Grandstanding Studies Cost City Taxpayers Thousands

Oh sorry, I guess the real headline was “No. 7 shutdown cost city commuters $25M: Gioia”:

New Yorkers lost more than $25 million because of service cuts to the No. 7 subway line during an eight-week period in January and February, according to the preliminary results of a study City Councilman Eric Gioia’s (D−Sunnyside) office conducted.

Gioia said the shutdown of the No. 7 line on weekends from Times Square and Queensborough Plaza from January to early March cost commuters $25.9 million and at least 950,000 hours because of extra travel time over eight weeks.

“New Yorkers not only lose their time, but their hard-earned money when they have their commutes interrupted by service delays,” Gioia said. “The subway lines are the lifeline for most New Yorkers — when the trains don’t run, New Yorkers suffer. The MTA needs to take tangible steps towards making sure that when there are service interruptions, they have a minimal effect on New Yorkers.”

Using a formula developed by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger, the study analyzed how much money detours, additional trip segments and increased wait times were costing the average rider of the No. 7 subway line, which runs from Manhattan to Flushing through northern Queens.

Look, shutting down the 7 between Times Square and Queensboro Plaza on the weekend certainly sucks, and I’m sure there is a “cost” to making the commute longer, though it’s obviously minimized on the weekend, but the other thing that sucks is neglecting infrastructure, and, you know, getting delayed at more inopportune times. But Councilmember Gioia got a lot of mileage out of this eminently grandstandable issue (MTA bad! Beleaguered outer-borough residents!) and there’s no reason to stop even after the delays are over . . .

But Here’s What I Don’t Get: After You Get To Penn Station Do You Then Put Your Wife, Who Is In Labor, On The 4 Train?

If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that one should splurge for a cab when his wife is in labor:

Penn Station isn’t known for its early arrivals, but little Caesar Boothe may change all that.

The 7-pound boy came into the world Wednesday right in the middle of the bustling Amtrak concourse as commuters gathered to welcome him with cheers.

“I didn’t care who was there, who was watching me,” mom Marie Boothe, 29, said hours after she delivered her son on the floor of the waiting area at 7:18 a.m.

“I was thinking, ‘Just get the baby out!'”

. . .

The ordeal started about 4 a.m., when Boothe woke up in labor at her home in East Orange, N.J.

Joined by husband Jonathan Boothe, 26, and 1-year-old son Samson, she hopped on a train about 6:30 a.m. to get to North Central Bronx Hospital, where they planned to give birth.

But when they pulled into Penn Station, her pain was too strong, her water broke and the baby was ready to come out.

“Forget the ambulance. Forget everything else. I’ll do it right here,” Boothe said she told her husband.

Even better: Sewell Chan reports that the parents decided to use “Penn” as the baby’s middle name . . .

Location Scout: Penn Station.

Thought For The Day

And keep in mind when reading this that the city budget for the next four or five years* is supposed to hover between $60 and $70 billion:

The state Financial Control Board, which studies the city budget to prevent another 1970s-style brush with bankruptcy, said New York must plug a $23.8 billion hole.

That’s more than twice the size of the budget gap Mayor Bloomberg projected less than two months ago.

*Check it (.pdf)

It’s Not All Jack McBrayer Farm Freshness After All

But Tina Fey can work with details like these:

The combination of factors took a toll on morale. Some pages bristled at a series of disciplinary crackdowns. According to one source, pages were regularly asked to keep an eye on their colleagues for possible infractions. “It’s a culture of fear,” said the former page.

One By One, They’re Taking Away Everything

And soon there will be nothing left:

The way Vincent Sapone sees it, the Staten Island postmark is bit like the “Made in the U.S.A.” label.

“It’s a point of pride,” said Sapone, a 28-year employee of the U.S. Postal Service.

So when Sapone — chief steward for mail handlers at the Manor Road Post Office in Castleton Corners — heard talk that bigwigs are weighing whether to shut down the facility’s outgoing mail processing service as a cost-cutting measure, the first thing he thought of was the postmark.

And the fact that it might not be around much longer. That’s because the Postal Service is in the midst of a five-month study to see whether consolidating the processing of outgoing Staten Island mail with that of Brooklyn and Queens would make sense from an economic standpoint.

Which would mean mailing a letter on Staten Island, having it taken by mail truck over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to have it processed and postmarked, and then having Staten Island-addressed mail brought back over the bridge to be distributed here.

“No offense,” said Sapone, who resides in Westerleigh, “but we don’t live in Queens or Brooklyn, and that’s what the postmark would say.”