Our Town - July 27, 2017

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The local paper for the Upper East Side

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Chelsea Clinto

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Chelsea News 2,2017 JULY 27-AUGUST

SENIOR LIVING SES, WHERE TO LIVE NEXT Ĺ— CLAS

WEEK OF JULY-AUGUST

L & MEDICAL ADVICE A RESOURCE GUIDE Ĺ— LEGA FOOD, TRANSPORTATION:

SENIOR LIVING < P.11

27-2 2017

PHOTO: PRESTON

EHRLER

CITY HALL FARCE, ALBANY FOLLY SUMMER WOES Or how the chartering of a transportation corporation 64 years ago became an excuse to dodge blame and poison politics amid the subway free fall BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN

So, let’s see if we have this right: A crippled subway system routinely tortures 6 million riders a day. It is beset by track ďŹ res, power outages, derailments, breakdowns, signal failures and airless cars. Yet the debate now raging is not about how to end the agony. Or even how to lessen suffering amid a brutal summer heat wave. Amazingly, it is about the incorporation of a transit bureaucracy in 1953. Some New Yorkers have already lost jobs in 2017. Busted switches and chronic train delays have made it tough to get to work on time. But this is what passes for leadership in City Hall and Albany these days: Pols talking in legalisms — unmoored from the real world underground — about an era when Vincent R. Impellitteri was mayor, Thomas E. Dewey was governor and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Hello? Here’s the context. On June 5, trapped riders endured 48 sweltering minutes on an F train with no air, power or lights. On June 27, an A train derailed in Harlem, injuring 39 people, after a worker improperly left rail detritus on the tracks. By July 21, when a Q train derailed in Brooklyn in the morning rush, the near-calamity was barely noticed.

A proposal to reduce service on the M31, M66 and M72 bus routes has roused community opposition. Photo: Michael Garofalo

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo rode an E train from Chambers Street to Penn Station on September 25, 2014. Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit “The Summer of Hell is turning into the Summer of Fear,� said Nick Sifuentes, deputy director of the Riders Alliance, an advocacy group. Indeed, there are three things to fear, and the imperiling of passengers is No. 1 on any list. But there are social and economic costs, too — the “human costs of subway delays,� city Comptroller Scott Stringer called them in a July 8 survey of 1,227 straphangers at 143 stations over a two-week period. How bad is it? Among respondents, two percent said they were fired as a result of subway delays, while 22 percent said they were late

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COMMUNITY RALLIES AGAINST BUS CUTS TRANSPORTATION MTA proposes to trim service on M31, M66 and M72 lines BY MICHAEL GAROFALO

Community groups and elected ofďŹ cials have vowed to ďŹ ght to preserve existing service on three crosstown bus routes scheduled for cuts by the MTA. Under bus schedules slated to take effect in September, riders on the M31, M66 and M72 routes will see scheduled wait times increase during certain parts of the day. According to the MTA, the reduced service will more

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accurately align with ridership on the lines, but bus advocates say that ridership is strong and worry that fewer buses will weaken a crucial transportation option in the community. “There’s a disproportionately large number of elderly and disabled people who live on the far East Side who are, in fact, more dependent on bus service,â€? state Sen. Liz Krueger told Straus News. The M72, which runs from York Avenue and 72nd Street to Riverside Boulevard and West 70th Street, faces the most signiďŹ cant cuts. Under the proposed schedule changes, headway between buses would be increased from nine to 10 minutes during morning

peak hour, from eight to nine minutes during afternoon peak hour, and from 15 to 20 minutes in the evening. On the M31, which runs from East 92nd Street in Yorkville to West 57th Street and 11th Avenue, via 57th Street, bus headway during afternoon peak hours would be increased

CONTINUED ON PAGE 33 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, July 28 – 7:57 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com

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