The problem with perseverating on traffic issues is that you have to start seriously considering other mitigation schemes — even if they don’t come with a giant pot of money:

Mayor Bloomberg, who once insisted the proposed Cross Harbor Tunnel would “destroy neighborhoods,” said yesterday he would be willing to take another look at the plan.

Bloomberg told U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a proponent of the tunnel, that he and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff would meet with him to discuss the plan — which would connect Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island with the national railroad freight network.

“I’m not so sure he’s wrong,” Bloomberg said after being quizzed by Nadler during a speech to the New York Building Congress. “It’s not the worst idea. It has some problems and who knows?”

The mayor’s comments came as a surprise to members of a Queens community group who had hailed him as a hero during Bloomberg’s 2005 reelection campaign when he declared, “We should not build this tunnel.”

Allowing the Times to interview the guy who cleans coins out of all the fountains on the premises must seemed like a good idea at the time to to the Met’s press department:

In the hour before the museum opened the other day, [Metropolitan Museum of Art employee David Mendez] filled about a third of a large white bucket. As he worked he talked about everything from the 40th president (a hero of Mr. Mendez’s whom he calls “Mr. Reagan”) to the museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello (”I love the way he talks. He just knows how to say whatever he’s saying.”).

He talked about V.I.P.’s who have visited the Met in the 19 years he has worked there, including Queen Sofía of Spain.

“Mrs. Juan Carlos,” he called her, referring to the king. “She had super-thick ankles. He was so tall and handsome, and she was so petite. I guess it was an arranged marriage. You know how those things are.”

Other quirky (museum) jobs that are probably just quirky jobs include.

After earlier sounding an alarm about how they would handle all the additional commuters MTA president admits that it actually wouldn’t be that big of a deal after all:

Amid all the bad news, the president of NYC Transit feared an underlying message had been lost about the benefits of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed congestion pricing plan.

During rush hours, the busiest train lines — including the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and E — are running at or over capacity. Yet Roberts insisted the system could still “fully support” the increased ridership projected from congestion pricing. “In fact the current strain on parts of the system is a big argument in favor of congestion pricing, not against it,” he said.

Roberts believes the business-day toll could pay for subway improvements and for such big-ticket projects as the first leg of the Second Avenue Subway, which is already $1 billion short.

On Monday, Roberts proposed quick “fixes,” including adding more cars to trains and extending station platforms. But these remedies would take “four or five” years. More importantly, they all require money the MTA doesn’t have.

“Congestion pricing is critical to putting these fixes into place,” Roberts said yesterday.

The city’s Department of Transportation estimates congestion pricing would dissuade 94,000 current drivers over an entire day, but believes only 7,000 of them will shift to subways and buses at the peak morning rush between 8 and 9 a.m. “Other drivers presumably come from areas where it is more convenient to use commuter rail,” said DOT spokesperson Molly Gordy.

If half of that 7,000 end up in the subway, they would add just 1 percent to the current morning peak-hour load of 345,000 riders. Roberts noted they would also be spread across the subway’s 22 lines.

“This is a minimal bump that the system can unequivocally absorb,” he said.

But doesn’t that also actually kind of undercut one of the main reasons to support congestion pricing — that so many more people will use public transportation?

And what’s more, has everyone simply taken at face value the notion that there will be an increase of one million new people in New York City in just over twenty years? (Questions to ask include but are not limited to: Really? Who are these people? Where will they come from? Will New York somehow magically get more affordable? Will Manhattan turn from a neighborhood of pied-a-terres to a solid middle-class enclave of families exceeding replacement levels? Will there be some massive new industry that will move here?) Or I guess it’s to everyone’s benefit to just assume there will be that many people here:

NYC Transit President Howard Roberts has expressed concern about how the system will handle expected population growth of 1 million people by 2030. Some lines, including the Nos. 2, 3 and 4, already are grossly overcrowded and operating at or above capacity.

“We’ve got to begin to look at how we get to comfortable rides, comfortable capacities, for people in that time period . . . given how long it takes for capital projects to get done, we don’t have a lot of time to do it,” Roberts said yesterday.

The strain on the system is a “big argument” for congestion pricing, Roberts said. The city’s pricing plan would generate billions of dollars to fund mass transit projects by charging drivers to enter Manhattan below 86th St.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign agreed.

“The choice is clear: We either act now to handle the coming million . . . . or drown in the crush,” Russianoff said. “Congestion pricing is the answer.”

Thanks to the Bush Administration’s solid lock on Congress, that giant vat of federal money for congestion pricing is a slam dunk:

A powerful congressman has warned Gov. Spitzer and legislative leaders that the $500 million in federal aid that Mayor Bloomberg claims will be available for his congestion-pricing plan has not been approved.

Rep. Peter DeFasio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, told Spitzer, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno in a letter that even if the money is eventually authorized, New York City may not be eligible to receive it.

