In which I rant about commuting and attempt to fix transportation in NYC

What’s wrong with commuting in NYC? The short answer: a lot. The long answer: it’s complicated. But with the third fare increase in as many years, it will now cost $104 to get to work each month, on increasingly crowded and late trains. A post of what’s wrong with the mismanagement of the MTA could easily run thousands of words and just scratch the surface but the fact remains that there is no way of schleping to and from your small overpriced apartment that is without its flaws.

Driving to work in the city is incredibly expensive, inconvenient, and impractical. Unless you live within a mile or two of your office, walking to work isn’t realistic. And biking in the city has it’s own set of problems:

Regardless of the miles of bike lanes that have been added in the last few years, New York City can still be a very unfriendly place to bike. A study last week of only 11 of Manhattan’s bike lanes showed what nearly everyone in the city knows: over 1,700 violations in 22 hours-- double-parked cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians and even police and city vehicles are clogging up the bike lanes, opening car doors forcing cyclists to swerve into traffic, and riders going the wrong way on way streets, or blowing through red lights, and though it all only two tickets issued.

Cops don’t care about cyclist safety—they are blocking the bike lanes – and drivers and pedestrians are hostile to cyclists and cyclists are hostile right back. Every cyclist has a story of a near miss with a car, but conversely every pedestrian and driver has a story of a jerk cyclist.

So here’s my solution to all of the city’s commuting woes:

1. Driving: Put congestion pricing into place—its main effect will be the final straw to force many people to not drive into the city during rush hours, making the streets less clogged and if it people still drive in the revenue can help improve the subway. Oh and save a few million by leaving inaccurate font on street signs and keeping the names of bridges.

2. Mass Transit: Make the subway and buses better. You can raise the fare without losing riders or pissing everyone off if people feel like they are getting what they pay for. Use the money from congestion pricing, cover everything in advertisements, then take the money and add more trains and buses to so it runs more regularly and isn’t so unbearably crowded at rush hours. What we can live without: wifi and cell phone service on the trains. What’s totally essential: electronic signs at on every platform that tell commuters when the next train in coming. The tube in London has it, the metro in DC has it, it is for me the most glaring common sense thing lacking in the NYC transit system. (it’s in the works for 75 stations currently, but it’s needed in every station and the city is decades behind on this)

3. Cycling: Everyone not on a bike stay the fuck out of the bike lane and all drivers and passengers, look twice before pulling out from a parking spot or opening a car door. There’s not two ways about it—it takes 5 seconds and ensures you won’t kill or hurt someone. If you ride a bike in the city, don’t be a jerk. When you are on a bike you feel like an odd cross between a vehicle and a pedestrian, and sitting for the duration of a red light when there are no cars coming and you know you you’ll likely get stuck behind a bus or other obstruction within in a block is frustrating. Most cyclists aren’t going to obey all the traffic laws (few drivers do and not all traffic laws are valid for cyclists), but if you are on a bike, you should at least do the following: a) wear a helmet b) have lights if you ride at night c) treat every intersection at least like a blinking red light; stop and look both ways—for cars, people and bikes-- before crossing d) have a bell but use your voice – so many times the polite “ding ding” work, so many others require a loud “HEY!” to be heard e) ALWAYS pay attention.

4. Pedestrians: Walk only on the sidewalk (see above re. stay out of the bike lanes), if you need to text/greet a long lost pal/look at a map/take a picture/read a book, etc. move to the side. Do not walk more than two people across, and look before jaywalking.

Yours truly,

Curmudgeonly commuter

In Which I Rant About Garbage and Attempt to Save New York City

The big event in my life right now is that my boyfriend is moving into my apartment August 1st, and my longtime roommate and good pal is moving out. With a move always comes the purging of many belongings from clothes and books to furniture and household goods and many things in between.

But what to do with all of this perfectly good stuff?

A) Spend the time and effort to hold a stoop sale hoping to make a little moo-la and find loving homes for your stuff
B) Donate it to a charity that will put it to good use
C) Put it all on the curb and hope someone takes it before it ends up in the trash
D) Throw it all away— the planet is already screwed and they’ll figure out how we can live on the moon soon enough!

At first I thought (A) was a good idea, but we are so hectic with the move, plus there’s not a lot of space or foot traffic on our street so I’d probably waste a lot of time to make $5 and still be left with tons of stuff. So I decided to opt of (B), which should be an easy enough thing to do right? Not in New York City.

Back in Michigan (and I’m sure in many other car-centric places in the US) when we wanted to donate things, we’d load up the car and drive to the local thrift shop where they’d always gladly take it. And here in the city there are plenty of places that will take your stuff but most New Yorkers don’t have a car (which is a good thing, right?!) which means in order to donate in person involves lugging bags and boxes of items and/or furniture on the subway or renting vehicle to haul it – both unlikely and totally cumbersome options.

So I searched for an organization that would come and pick up all of our great stuff. There were woefully few. I finally found one—the Salvation Army—after two days of trying to get through, I attempted to schedule a pick up for July 31, only to be told they are booked until the end of August.

