Howard Beach A Train Shuttle Be Damned, The $1.9 Billion JFK AirTrain Is Still Worth It

The Queens Chronicle questions whether the JFK AirTrain was worth it:

The AirTrain may be the cheapest way to get to Kennedy Airport, but the cost of running the futuristic rail system is adding up.

The rail link that runs from Howard Beach and Jamaica to the airport has hemorrhaged nearly $70 million since it opened on Dec. 17, 2003, according to Port Authority of New York and New Jersey documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws.

The numbers, which run through the first quarter of 2006, detail losses of $800,000 during the system’s first two weeks of operation, followed by shortfalls of $34.2 million and $28.7 million in 2004 and 2005, respectively. The system ran $5.5 million in the red for the first three months of 2006 for a total negative balance of $69.2 million.

Port Authority officials counter that — like most, if not all, public transportation projects — the point is not necessarily to make money:

Officials at the Port Authority said the lackluster financial performance was not alarming.

“AirTrain was not created as a revenue generator but as a service for travellers,” said Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco. DiFulco pointed to another Port Authority system, the PATH trains, which run from New Jersey to New York and lose about $250 million a year. He said the AirTrain system is not expected to approach break even numbers in the near future.

Not to quibble, but the AirTrain isn’t the cheapest way to get to JFK — you can still take a bus there. It takes about twelve days, but you can do it . . .

See also: A Ride On The JFK AirTrain.

Take Your Head Out Of The Semi-Toxic Sludge!

Queens boosters make it sound like such a great place to be:

Ditmars Boulevard in East Elmhurst used to be the last street before the beach. Now there’s a highway and then an airport, both built on landfill, and the beach of the 1920s has long since been replaced by a semi-toxic marsh.

“I’ve been living in this neighborhood since 1960,” recalled Borough President Helen Marshall, “and air quality has always been a problem. It’s not just the airport. It’s the combination of everything.”

By “everything” Marshall means LaGuardia Airport, the Grand Central Parkway, the combined sewage overflows (CSOs) into Flushing Bay, and the finger sticking out from the airport which prevents the raw sewage from those same CSOs from circulating fully into Long Island Sound. Instead the sludgy stench is trapped in northern Queens, and much of it ends up collecting under the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge near Shea Stadium.

“The waters here are very dirty and stagnant,” complained Ranford Parkes, who has lived next door to Marshall since she first moved to the neighborhood 45 years ago.

“Sometimes you have to go back into the house,” admitted his wife, Easter, “because the smell is so bad. I don’t know if it’s the chemicals or the river.”
Marshall concurred with this assessment, saying, “Some days I open my back door and smell chemicals.”

“Jet fuel?” immediately suggested Jackson Heights State Senator John Sabini. The occasion which brought these two Queens pols together was an announcement, on the 27th Avenue pedestrian bridge over the Grand Central Parkway, of a bill co-sponsored by Sabini but inspired by Marshall.

“We have strong bipartisan support for this bill,” promised Sabini, “which says to the DEC, ‘Take your head out of the sand.'”

The bill calls for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to test pollution hotspots along the borough’s waterfront:

Right now the DEC tests air quality at 80 sites throughout the state, but the Queens sites are all located within the interior of the borough, not near the waterfront airports. “Every plane that takes off here,” grimaced Sabini, as several of them passed by directly behind him, “has the equivalent particulate emission of 3,000 cars.”

Of course, moving the test sites will only confirm the problem, but Sabini and Marshall are confident solutions will eventually emerge. Neither was willing to talk about specific solutions. Marshall did say this, however: “I’m not worried, because the minds of Americans will come up with something. Science, they’re doing it all time.”

“We don’t’ know just how bad the problem is yet,” she went on to admit, “but we have to first know what we’re talking about.”

Marshall then referred to the waterfront corridor from LIC — which has the greatest concentration of power plants in the state — to Bayside as “asthma alley.”
“It’s no accident,” concurred Sabini, “that asthma rates are so high around here.”

Asthma Alley, airplane particulates, stagnant toxic sludge . . . with any luck, rents will go down. And what a great place to build a new urban community!

Jinx, You Owe Me A Coke

New York Daily News: “Feds rescue ‘Superman,’ nab pirating men of steal”.

New York Post: “COPS NAB MEN OF ‘STEAL'”.