“I write to express my concerns about the assurances by [U.S. Transportation] Secretary Mary Peters . . . that New York City will receive a significant amount of federal funding for implementation of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed congestion-pricing program,” DeFasio wrote in the letter obtained by The Post.

“You should know that Congress has not authorized the [Transportation Department's] Congestion Initiative or its component parts,” DeFasio added.

DeFasio told Spitzer he had “serious doubts that New York City or Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing program” would be eligible for federal funding under several DOT projects from which the funds had been expected to come.

“Before you rush to enact legislation authorizing the establishment of Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing program, I urge that you obtain all the relevant information, including asking Secretary Peters and DOT for clarification, and written assurances, that New York City will be eligible to receive federal funding under the programs,” wrote DeFasio in the letter to Spitzer, which was copied to Silver and Bruno.

“I caution you to carefully consider the expectation that the federal government will deliver those funds,” he continued.

So when Bloomberg takes the subway, it’s not really about reducing congestion, saving time or fighting pollution — in that respect, it’s sort of like how congestion pricing really isn’t about the environment either:

Mayor Bloomberg took the subway yesterday to a news conference about a new green-car initiative — but he also brought along his SUV.

After his small, fuel-guzzling motorcade arrived at the Museum of Natural History on West 79th Street to join a Hertz Corp. announcement about adding 3,400 hybrid cars to its fleet, the mayor insisted he and his aides had driven only a short distance.

“We drove here from [the] 86th Street [station],” Bloomberg said, pointing out that he wasn’t inside the SUV that took the trip from City Hall, but instead had hopped on the subway.

That raised the question: If the mayor rides the subway uptown but is met by an SUV driven from City Hall — with or without him in it — where’s the carbon-emission savings?

An aide later explained that the NYPD tails Bloomberg wherever he goes and has his specially equipped SUV at the ready in case of emergency. Also, Bloomberg’s SUV is equipped with “flex-fuel” tanks and runs on a mixture of ethanol and gasoline, the aide said.

You would never believe that your neighbors keep pythons at home . . . until you find out that they do:

Shocked firefighters stumbled upon a menagerie of deadly animals — including two alligators, two cobras, black widow spiders and a python — while putting out a blaze in a Queens apartment yesterday.

Tony Baez, 23, was in tears after his animals were removed and he was issued a summons by the Health Department.

Lt. Ed Ireland said he and his crew discovered dozens of reptiles and spiders after they put out a fire in a basement apartment at 39th Avenue in Corona at 11:30 a.m.

All of the animals were caged, except for a python, which Ireland said he was “startled” to discover near his leg as he entered the room.

“It felt like something out of a science-fiction scene,” he said. “It looked like a biology lab. The whole room was in cages.” The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but Ireland said it was not considered suspicious. Baez’s “ark” included two 2-foot-long alligators, numerous frogs, turtles and tarantulas and at least two cobras.

. . .

Angelo Diaz, 55, who has lived on the block since 1970, was shocked to learn his home was just feet away from dangerous snakes.

“You never know if one night the snake could get out. We feel very happy that they came to get them,” he said. “We have babies here, it isn’t safe. We never would have thought that animals like that are here.”

NYU students “aghast” — simply aghast — at mixup that forces some to resort to double negatives:

Many of the students affected by May’s mixed-sex housing mix-up — in which a handful of male students were mistakenly assigned to share their dormitory bedrooms with females — obtained new room assignments from NYU and were able to hang on to their residence hall and same-sex roommates of choice.

Leslie Faylor, a rising GSP sophomore, learned through a Facebook group that men would be sharing her Coral Towers suite this fall. Recently, however, NYU reassigned Faylor and her roommate, rising CAS sophomore Jae Honey, to the same numbered room on a different floor.

“The mix-up didn’t create any major problems for us,” Faylor said. “Overall, the change was smooth, and I am pleased that I was not moved to a room that I wouldn’t prefer.”

. . .

Though some freshmen predicted dorming doomsday scenarios on Facebook housing groups when they first noticed the mix-up, many seem to have overcome the crisis.

Nate Hess, a rising CAS sophomore, was initially “aghast” about the problem.

“If the internet can simply mix up my room assignment, think about what other ’system failures’ can occur,” he said.

Hess’ reassigment, however, was to the same room in the same dorm, and the females were moved.

“I’m still sort of aghast. But, I’m glad I got to stay in Thirteenth Street — in the room I was initially assigned to — and I look forward to living there next year,” Hess said. “The situation has been remedied.”

But you can still make lemonade:

The city Department of Transportation moved at lightning speed yesterday to replace the Foley Square street sign at the intersection of Duane and Lafayette Sts. in lower Manhattan after the Daily News informed the agency that Foley was misspelled.

The sign, which was installed April 27, incorrectly spelled the name of the famous square in the heart of the city’s government district as “Folley.”