Which means I’ll have to opt for option (C), which according to the city really amounts to option (D) in most cases. I hope that if someone does come to take our stuff they aren’t driving, because as came to light this week it’s illegal to pick up discarded items on the sidewalk if you're driving a vehicle at the time because once something is set on the ground it becomes city property. This has been in the news this week after a man is Queens was fined $2,000 and had his 73-year-old Aunt’s car impounded for attempting to take an AC some one was throwing out. Even the MAYOR of the city didn’t know about the law and thought it was insane.

(Image from NYT “freegan” article)

Recycling is not only mandatory in NYC because it’s good for the environment; it’s actually a revenue source for the city. And yes there’s a list of places to donate useable items on the Department of Sanitation’s site but again, good luck getting someone to pick it up.

And yeah there’s special events/locations/days when you can recycle un-useable hazardous things like electronics/light bulbs/batteries. But how realistic is it to expect people to store a bunch of old light bulbs and batteries for six months in their already cramped apartments and then remember which day and location to take these things?

Mandatory recycling is such a beneficial idea for all involved. (Speaking of Michigan, 95% of the people I know there don’t recycle because it’s not as easily available)
Sure people in NYC still throw out tons of easily recycled stuff, regardless of how required or easy it is to put glass/plastic and paper in separate bins. It’s impossible to make everyone responsibly dispose of items they no longer need, but the lack of options for passing along perfectly good stuff is a glaring opportunity for the city.

So here, free of charge, is my solution:

Once every other week, deploy a fleet of trucks to pick up useable unwanted items. Residents would put them on the curb just as they do now, but instead of the things that don’t get taken by passersby ending up in the landfill (which is totally costly for the city), they’d go to locations in each borough where they could be distributed to non-profits.

The same could go for hazardous/non-traditional un-useable items: every month (say on the 1st) there could be a collection of these items. Both of these options involve additional cost and infrastructure, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs, and with the right investment could turn into a program just as lucrative as the recycling program has been. Otherwise I’m just going to have to open that store that sells their neighbor’s garbage to yuppies that I’ve been talking about for years…

**Update: I put a bunch of clothes, jewelry, books, etc. out on the curb this Saturday and within an hour everything was gone, I was joyful...until I opened the garbage can and found all of my lovely and totally usable belongings covered in smelly trash--thrown there by the insufferable woman who lives in the front apartment of my building.

Awesome K's own double entry

New York City’s feeble attempt to balance the books…

For anyone paying attention to my life the past year in our planet’s capital, you will have noticed that the city owns me quite a lot.

In the past two weeks I have started finding money lying on the various sidewalks near my apartment, it appears that the city is finaly paying me back, be it ever so slowly.

Below you will find the detailed documentation of where how much I am owed:

Owed
Amount Date Offence
$1,113.50 Feb 06 Blizzard of ’06 damages (mostly emotional damages)
$1,128.93 Jan 06 Hospital charges for debacle (emotional damages exceed calculation)
$ 400.00 May 06 Hit by a car (ruined clothing, emotional damage, lost day of work)
$ 90.00 July 06 Stolen bike
$ 50.00 Sept 06 Bike tire on new bike stolen
Total owed: $2782.43

Paid
Balance carried over: $127 (found on the street during a visit to the city December 2003)
Amount Date Explanation
$ .25 Oct 06 found on doorstep
$ 1.00 Oct 06 found on sidewalk
$ 7.00 Oct 06 found on sidewalk
Total paid: $135.25

Helping out my fellow man

I am all about helping my fellow humans, truly I am a do-gooder by nature. The feeling of seeing a young child’s face light up when you help them overcome a problem is unmatched in its warm fuzziness.

Or so I thought.

Turns out that sometimes you can get that same rush of well being from screwing someone over.

Last night I was dragging the old lady shopping cart (popular with countless urban dwellers residing more than four blocks from a major grocery store). I was enjoying the leisurely stroll when I was nearly knocked over by a guy zipping past me on his bike on the sidewalk. (Please note that it is illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk in New York City, as the sidewalks are normally crowded with people, you know, walking). JerkWad then proceeded to hop off his bicycle and park it in the MIDDLE of the sidewalk, a mere feet away from a perfectly suitable bike rack.

I am the sort of person that usually has mildly vengeful thoughts, but never acts on them. So when I saw him do this, my thought was “Wouldn’t it be funny if I just kicked his bike over as I walked by?” Just as quickly, though I thought, “Yeah, but I could never do that..”

Sometimes though there are forces greater than our mere human will. As I walked by his bicycle (taking up 85% of the busy sidewalk) the wheel of my old lady cart caught his tire and knocked his bike to the cold hard cement of truth and righteousness.

I stood there for a second in the serendipity of the moment, deciding if I should sent my cart aside and attempt to pick his bike up (the do-gooder in me still wanting to shine through). I wasn’t allowed much of a chance however, because as soon as he heard his bike crash to the ground he came running: “What the F**K’s your problem!?! Why don’t you watch where you are F** KING going!?!”

