A marvelous commercial for Toyota Australia:

Following up on my post from Tuesday, here are the proposed subway cuts announced in an MTA press release yesterday:

• Route modifications – shorten G, operate N via Manhattan Bridge late nights, eliminate W and extend Q to Astoria, operate M to Broad rush hours, eliminate Z, add J local service.
• Increased headways and loading guidelines during non-rush hours – headways increase from 8 to 10 minutes on ADEFGJMNQR on Saturdays and the ADEFGNQR on Sundays; headways increase from 20 to 30 minutes from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.

MTA also wants to cut some low-ridership/redundant bus service, eliminate jobs (management, station booth managers) and cut back on (ugh) cleaning. The MTA’s budget presentation says they are trying to make budget and still: “Fulfill fundamental mission of getting people where they need to go.”

Okay, let’s talk about the cuts. As I wrote earlier, we’ll be fine without the W and Z. I hadn’t considered the possibility that they would run the Q all the way out to Astoria once they kill the W, but that’s a good solution. Confirmed that they want to stop running the M all the way to south Brooklyn during rush hours, which is a bummer. The R train is going to get crowded. And the G… [long silence]… That poor train…

Most serious is increasing the overnight space between trains from 20 to 30 minutes. Psychologically, there’s a huge difference between waiting 19 minutes for a train and waiting 29 minutes. We’ll have to start carrying timetables for the subway!

About once a month I end up taking the subway during those hazy hours between 2 and 5 a.m. (heading home after parties, or heading out to an airport or Penn Station early in the morning). During the pre-dawn hours, most of the people riding the train here in Brooklyn are working-class immigrants on their way to work. Anybody who works that hard deserves a break. A functional, round-the-clock public transit system is one of the few breaks they get in this hard city. If we’re pinching pennies, let’s find another service to cut.

(Thanks to Jeremy for the tip.)

This is a camera phone picture of my cat transmitted directly to the blog.

Check out my new Pantech Breeze: Thin, smooth, sturdy and smartly designed. No goofy lights or music buttons or other tomfoolery. Did I mention this phone is marketed toward the elderly? I frankly don’t care if it’s for old timers, because it is one of the best-designed cell phones I’ve seen. It just looks and feels like a high-quality product, and AT&T offers it at a good price for a quad-band GSM phone with a decent camera. (I switched to AT&T from T-Mobile because my company offers me a corporate discount on AT&T service.) AT&T customer service was polite and efficient in setting up my account. Too soon to know if I love this phone a lot or just a little bit, but I already know it’s a hundred times better than my old Motorola lemon. I like this simple design much better than the tricked-out phones that get all the hype these days. The old folks are all right.

Just two complaints:

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night we saw the new 007 flick “Quantum of Solace.” My favorite part was the part about the quantum of solace. [Pause for laughter.]

James Bond feels like he’s in a kind of transitional phase, but the movie is still a safe choice: You’re paying for 007, you’re getting 007. Two films ago, the ever-wise custodians of the Bond brand brought in actor Daniel Craig to bring the series up to contemporary standards. So far, this has meant copying the look of the Jason Bourne movies (which have come dangerously close to out-Bonding Bond). The new Bond involves less sex, gadgets, drinking and sleaze – and more noise, quick-cut fight scenes, backstabbing and pain. Judy Dench is the ideal M, and Craig is the best Bond ever. The problem is the villains. The bad guy in this film is the head of a utility company who’s evil scheme involves— [spoiler alert!] Read the rest of this entry »

This is how you get a headline: Let it slip that you’re planning to eliminate two entire subway lines!

The Daily News has a story today speculating that the MTA’s upcoming budget proposal will slash jobs and kill the W and Z trains.