The square — on the site of the historic Five Points neighborhood — is named after Thomas Foley, a prominent Tammany Hall district leader who once served as a member of the old City Council, as an alderman.

The News alerted the Transportation Department about the misspelled sign at 11:07 a.m. yesterday. At 12:15 p.m., a DOT truck rolled up and a cheery city employee removed the spelling-challenged sign.

“They said it was important,” the worker explained. “They’re getting a new one made up.”

Within an hour, the new sign — with the correct “Foley” spelling — appeared.

Chris Gilbride, a department spokesman, said it cost $212 to replace the sign.

You can’t really cut corners when it comes to keeping Kosher:

A handmade matzo factory in Brooklyn is facing questions over whether some of the ritual flatbread it produced is kosher enough for observant Jews to use at Passover seders. At issue is whether a former employee at Lubavitch Matzo Bakery, which each week produces thousands of pounds of round “shmura” matzo, is Jewish.

According to some rabbis, matzo used during Passover seders must be made by Jews who utter a Hebrew phrase before rolling each batch of dough. Matzo consumed at other times during the eight-day holiday need not be mixed, kneaded, rolled, or baked by Jews, according to those rabbis.

Last week, a court of Jewish law, the Beth Din of Crown Heights, ruled that while the bakery’s matzo is kosher for Passover, some religious Jews should consider purchasing seder matzo elsewhere or from batches baked after the woman was laid off. Passover begins at sundown on Monday, April 2.

An inquiry into the woman’s religious background is ongoing, said Yitzchok Tenenbaum, who has been an owner of the Lubavitch Matzo Bakery for more than 20 years. “We told her that until we find out for sure, we couldn’t have her working here,” he said.

. . .

The employee at the center of the controversy, a Minsk native, was hired in October, when the bakery begins preparing Passover matzos. Her employment was terminated about two weeks ago. “From the information we have, it seems like she’s Jewish, but we still don’t feel 100% comfortable saying for sure,” Rabbi Zalman Osdoba, rabbinical coordinator of Crown Heights Kosher certification, said.

Rabbi Osdoba said he has fielded dozens of calls from people looking to clarify the kosher-for-Passover status of the matzos. “Rumors have been flying,” he said. “We’ve had many phone calls from people who are worried. We asked people not to panic, and that a letter of clarification would come out.”

OK, I think everyone’s pretty much understands which “N-word” they’re talking about:

At a hearing yesterday on a resolution to discourage the use of the n-word, the racially offensive term was heard more times than on a Kanye West album.

The spewing of the slur nearly 50 times in less than two hours angered the anti-n-word measure’s sponsor, Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-Queens).

“If I had been the chair, I would have asked them not to use the word,” Comrie told The Post afterward. “I was not pleased.”

Marcia Harris, founder of the Harlem-based Ban the N-Word Movement, got the ball rolling with a passionate lecture on the word’s origins — that dropped the n-bomb a staggering 19 times.

“All of the other things will be for naught if, at the core, you see yourself and others who look like you as a n- - - - -, a word used to dehumanize a living, thinking human being,” she said during the hearing held by the council’s Civil Rights Committee.

The campaign to stop the use of the slur is aimed largely at young whites and blacks who aren’t aware of the term’s historical significance or don’t care. The measure, approved by the committee, will be taken up by the full council tomorrow.

Tim Gaylord, a New Jersey resident who told lawmakers he was instrumental in getting a similar measure passed in Irvington, N.J., used the word 10 times in his testimony.

He said using the word makes people think about blacks in a negative way.

“Fifty-thousand black people murdered and ain’t nobody saying anything about it. Why?” he asked. “It’s because it’s just n- - - - -s.”

Even some council members didn’t bother with euphemisms to make their points while sporting pins with a slash over the letter “N.”

Mike Nelson (D-Brooklyn), who was the only white person to use the word at the hearing, described a “sickening, scary, depressing” date he had in the 1960s while serving in the Air Force in Arkansas.

When he grimaced after his date used the n-word twice, he said, she told him, “Well, obviously you don’t like what I’m saying. Well, they may be Negroes to y’all, but they’re n- - - - -s to me.”

The New York Times’ William Neuman explains in great detail why he was late to work yesterday:

The beating of a butterfly’s wings, it is said, can lead to a hurricane an ocean away. And a break in a Manhattan subway rail, though it may lack poetry, can really foul up the morning trip to work in Brooklyn and Queens.

That is what happened at 6:55 a.m. yesterday, when the operator of a Queens-bound N train leaving the Lexington Avenue station radioed a dispatcher to say that the train was being delayed by a red signal that should have been green.

For many riders on the N, R and W trains, that was the beginning of a morning journey that was more headache than head-to-work.

. . .

The radio call from the N train went to a dispatcher at the Rail Control Center, the subway system’s computerized nerve center in Midtown. The dispatcher told the train operator to go slowly past the signal.