It was at this moment that the much pursued feeling of light and warmth took over my body and I smiled and walked away leaving him to scramble to pick up his own bike, calling over my shoulder, “Maybe next time you won’t park your bike in the middle of the sidewalk.”

One slighty used bike lock for sale..

I have long believed that I own nothing worth stealing. It’s why I never locked my car- I figured any one desperate enough to want to steal either a beat up1988 Plymouth Reliant or a equally beat up 1995 Ford Escort was in a worse position than I was for having to own them in the first place.

The same could be said for my slightly rusted six-year-old Kmart Huffy bicycle. It has saw me though 10 miles a day for a summer on Mackinac Island, all 36 miles of the Kal-Haven trail, the collegiate streets of Ann Arbor and the mean streets of Brooklyn where it survived being hit by a car, and where it was late Friday night stolen from outside my apartment. Someone was in fact desperate enough to want my bike, enough in fact to pass up many the thousands of other bikes in Brooklyn and cut the lock on the little purple bike that could..

I’m annoyed of course, mostly because I now have to buy a new bike and because of the quick reprimand from my roommate that I should have kept it in the basement (yes clearly, by locking my bike outside I was inviting thievery).

The most amusing thing that came from this was my mom’s optimistic reaction: “Maybe they will realize it wasn’t worth it and they will return it!”

I can only hope that the undesirable ness of my belongings will be my saving grace and for the first time in the history of the world a stealer will take pity on a steal-ee and return to the scene of the crime to give them back the goods that are rightfully theirs. I think I’ll put a new bike lock on the gate just in case..


Ps. If you live in the 5 boroughs, keep your eyes peeled for a purple women’s huffy with a 2001 Mackinac Island license sticker…I’m fixin’ to give them a talking to..

Worst wrong number call ever

Rudest lady ever (RLE): hi I'm calling from some kind of mumbled disability firm

me: ok how can I help you

RLE: I need to get some information about Kathleen Davis

Me: ok, that's me, what do you need to know?

RLE: That’s you!?!

Me: yep

RLE: Well the Kathleen Davis I am calling about is deceased

Me: Well, then it’s not me, but I am the only Kathleen Davis that works for this company, Are you calling the right company?

RLE: I don’t know, the address is blah blah. I don’t know the company name, but this is the number I was given

Me: well that is not our company’s address, so…

She hangs up.

5 minutes later she calls back.

RLE: It’s blah blah from some mumbled place again.

Me: Hi

RLE: I called three people and they all transferred me to you- again!

Me: Well I am the only Kathleen Davis that works here

RLE: Yeah, she doesn’t work there anymore- she’s dead.

Me: Well I don’t know when she died, but our company has never been at the address you gave and I don’t know of any Kathleen Davis’ working here before me. You don’t know what company you are looking for?

RLE: No, I just need information about Kathleen Davis!!!

Me: I don’t know how I can help you- I am the only Kathleen Davis I know, and I’m not dead.

She hangs up again.

Once again my being alive has ruined someone’s day.

You know where to send the check

There is a lot of snow in New York right now. Growing up in West Michigan it doesn’t seem like quite as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be. I remember one year when we got this much snow in early October when all of the leaves where still on the trees (and I had to walk 2 miles to school up hill both ways).

But this “blizzard of ‘06” has gotten people quite worked up. What would we do without all the cheesy graphics and constant updates? There is a lot of snow, so what. Penguins and polar bears deal with much worse and look at how happy they are.

Being the sad and bitter person that I am however I have tallied all the things that are owed to me personally due to the 26 inch snow fall.


1. Offence: Friends not showing up for my party Saturday night because it had started to snow. Damage: cost of food ($50), time spent preparing food and apartment (approximately six hours), severely bruised self-esteem (priceless).

2. Offence: Book club meeting canceled without my knowledge as they only had my work email address. Damage: Cold and wet feet from walking 20 blocks to the bar where book club was supposed to meet only to find it canceled, time spent commuting back and forth to said non-existent book club meeting (2 hours), having to read all 500 pages of self important crap in the assigned book; A Million Little Pieces, yet never actually discussing it (cost of the book: $12, time spent reading it: approximately 12 hours)

3. Offence: Roommate’s cats hiding and possibly eating or pawning my watch due to the extreme emotional stress of being trapped alone with me and without their owner because she flew to Miami for the weekend with her boyfriend and her return flight got cancelled. Damage: my watch ($50), being late to work this morning because I was looking for my watch.

4. Offence: Hearing everyone talk about the weather endlessly for the next week Damage: Listening to everyone talk about the weather endlessly for the next week, annoyance at hearing the phrase “Blizzard of ‘06” and seeing pictures everywhere of cars with a lot of snow on them.

5. Offence: Becoming one of those people who talks about the weather. Damage: increased self loathing.

Total cost in dollars: $112

Total cost in time: 20.25 hours (at a rate of $26/hour = $526.50)

Total cost in irreparable emotional damage (translated into a dollar amount for calculation purposes): $475

Overall amount owed to me personally: $1,113.50



I’ll be watching the mail for the check..