As a reminder to those of you who don’t live in New York, subway lines here are not like subway lines in other cities. Most NYC Subway lines share track with other lines, and most stations are served by multiple trains. So when you eliminate a line, there’s always another train to pick up the slack. How would this work if the W and the Z go to the great rail yard in the sky? Time to play Fantasy Subway:

Let’s start with the Z train, since that’s easiest. It’s an express J. They could have called it the J Diamond. A lot of New Yorkers have never even seen a Z train. Kill it. Over!

The W is more complicated. It’s a daytime local on the Broadway line in Manhattan and then runs local up to Astoria in Queens. It stops running after 9 p.m. weekdays and doesn’t run at all on weekends, when the N runs local in Manhattan to haul tourists from Times Square to Ground Zero alleviate crowding. Eliminating the W without making other adjustments will mean the R will be the only local train on the Broadway line on weekdays. I have a hunch the MTA would just put the weekend schedule in effect all week for the Broadway line: No W, R local, N local, Q express. That makes a lot of sense, but they would have to run more Q trains, especially to pick up passengers riding over the Manhattan bridge to and from Brooklyn, and enough N trains for the rush hour riders in Astoria. An alternative would be to ramp up R service on the Broadway local line during rush hours, and stop the weird rush hour M service on the 4th Avenue line in Brooklyn (which has to share track with the R).*

Most likely scenario: Public outcry will pop this trial balloon. The state will cough up a few more bucks, the MTA will raise fairs fares, and the cuts will hit other things that still hurt the quality of the subway experience but that don’t sound so drastic.

* UPDATE: WCBS-TV reports that the MTA is considering cutting the M line in half, which I’m guessing means stop the 4th Avenue rush hour service. Same treatment may be in store for the hapless G train.

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio)

The Leaf Chronicle (Clarksville, Tennessee)

The Vindicator (Youngstown, Ohio)

The Log Cabin Democrat (Conway, Arkansas)

The Truth (Elkhart, Indiana)

Last month I wrote about the New York City bike rack design competition. After seeing all the experimental bike racks installed in the Astor Place traffic island near my office, my favorite was the circular rack seen here…

Recently they announced the winning design, and guess what won? Right! From the design competition blog:

“Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve’s design reflects a modern simplicity that will greatly enhance the City’s streetscape. The rack is round with a horizontal crossbar, evoking an abstracted bicycle tire. Constructed of cast-metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand the harshest street environments.”

Here’s hoping the city installs these racks in pairs, both for convenience and aesthetics.

(From The Times, spotted first at Cityspecific.)

These days, a mobile phone is a deeply personal item. I carry mine with me everywhere I go. It is part of my identity. True, as a superficial object it can never be a source of true happiness. But let’s face it, it’s nice to have a good phone. I’ve had four phones in my life, and the best one was a miniature Panasonic GD51 GD55 I got at some sketchy shop in the West Village that imports phones from Asia. Friends called it my Zoolander phone. Regrettably, it was stolen by some theiving punks. Now I use a Motorola PEBL, which is bad at everything it does and has an interface so bewildering it must have been designed either by idiots or rocket scientists. When I’m in a bad mood, my cell phone makes me feel worse.

My two-year contract with T-Mobile is up, so I can get a new phone at a steep discount from any service provider. The array of choices has left me bewildered. Here are my conditions:

• First, since I travel, I want a quad-band world phone. I think that rules out every provider except T-Mobile and AT&T.
• Second, no smart phone. I refuse to pay for a data plan. Sorry Apple, sorry Blackberry.
• Third, I swear to you I will never buy another Motorola product as long as I walk this Earth.
• Fourth, I like small, light phones that look sharp and are easy to use. I don’t really give a care about a camera or a music player.
• Fifth, I’m not gonna pay a lot for this muffler. That means the phone should be free or in the neighborhood of $50.

Right now I’m eyeing the Samsung Blast, but at this point in the buying process, I am highly succeptable susceptible to persuasion. Any suggestions?

… knowing full well that some of the people they handed it to were journalists who would blog about it, as I did here on my work blog. I give this stunt an ‘A’ for effort.