A call then went out to a pair of track maintainers based at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, two stops from the problem.

They jumped on a train and by 7:15 a.m. were at work at the Lexington Avenue station, according to John Johnson, the Rail Control Center’s assistant chief. They discovered a break in a rail about 1,200 feet from the east edge of the platform.

It was not unexpected. A red signal of the type that stopped the N train is often a result of cracked or broken rails, according to Antonio Cabrera, director of track engineering. That is because electrical power for the signal system flows through the rails, and a crack can break the circuit to the signal, sending it into its default red position.

“It was a clean break, like if you cut it with a knife,” said Mr. Cabrera after reading a report about the work. “It was up and down. It looked like a joint exactly.”

The cause of the break was not clear, Mr. Cabrera said, although the cold weather may have been a factor.

The metal contracts in the cold, he said, increasing stress on the rail, and small cracks can turn into large ones.

Once the break was discovered, Mr. Johnson said, dispatchers at the control center halted Queens-bound trains heading toward the Lexington Avenue station.

Now workers had two separate problems. The break had to be repaired, and trains had to be diverted.

A repair crew was called in and by 8:20 a.m. had set to work. Power to the third rail was cut on that section of track.

Using a large drilling machine, a crew of three workers and a supervisor drilled holes in the rail on either side of the break, Mr. Cabrera said. Then they fitted metal bars to both sides of the rail and bolted them in place. At 10:15 a.m. an empty subway train made a test run over the mended rail. And at 10:20 service resumed under the East River to Queens, just over three hours from the time the broken rail was discovered.

I don’t know what you should feel more embarrassed about — that you left 31 expensive diamond rings in a cab or that you left 31 expensive diamond rings in a cab and you only tipped the driver 30 cents:

Chowdhury Osman is one gem of a cabbie.
Not only did the Queens taxi driver graciously accept a passenger’s 30-cent tip on a nearly $11 ride, but hours later he tracked her down and returned the black travel bag she left in the cab’s trunk.

It contained two small display cases with 31 diamond rings tucked inside.

. . .

The woman, who said she was a jeweler, wanted to give Osman, an emigrant from Bangladesh, a handsome reward. He grudgingly accepted $100 as compensation for the income he didn’t make picking up passengers because he was on his mission to do the right thing.

“When I find something left in my cab, and I can return it to the owner, I feel very happy. I feel proud,” he said.

Osman drove the jeweler from the Hilton New York to an E. 35th St. apartment building Monday night. The fare was $10.70. She gave him a $20 and asked for $9 back.

He took the three-dime tip in stride.

You never know what’s in people’s minds or purses, he said, explaining his thinking. They might be distracted. They might be broke. Besides, most passengers tip well, he said.

Former Councilmember Allan Jennings sees no reason to throw away all that perfectly good stationery:

Members of the district he once represented in Queens are up in arms because he is using official City Council envelopes to advertise his real estate business.

The brightly colored flyers are enclosed in envelopes displaying the 28th Council District seal and prominently feature a picture of a smiling Jennings. They boast, “No one can sell your home faster.”

A former police officer who lives in Richmond Hill, part of Jennings’ former district, took exception to the postal ruse.

“Here I think I’m getting an official communication from the city, and it’s a sleazy real estate ad,” said retired cop Matt Fanning.

The voice-mail message of the phone number listed on the flyers still identifies Jennings as a councilman.

“That’s a no-no. It is misleading and inappropriate, and he should cease immediately,” said Councilman Thomas White, who defeated Jennings in the 2005 Democratic primary, making Jennings the only incumbent to lose in that primary.

Then there are those with their hoity-toity Ivy League “educations” who sneer at “fake degrees” coming from “diploma mills”. Elitists:

Fourteen employees of the Fire Department of New York bought phony diplomas over the Internet and submitted them to the city in an attempt to meet educational requirements for being promoted or hired, according to a report released yesterday by the Department of Investigation.

Of the 14 employees, 3 were promoted in 2001 and 2002 based on the phony degrees; they did not have the required college credits.

The other 11 turned in phony diplomas that were subsequently rejected; 10 were promoted or hired anyway because they eventually obtained enough legitimate credits, but one was improperly promoted without proper credits.

Asked whether any employees would be punished or promotions rescinded, a Fire Department spokesman, Francis X. Gribbon, said officials had awaited the completion of the investigation “before proceeding with any disciplinary actions that may be warranted.”

He added, “That review is now under way.”

The report says several of the 14 employees had suspicions about the degrees and expressed their misgivings to peers and supervisors.

The phony diplomas were purchased from St. Regis University, described by federal prosecutors as a diploma mill that churned out thousands of fake degrees, at hundreds of dollars apiece, from a base near Spokane, Wash., using various Web sites.

