-
I’ll take Boardwalk.
Next time the communication of a major MTA problem gets screwed up, we’ll have someone new to blame: MIS Sciences.
The authority has signed a $600,000 contract — $120,000 a year for five years — with the MIS Sciences Corporation, an Internet services company, to run a text-messaging service that will provide real-time alerts about subway, bus and train disruptions to millions of commuters. (The Daily News reported some details of the new text-messaging system on Sunday.)
MIS is supposed to be able to distribute 1 million messages every five minutes, which is just a little better than the MTA’s previous best: 40,000 messages per hour.
But this doesn’t mean we’re going to feel any better about the MTA.
This system is designed to better communicate their shortcomings. So we’re still going to focus on… THE SHORTCOMINGS.
MTA is plagued by fundamental problems: sub-standard service and super-bureacratic management, which is unsurprising from a de facto monopoly. Until that changes, these marginal improvements are kind of irrelevant.
-
NYC Protects You
Two City measures to control watch protect you:
*The first is the subway-wide surveillance plan that was designed as a crucial part of a “program to thwart terrorist attacks on the region’s transportation network.”
Plans for the surveillance system were announced in August 2005, when officials said that they expected to have it up and running in three years. The system, which is being built by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, is to include at least 1,000 surveillance cameras and 3,000 motion sensors, mostly concentrated at major travel hubs and high-volume stations, like Grand Central Terminal, as well as in tunnels and other areas.
But don’t worry about the surveillance for now. It’s been delayed indefinitely by the discovery of aging fiber-obtics in Brooklyn and Queens. Instead, on to your health:
The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx.
Every adult in the Bronx? That’s 830,000 tests in three years. The tests will still only be administered to the willing, which means, undoubtedly, that not every adult in the Bronx will be tested, but the “peer pressure” to test will supposedly be stronger. And the city will absorb the $12 per test cost. Assuming that half the population is willing, we’re looking at $4,980,000. No problem, turnstile fines can fund it.
*spray paint camera found near the door to NYU’s Weinstein dorm.
-
Exceedingly Bad Odds
The fine for jumping the turnstile and saving yourself two dollars is sixty dollars. How many New Yorkers are stupid enough to make that gamble?
85,000, evidently (from whom $7.2 million in fines was collected this year).
I find it hard to believe that your typical turnstile jumper averages thirty successful jumps for every fine, which is the only way to make this crime not even pay, but break even.
I don’t know any jumpers, let alone habitual ones. Anyone out there want to fill us in?
(via Second Avenue Sagas)
-
Ovaries of Steel
It’s hard enough to give birth in a hospital with tons of qualified caregivers buzzing around to prepare you for the imminent insanity. But on a subway platform? This woman has ovaries of steel. And this baby is going to be the toughest kid ever to be named Soleil.