The story — authorities bust a DVD pirating ring:

The feds yesterday charged 22 alleged members of an underground network with recording, printing and selling millions of counterfeit videos and DVDs in an elaborate scheme dating back to at least 1999.

“We believe it to be the largest video piracy syndicate worldwide,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York, announcing the arrests under a three-year undercover probe dubbed “Operation Knock-Off.”

The FBI arrested 13 accused members of two rings, including those who filmed the movies in theaters, printers who made video and DVD covers and distributors who sold copies of the flicks. Nine others are being sought.

Raids in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens yesterday uncovered evidence the syndicate was already geared up to make a killing off “Superman Returns.”

According to court papers, members of the rings recorded high-quality “masters” at theaters throughout the city, infiltrating previews and other limited showings.

Members known as “cammers” used camcorders on tripods to record the flicks, while “blockers” allegedly sat themselves in strategic positions around the theater to help prevent detection.

The distributors allegedly bought masters for anywhere from $40 to several hundred dollars each and then mass-produced them, selling copies for anywhere from $7 to $10 each.

“We had a camcorder making $400,000 a year just by delivering recordings two to three times a week,” said Scott McGaunn, a special agent with the FBI.

Don’t Let The Stevedore Hit You On The Way Out

Waterfront development may be pushing out, um, waterfront development in Red Hook:

Dozens of longshoremen swarmed across the blue-hulled Zim Charleston on Tuesday at the Red Hook container port, unloading 1,150 containers of food, clothing and furniture from India that are bound for Long Island, New York City and New Jersey.

It was the first of what Zim, one of the world’s largest container carriers, says will be a weekly service bringing 90,000 containers a year to Pier 10, more than doubling the current volume and adding an estimated 152 new jobs.

But by next April, the city and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are hoping to close the container port and the last remnants of Brooklyn’s once-bustling cargo piers, while evicting the operator, American Stevedoring. They say the freight can be better handled at ports in New Jersey, or at Howland Hook on Staten Island.

The city is also interested in residential projects and other maritime uses on the waterfront that could generate thousands of jobs, like the newly opened cruise ship terminal on Pier 12 in Red Hook.

Although the Bloomberg administration says it would consider creating a container port in the future, the City Council will vote today on the administration’s plan to turn part of the only alternative location — the long-dormant South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park — into a parking lot.

Critics like Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn, and Representative Jerrold Nadler said the city’s plan to close the Brooklyn port is both wrong and shortsighted. They say that both the business and the well-paying waterfront jobs could be lost forever. And, they say, both New York and New Jersey need every inch of space to handle the rapidly escalating volume of goods.

“Shipping creates excellent-paying jobs for people who don’t compete in the high-tech economy,” Mr. Yassky said, “and it keeps trucks off the roads.”

But Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff counters that Red Hook is not sustainable because of its small size and lack of rail and highway access.

“Our single most important priority is providing jobs for New Yorkers,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “We also consider it an important priority to preserve and enhance jobs for dockworkers. That does not mean we have to achieve that by retaining the current uses or current tenants on the piers.”

It’s Not Your Imagination

Those beefy bouncers who look and act like ex-cons really are ex-cons:

Cops raided 42 bars last weekend and nabbed 41 unlicensed security guards — including some convicted of rape and other serious crimes, NYPD officials revealed yesterday.

At a City Council hearing yesterday on a bill to beef up regulation of bouncers, a top NYPD official testified that of those 41 unlicensed guards, 17 had previous arrest records for everything from rape to illegal gun possession and drug charges.

The NYPD didn’t immediately release the names of the bars and officials said they won’t shut them down. Instead, bar owners will be required to pay a fine and show proof of proper registration.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the proposed legislation would allow the city to shut down bars that employ unlicensed bouncers or hire bouncers who have criminal records.

But NYPD officials said they would like to make the law even tougher – requiring more training for security guards, expanding the definition of guard to include anyone who might be called upon to break up a fight, such as a host or hostess, and making bar owners keep detailed records of who is on duty at any given time.

“This is an all-too-common occurrence when police respond to a violent incident — the owner of the bar has no documentation of who was working security and the bouncer who may have been involved has disappeared,” said NYPD Deputy Chief Brian Conroy, who oversaw last weekend’s raid.