In October 2005, a federal grand jury in Spokane indicted eight people at St. Regis on charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Three have pleaded guilty. The other five cases are pending, including those of Dixie E. Randock and Steven K. Randock Sr., who were described as the main owners of St. Regis and were also charged with money laundering.

St. Regis had called itself an “online distance learning institution,” based in Liberia and accredited by the Education Ministry there.

Not telling him what you got at the UJA thrift shop is one thing, but explaining what that big wedding dress is doing in the closet is quite another:

A 27-year-old Manhattan woman twirled before a full-length mirror in a lace wedding gown yesterday morning. “If my boyfriend knew I was doing this, we’d break up,” she said.

The strapless gown by Vera Wang retails for $12,900. However, the yet-to-be-engaged woman, who didn’t want her name mentioned lest her live-in boyfriend find out she was planning ahead, bought it for only $450.

Donated new and store-sample wedding dresses by high-end designers went on sale yesterday at the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York Thrift Shop on West 17th Street. All of the usually four- or five-figure gowns were tagged at $500 or less.

At those prices, bride-to-be Molly Davis, 31, bought two. One was a white backless empire-waist Monique Lhuillier white gown, which retails for $4,700. The other was a slinky, ivory halter dress by Vera Wang, usually priced at $2,300. Ms. Davis, who works in the fashion industry, paid a total of $750 for the dresses. “I was planning to pay more, but I’m not going to argue with these prices,” she said.

Mr. Miller, put down the remote . . . and for pete’s sake, stay away from the Oprah books:

At the northwest corner of Central Park, construction is under way on Frederick Douglass Circle, a $15.5 million project honoring the escaped slave who became a world-renowned orator and abolitionist.

Beneath an eight-foot-tall sculpture of Douglass, the plans call for a huge quilt in granite, an array of squares, a symbol in each, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves. Two plaques would explain this.

The only problem: According to many prominent historians, the secret code — the subject of a popular book that has been featured on no less a cultural touchstone than “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — never existed. And now the city is reconsidering the inclusion of the plaques, so as not to “publicize spurious history,” Kate D. Levin, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, said yesterday.

. . .

Algernon Miller, who designed the memorial site, said he “was inspired by this story line,” which he discovered in the library. His was a re-interpretation, he said, noting that he was “taking a soft material, a quilt, and converting it into granite.”

“Traditionally what African-Americans do is take something and reinterpret into another form,” he said.

. . .

Giles R. Wright, director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission, rattled off the historians’ problems in a telephone interview: There is no surviving example of an encoded quilt from the period. The code was never mentioned in any of the interviews of ex-slaves carried out in the 1930’s by the Works Progress Administration. There is no mention of quilting codes in any diaries or memoirs from the period.

Mr. Miller responded to critics: “No matter what anyone has to say, they weren’t there in that particular moment, especially something that was in secret.”

It’s not the interstate, the mall or even Wal-Mart that killed Main Street — it was overzealous traffic agents:

Combatting graffiti, applying for sidewalk permits, and monitoring the scourge of empty storefronts or new chain stores aren’t at the top of the priority list for the dozens of small business owners along Morris Park Ave.

Number one on their list is parking tickets.

At a meeting called on Jan. 9, over 40 store owners met with community leaders in hopes of building a unified front to tackle issues many in the area fear could lead to the commercial strip’s downfall.

“It’s totally supportive. They need it desperately,” said John Fratta, district manager for Community Board 11.

While the addition of sidewalk cafes, new clothing stores and diverse shops would be a boon, all merchants had one beef: Ticketing of their customers by parking agents.

“Morris Park is getting killed by traffic agents,” said Fratta. “They have those people out there issuing 120 tickets a day. A customer gets a ticket, that person no longer comes to Morris Park. That person will be going to the malls in Westchester, where there’s parking.”

Clothing stores, especially well-known vendors, could provide an anchor to draw shoppers to the area between Williamsbridge Road and Bronxdale Ave., Fratta said.

“Most people now come to eat or get their nails done.”

But traffic agents deter any newcomers, he said. “Cookies [a school uniform store] wanted to come here. They looked at the traffic agents and changed their minds.”

Marco Muccitelli, owner of Marco’s Salumeria Leone caterer and deli, called the ticketing “absolutely insane.”

“People don’t even have two minutes to actually get out of their cars there and pick up a sandwich. They’re getting a $115 ticket for a $6 hero.”

With 125th Street already named for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the portion of 125th Street in front of the Apollo already named for Nat King Cole, those wanting to honor the memory of James Brown find that they have simply run out of streets. Enter Al Sharpton:

A large part of 145th Street in Harlem soon may be renamed in honor of the late James Brown.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday he has met with officials from Community Board 10 about renaming the stretch of street from Lenox Avenue to Broadway “James Brown Way” for the late godfather of soul, who died Dec. 25 after a decadeslong, groundbreaking career. The street runs in front of the new headquarters of Sharpton’s activist group, the National Action Network.

