Gold Coast Metro-North Commuters To LIRR Customers: Hold Your Liquor, Lightweights!

Battle lines are being drawn in an intra-agency debate over alcohol on trains as Metro-North takes a pro-hooch stand:

The state announced plans last week to buy new bar cars for the Metro-North New Haven line, even as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages on commuter trains and platforms.

Eugene Colonese, the rail administrator for the state Department of Transportation, would not say when or how many cars would be bought, but he left no doubt that the state was committed to bar car service.

“We will do our utmost to maintain it,” he said.

Mr. Colonese’s comments came after an M.T.A. board member from Long Island, Mitchell H. Pally, proposed banning alcohol on all M.T.A. trains. The New Haven line, which has bar carts at Grand Central Terminal as well as 10 bar cars on trains, is run by the state and Metro-North, which is part of the M.T.A.

. . .

Drinking on trains became an issue after a woman who was found to be intoxicated was killed in Queens in August after she fell between a station platform and an L.I.R.R. train and was hit by another train.

But many Westchester and Connecticut residents who use the bar cars on the New Haven line defended them, saying most people drank responsibly.

“I have yet to see a person get that drunk on a bar car,” said Terri Cronin, vice chairwoman of the Metro-North/Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, a riders’ advocacy group.

Ms. Cronin said she had been riding in the 5:46 p.m. bar car to Norwalk almost every workday for more than four years.

“Most people that are drunk on the train get on that way,” she said.

Mr. Colonese said that there are no bar cars among the 300 new cars scheduled to be delivered in 2009, at a cost of $75 million, but that the next car order would include them.

Ms. Cronin said she would like to see the bar cars replaced as soon as possible.

“They’re old and practically falling apart,” she said.

Cue Merrie Melodies Closing Title And Fade Out!

The transit strike comes to a merciful end as arbitrators award workers with substantively the same deal they rejected:

Ending a marathon contract dispute that included an illegal 60-hour transit strike, an arbitration panel ruled yesterday that the city’s subway and bus workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must abide by essentially the same deal that the two sides approved almost a year ago.

The bitter and sometimes bizarre labor dispute went to arbitration earlier this year, after the transit workers first voted to reject the post-strike settlement, then voted to approve it, only to have the transportation authority repudiate the deal altogether.

Seeking to restore some amity and peace between the feuding parties, the arbitration panel wrote that the best way to resolve the impasse was to award a contract that was as close to identical as possible to what the two sides agreed to last December, just days after the first transit strike since 1980.

The arbitration ruling came the same day that Roger Toussaint, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union and the man who led last December’s strike, was declared the winner in a hotly contested election, giving him a third three-year term. With some votes still uncounted, union officials said that Mr. Toussaint would win with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote. His failure to secure a majority indicated the level of dissatisfaction among union members over the strike and its muddled aftermath. He had faced a tough challenge from Barry Roberts, a union vice president, and three other opponents.

The three-person arbitration panel called for a raise averaging 3.5 percent a year for three years. It also called for the reimbursement of $130 million to some 20,000 transit workers who had paid too much into the pension fund. That last provision in the original deal drew strong criticism from Gov. George E. Pataki.

The arbitration ruling, like the original deal, will also require the transit workers to pay 1.5 percent of their wages as premiums for health insurance. That was the provision that most angered the union’s members, causing them to vote down the settlement at first. It also helped fuel broader opposition in the union to Mr. Toussaint.

The arbitration decision is binding on the two sides, and in effect sets the terms for a new 37-month contract that runs retroactively from Dec. 16, 2005, until Jan. 15, 2009.

It’s Not So Much A Quota As It Is A Make-Work Plan For Its Enforcement Agents*

A Department of Sanitation representative tries to explain the five cigarette butt rule to a tough crowd:

When it comes to giving tickets, the city’s Department of Sanitation (DOS) does not have quotas.

That was the word from the agency’s citywide community affairs officer, Ignazio Terranova, who was in the hot seat as he responded to claims that the agency is more than eager to give out summonses, during the December meeting of the Friends United Block Association (FUBA).

Speaking to the group gathered at Temple Shaare Emeth, 6012 Farragut Road, Terranova acknowledged that DOS enforcement officers could make mistakes, but insisted that the agency is not writing tickets simply to make up a certain number and fill the city’s coffers.

“We do not have a quota, whether people choose to believe it or not,” Terranova asserted. Nonetheless, he added, “But we did not hire 56 new enforcement agents to go out and sit in a car and drink coffee all day. Their job is to find summonses, whether five or 50 in a day.”

There are perameters that must be exceeded, said Terranova, for a ticket to be written. “You’re not going to get a summons for one item,” Terranova contended. “If there’s a cap on one water bottle, you’re not going to get a summons. What constitutes a summons is five things wrong with the garbage or five things on the floor. On the sidewalk, it could be one plastic cup and four cigarette butts. That constitutes five items.”

Keeping your sidewalk and 18 inches into the gutter clean, Terranova added, is a matter of making sure it is free of debris two hours a day — from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. That is actually an improvement, he told his listeners; before a relatively recent law was passed, residents could be ticketed at any hour of the day or night, seven days a week.

*At least he didn’t call it “productivity goals”!

Sure It’s Eight Stories Tall, But Think About What A Nice Flagpole It Will Make!

I’m sympathetic to a neighborhood’s concerns that a proposed cell phone tower is an ugly eyesore, but opposing it on the grounds that it might fall over seems like a stretch:

Community members challenged Omnipoint Communications’ plan to build an 82 foot tall wireless communication tower in Ozone Park’s Bayside Cemetery last week, calling for the company to make it half the size.

Set 20 feet from the cemetery’s south border and roughly 70 feet from Pitkin Avenue homes, the damage that the falling pole could potentially cause was the principal concern that drove Community Board 10’s Thursday recommendation.

“It’s too big. It’s just too big for a residential area,” said Ozone Park resident and community board member Anthony Cosentino. He added that the tapered pole will be weaker as it rises above wind shielding trees.

After Omnipoint representative Robert Gaudioso said that the tower will be disguised as a flagpole and its flag could be as large as 12 feet, the board’s Land Use Committee Chairman John Marus likened it to a sail driven mast.

One Year Later

Remember that whole Transit Strike thing that happened, oh, like a year ago? There actually may be some movement towards a new contract:

A year after the transit contract expired, union workers could learn today whether they finally have a new deal and whether their leader survived a bruising re-election battle.

Their 60-hour strike began last Dec. 20, crippling the city at the height of the holiday shopping season.

Once the strike ended, the union’s members rejected the contract negotiated by their leaders, throwing the matter into binding arbitration.

Gary Dellaverson, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s director of labor relations, said the arbitrator’s decision could be delivered as early as today.

The president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, Roger Toussaint, has said he expects the final contract to be very similar to the original deal negotiated after the strike.

That includes a first-time health insurance premium of 1.5 percent of workers’ gross pay.