold a hearing on bicycling to somehow balance the shrinking space for bicyclists and other road users. If you want your opinion heard on any of these matters, the Find Your Council Member Page is a good place to express it.
[To be continued]

Tight Lipped City Officials Won’t Say where Parking Spaces Will Be Cut.

As many of us have realized the Bloomberg’s administration “re-engineering of the city’s street grid” is costing us parking spaces, not to mention adding to the very traffic congestion he was once so determined to alleviate with a drivers tax. Apparently he means to break those too many Manhattan drivers the old fashioned way, by just saying no. But the most alarming thing I have heard about these traffic redesigns came in a New York Times article this summer.
This article recounts statistics that show that the deadliest pedestrian accidents occur when male drivers turn left (and our favorite passenger said we weren’t listening!). The article also talks about the Bloomberg administration’s series of traffic pattern changes (barring vehicles from major avenues, the bike lanes, etc,). Then the article mentions a planned series of changes in line with these latest statistics and we are told:
"Dozens of parking spaces will be removed next year from a major Manhattan avenue — officials would not say which one…”
Representatives of the Bloomberg administration, our elected city government, already has plans for substantial changes on a major Manhattan avenue, but would not say which one. Excuse me? Does that feel as creepy to you as it does to me?
Our administration is playing secrets with public policy. Traffic strategies affect local residents and businesses and directly impact those businesses’ economic value. We have a right to know. Since when is our American standard of open government subject to the whims of a few people who won a local election? Do we have a democratically elected Mayor or a Czar? Even Dad will let us know what kind of cake he is baking before it’s finished. Maybe that third term really does pervert all Mayors’ sense of entitlement. But no, I can’t imagine Ed Koch using such an intrigue, looking askance, like a jilted Doris Day, and refusing to say where he plans to make changes that will affect traffic and parking on a major Manhattan avenue.
If this administration truly fears open debate, prepared community review, and needs to ambush local communities with its special agenda, then maybe it’s because it’s not such a good agenda. Please feel free to click on the Contact the Mayor link to the right and let Mayor Bloomberg know you are old enough to know what he plans to do in your neighborhood before he actually does it.