Genius!

Is all press still good press** if media outlets*** basically reproduce your press releases verbatim? The headline**** “Weiner Gets $2.5 M for Safety Improvements” just gives it away:

Five schools in Congressmember Anthony Weiner’s district will be getting upgraded traffic safety measures, thanks to a $2.5 million grant from the federal Department of Transportation, the lawmaker announced.

The public safety improvements were announced at a press conference held by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joe Klein, city Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Weiner (D–Queens/Brooklyn).

The schools involved, according to Weiner, are P.S. 220, Edward Mandel School, Forest Hills; P.S. 71, Forest Elementary School, Ridgewood; I.S. 250, Robert F. Kennedy Community Middle School, Flushing, and St. Elizabeth School and J.H.S. 210, Elizabeth Blackwell School, both in Ozone Park.

The DOT studied all 1,471 elementary and middle schools in New York City. One hundred and thirty five had the highest accident rates and were designated priority schools for safety improvements. Of these, 34 are in Queens.

Weiner said the Safe Routes to Schools Program is a nationwide effort aimed at making travel to school safer by reducing traffic congestion, reducing the number of collisions in and around schools and lowering the speed limits in residential neighborhoods by installing signs and speed bumps.

For children ages 5 to 9 in New York City, getting hit by a motorist is the number one cause of death and injury, said Weiner of Forest Hills.

To achieve better safety for the students, each school involved in the program will receive infrastructure additions and upgrades such as speed bumps, traffic signals bicycle lanes, medians and crosswalks. Construction is set to begin next year.

Weiner holds a seat on the House Transportation Committee from which he secured the school safety grant. The total amount of funding needed to improve safety at all 135 priority schools is $30 million.

And John, the dangerous thing about lazily reediting press releases is that these days, they’re all on the internets (”WEINER ANNOUNCES $2.5 MILLION FOR PUBLIC SAFETY AROUND SCHOOLS”):

Today, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn & Queens), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced $2.5 million for public safety improvements around New York City schools, including six schools in the Ninth Congressional District. The funds will be used to add or upgrade safety measures such as crosswalks, signs, speed bumps and medians as part of the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Safe Routes to Schools Program.

Last week, Rep. Weiner joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at P.S. 21 in the Bronx where the list of schools slated for enhancements was announced.

The Department of Transportation studied all 1,471 elementary and middle schools in New York City and established a list of 135 schools that are considered priority schools for safety improvements — schools with the highest accidents rates. Of the 135 priority schools, 46 are in Brooklyn and 34 are in Queens.

The project is part of a nationwide effort aimed at making it safer for kids to travel to and from schools by reducing traffic congestion, reducing collisions in and around schools, and decreasing speed in residential neighborhoods. For children ages 5 to 9 in New York City, getting hit by a motorist is the number one cause of death and injury.

To accomplish these goals, each priority school in New York City will receive infrastructural additions or upgrades such as speed bumps, traffic signals, bicycle lanes, medians and crosswalks. Construction is set to being on the first 32 priority schools in 2007.

Rep. Weiner, from his seat on the House Transportation Committee, was instrumental in securing funding for the project. Rep. Weiner’s $2.5 million in federal funds, which comes from federal gasoline taxes, makes up a significant portion of the estimated $30 million needed to complete work at all of the 135 priority schools.

In addition to the 135 schools announced today, Rep. Weiner is working with Commissioner Weinshall to fast track improvements at 10 additional City schools.

“Looking both ways before crossing a street isn’t enough to protect our City’s schoolchildren,” said Rep. Weiner. “We have to stop speeding, reckless driving and collisions around our schools.”

The following schools in Rep. Weiner’s Congressional District are priority schools slated for improvements:

QUEENS

Saint Elizabeth - 94-01 85th St Ozone Park - Ozone Park

P.S. 220 (Edward Mandel School) - Forest Hills

P.S. 71 (Forest Elementary School) - Ridgewood

I.S. 250 (Robert F. Kennedy Community Middle School) - Flushing

J.H.S. 210 (Elizabeth Blackwell School) - Ozone Park

BROOKLYN

Yeshivat Ateret Torah – Ocean Parkway

*I’ll tell you, he’s no Chan.

**Duh!

***Maybe Connie Rosenblum isn’t so crotchety after all.

****And — just a guess here — if instead of “Weiner Gets $2.5 M for Safety Improvements” it read “Queens to Receive $2.5 M in Safety Improvements” I’m pretty sure no one would have bothered to look it up. Moral: If you crib from press releases, at least change the headline!

ATMs, like those new-fangled parking meters, are just so darn smart nowadays:

You walk up to the ATM. Feed your card into the slot, and it disappears. Maybe you get an error message.

What do you do? Contact the bank manager? Push the button and ask for customer assistance? Fiddle with the ATM numbers?

