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On alert. New York City Transit is now alerting straphangers when their line will be disrupted during the week. A new service will send e-mails about scheduled service disruptions and delays
Scary streets Oct. 17.

Every so often, the quiet and neurotic worst fears of pedestrians are realized. To wit: Today's incident at the Bank of America tower. Here's a sampling of other troubling cases:

May 18, 2007 — A steam pipe from the former Deutsche Bank building fell through the roof of the firehouse next door, injuring two firefighters.

May 18, 2007 — A woman falls 10 feet through a sidewalk grate and into a transformer vault in Midtown.

July 14, 2005 — An old Gristede's supermarket under demolition at Broadway and 100th Street collapses. The rubble traps five people and injures four.

January 9, 1998 — Bricks fall four stories from construction scaffolding in Brooklyn, critically injuring a 16-year-old girl. This was one of many incidents involving falling masonry that year, including four separate incidents during a 24-hour period — one in which two entire walls crumbled from a building on 42nd St. ~ Kristen V. Brown ~Posted by Rolando Pujol on October 17, 2007 3:23 PM . The agency already sent e-mails about weekend disruptions. [NY1]

A step in the right direction? (via DOT) The answer of which way to go is at the feet of some lucky and observant straphangers.
Decals of compasses on the sidewalk outside four midtown subway stations around the Grand Central area will greet train riders for the next week, pointing them in the right direction.
The city transportation department, Grand Central Partnership and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are experimenting with the sidewalk decals to see if subway riders want a permanent compass outside stations.
“If we admit it ourselves, we’ve come out of a subway station and thought, ‘Am I on Madison Avenue?’ ” said Fred Cerullo, president of Grand Central Partnership, a business improvement district.
The compass, a slip-resistant canvass and vinyl prototype, points out the four directions as well as which streets correspond with each direction. For now, New Yorkers can check out the compasses at
-150 East 42nd Street (south side of East 42nd St between Lexington Ave and Third Ave)-Entrance to 42nd Street/Grand Central station
-The Grand Hyatt New York, 109 East 42nd Street (west side of Lexington Ave between East 42nd St and East 43rd St)-Entrance to 42nd Street/Grand Central station
- 570 Lexington Avenue (south side of East 51st St between Lexington Ave and Park Ave)-Entrance to 51st Street/Lexington Avenue station
- 509 Madison Avenue (south side of East 53rd St between Madison Ave and Park Ave)-Entrance to Fifth Avenue/53rd Street station

Continue reading "A step in the right direction?" » by Marlene Naanes on Oct 16 7:26 PM

Cell phone subway service probe The city council will convene a hearing on cell phone service in the subways Thursday. Council members Gail Brewer and John Liu will "review the capabilities and limitations of the system." The MTA already approved a pilot program of six cell and wifi accessible stations that will eventually expand to all stations. Brewer said she wants to probe whether service on the 277 platforms enhances security. She also wants to know what text services, if any, may be paired with cell phone and wifi service, offering customers a line into the MTA or a way to communicate with each other. MTA officials are looking into a text message alert service for Transit customers. The service was one recommendation from the flood report that probed the MTA's response to August's transit crippling floods. Transit officials will be at the hearing to take questions from the council's transportation and technology committees. ~ by Marlene Naanes on Oct 9 6:36 PM

Escalator accident
(via flickr's gak) ~ Escalator steps in the Bowling Green subway station collapsed, injuring a woman and upsetting another straphanger yesterday, Transit officials said.
The woman was “slightly” injured, a New York City Transit spokesman said, and she asked for medical treatment. It was unclear how she was injured and what her injuries were.
EMS took her to New York Infirmary-Beekman Downtown Hospital. Another person was “very upset” but not injured, a spokeswoman said. The stairs gave way at 9:20 a.m., at the end of the morning rush.
Transit workers cordoned off the escalator, which runs from the No. 4 and 5 station mezzanine to street level on Broadway. Elevator and escalator workers are investigating why the stairs collapsed.
The police department said that two steps somehow became off-track and when they reached the end of the escalator, they threw two people off. Transit officials would not confirm that account. Marlene Naanes ~ by Rolando Pujol on Aug 28

Check it outage (via flickr's metrocake) ~If you need to know if a subway elevator or escalator is out before you head out, you'll be able to see outages on the MTA's Web site beginning tomorrow. The plan to do this was announced long ago and promised to be close to real time. The updates will progress to 24/7 in the coming months. For now, the Web site will be the on-line version of the Elevator and Escalator Hotline, which disability advocacy groups have claimed is unreliable and only updated four times a day. ~ Marlene Naanes ~ by Rolando Pujol on July 31 12:11 PM

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