Lawrence Grey went a different route, cops say — he got a tire iron and sought vengeance on the machine.

Now he faces a felony charge.

Early on Thursday, at about 2:20 a.m., the 44-year-old Brooklyn construction worker slipped his sister’s expired ATM card into the machine at the SI Bank & Trust at 6975 Amboy Road in Tottenville, according to court papers.

When the machine wouldn’t give the card back, he tried to pry the front plate off with a tool he had on him, likely a screwdriver, then left, according to a source close to the investigation.

A few minutes later, “he came back with a tire iron, and started whaling on the machine,” the source said.

The attack cracked the face plate and damaged the wiring underneath, according to court papers.

One source estimated the damage at more than $5,000.

Bank security notified the police, but Grey was gone before they arrived, authorities said.

But a security camera caught him in the act, and a detective from the NYPD and FBI’s Joint Bank Robbery Task Force used his sister’s card to track him down, according to a law enforcement source.

He ultimately admitted to cops that he realized “what I did was stupid,” but was worried about losing his sister’s card, the source said.

A perfect example of what John Sutter is talking about is when the big dailies take perfectly crafted ledes like this:

Not too long ago, when people spoke about swingers on the Lower West Side waterfront, they were probably referring to the gay cruising scene on the crumbling former shipping piers. But a new proposal to redevelop Pier 40 at Houston St., if successful, would bring a new kind of swinger to the waterfront — namely tights-clad trapeze artists with Cirque du Soleil, speaking a strange gibberish called Cirquish, no less.

. . . and bowdlerize them to resemble the sort of pablum the Post likes to print:

The acrobats of Cirque du Soleil are jumping at the chance to set up a permanent show on the Hudson River.

The Montreal-based circus — best known for its astonishing Las Vegas spectacles — is interested in opening a theater at Pier 40, at the western end of Houston Street in Hudson River Park, a Cirque spokeswoman said yesterday.

Urban students lack even a basic understanding of science, perhaps due in part to fewer (and less!) hands-on learning opportunities:

A physics demonstration landed a Queens teacher a suspension from his job and he now faces allegations of improperly touching a student.

Teacher Leonard Brown says he’s done the demonstration on Newton’s Third Law of Motion in countless physics classes in an 18-year teaching career. But when he called a female student to the front of his class at Benjamin Cardozo High School on Nov. 15 to help illustrate that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he got a reaction he didn’t expect.

He asked the student — from Cardozo’s elite Da Vinci Math Science Institute — to hold her hands up against his and lean against his hands with all of her weight, he said. He also put his hands on her shoulders before the demonstration.

Brown said he heard the girl claimed he touched her breast during the process — an allegation he denies.

“Assuming I wasn’t moral and ethical, I’m not stupid,” he said. “Do they think I’d be stupid enough to molest a girl in front of 34 witnesses? To me, this is absolutely insane.”

He was yanked from his classroom on Nov. 16, he said. Special schools investigator Richard Condon requested Brown’s removal from the classroom until the investigation is complete.

Kids — so touchy these days!

Understatement of the day:

To the average person, 50 may seem like an excessive number of bullets fired by police officer.

The Post answers what was in (or near) Scranton — a toilet:

A simple pit stop by the side of the highway led to the theft of an priceless painting by Spanish master Francisco de Goya while it was being transported to New York from Ohio for an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum.

The 1778 masterpiece, “Children With a Cart,” was snatched when the professional art movers took a break on the side of the highway en route to the Big Apple and left their vehicle — and the nearly 5-foot-by-3-foot painting — unattended, said FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams.

When they returned to their vehicle, the movers discovered it had been broken into and the painting had been swiped, she said.

It was the only artwork they were transporting — and that makes investigators believe the thieves didn’t just chance upon the masterpiece.

By the way, the Post’s headline — “When You Gotta Goya You Gotta Goya” — is not half bad!

Is the Civilian Complaint Review Board actually defending people who abuse PBA cards? It sounds that way:

Eleven officers have improperly confiscated police union “courtesy” cards shown to them by relatives and friends of other officers throughout the last 18 months, the Civilian Complaint Review Board announced yesterday.

In a letter to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, CCRB chair Franklin Stone recommended that the NYPD better inform officers about the cards, which are often shown by civilians to get special treatment or immunity from tickets and/or arrest.

“Most, if not all, of these cases involved the improper seizure of union cards by police officers who misunderstood the law relating to these cards,” the Nov. 9 letter read. “Simply put, officers often do not have legal justification to seize police union cards — private property — from individuals who lawfully possess them.”

And apparently people complaining about a lack of special treatment is endemic:

In a separate letter to Kelly — dated yesterday — [New York Civil Liberties Union associate legal director Christopher] Dunn and NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman echoed the CCRB’s concerns and called for an investigation into conduct by NYPD Officer John McNeeley, who was pulled over for speeding in Kansas last month and showed the officer his driver’s license and NYPD ID.

“About 5 minutes later, he brought back a summons to me and thanked me for my cooperation,” McNeeley wrote in a letter to the court obtained by the NYCLU. “I then tried to ask him why a cop would write another cop a ticket? He would not answer. I have stopped many people and the minute they pull out their Law Enforcement ID card I say ‘Sir or Mam [sic] have a nice day’ No questions asked. . . . You see it’s called professional courtesy.”

Nice to know that both the CCRB and the Civil Liberties Union (while ostentatiously “sounding an alarm”) are standing up for your right to get out of paying tickets. Very heartening!

I guess if you’re going to get fined, the race better be competitive*:

An East Bronx public school principal has been fined $10,000 for endorsing a Democratic candidate in a letter sent home with students the Friday before the election. The Department of Education is also investigating the school’s parent coordinator, who apparently used her city government e-mail address to solicit campaign volunteers for the same candidate, who is running for re-election to the state Senate.

As The New York Sun first reported yesterday, the principal of Public School 71, Lance Cooper, issued a letter praising City Council Member James Vacca and state Senator Jeffrey Klein. The letter encouraged parents to “endorse these Community Leaders when they need our support as a way of saying thank you for always being there for P.S. 71!”

Mr. Klein, a Democrat who represents portions of Bronx and Westchester counties, faces the Bronx Republican chairman, Joseph Savino, in today’s election. Mr. Vacca, a first-term council member, is not up for election this year.

After authenticating Mr. Cooper’s letter yesterday, education department officials consulted with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. The Board determined that Mr. Cooper’s letter violated the Chancellor’s Regulations, which forbids school employees from endorsing a candidate while at work, or in contact with students. Mayor Bloomberg was briefed on the matter, an education department spokesman, David Cantor, said.

In addition to the fine, which will go to the city’s general fund, Mr. Cantor said a letter would be placed in the principal’s personnel file “denoting the unacceptable action that he took.” He added that Mr. Cooper seemed “quite penitent,” and “acknowledged, as soon as we contacted him, if not earlier, that he suffered a significant lapse of judgment.”

But why bother also endorsing someone not even running?

*Competitive? Depends who you ask.

A novel way to report the news:

North- and southbound traffic on the Steinway Street Bridge over the Grand Central Parkway was to resume on or before yesterday, October 31, the city Department of Transportation announced.

After a study of 9,442 rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero determined that 70 percent of them are suffering from debilitating respiratory conditions because of the air there, the mayor does his best impression of a tobacco lobbyist:

Mayor Bloomberg cast doubt on a Mount Sinai Medical Center report showing thousands are suffering long-term effects of the disaster — even as he vowed the city will not walk away from its responsibility to the victims.

“I don’t believe that you can say specifically a particular problem came from this particular effect,” said Bloomberg, who had not read the report.

“There is no way to tell for sure, and you’ve got to be very careful. If I say, ‘I’ve got something because of this,’ that’s just not the way science works.”

His comments reflect what critics say has been a cold, bureaucratic stance when it comes to helping victims of the attacks. Bloomberg lobbied hard against three bills — eventually signed by Gov. Pataki — that cover health costs of 9/11 responders.

If you found it problematic getting from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the Lexington Avenue line yesterday, rest assured that it was only this way because of a fraction of an inch:

Work crews involved in a major overhaul of the Wall St. station on the Lexington Ave. line installed temporary ceiling beams and panels too low — causing some trains to scrape against them.

The Transit Authority slowed trains before finally halting service for four hours so repairs could be made.

No. 4 train service was suspended in both directions, from Nevins St. to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, about 2 p.m.

“Rider safety was never in jeopardy because of this incident,” TA spokesman Charles Seaton said. “It was just a fraction of an inch too low. It never came in contact with the front of any train, only certain sections of the roof, on a limited number of cars.”

One day after she received a big endorsement from rising star Anthony Weiner, opposition research about CD11 candidate Yvette Clark emerges with its first hit. Oh, how did that get in the Post? Hmm, I wonder:

A Brooklyn congressional candidate said yesterday she forget that she never completed her college degree.

City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke, running in the 11th District, claims on the Campaign Finance Board Web site that she graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin College. But the Democrat, who also studied at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College, admitted yesterday to being two classes short of her BA.

“I spent much of the day today in contact with Oberlin College and Medgar Evers College to retrieve my academic records from two decades ago, convinced of my recollection that I had fulfilled the requirements for a bachelor’s degree,” Clarke said.

“Contrary to that recollection, I have now discovered that I remain two classes short of the requirements for my degree. This is an embarrassing moment for me, but I feel it is important to set the record straight.”

Next oppo steps: Check how crazy she sounded on the podcast (I haven’t listened to it). Or here (I’m pretty sure she was the only one who out and out said that only an African-American should run).