Leading Economic Indicators: Younger Interns

In this tough economy, a young person is forced to explore internship opportunities as early as he possibly can:

A subway rider says he got the shock of his life when he peered into the cab and saw a kid behind the controls alongside the driver.

“I saw him driving. He couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9,” said Jules Cattie, 41. “That has to be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Cattie, a lawyer who lives on the East Side, said he spotted the child after he got into the front car of a Lexington Ave. express train Sunday.

“I was just in shock,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is really dangerous.'”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday said it has launched “a vigorous and thorough investigation” into the charge.

Everyone Has A Narsty Subway Story

And if the MTA has its way, there will be fewer outrageous subway stories to share with friends and family:

To dramatize the effects of budget cuts on subway cleanliness, the head of New York City Transit on Monday described a recent incident in which someone used an entrance to the Rector Street station in Lower Manhattan as a public bathroom.

“We are in a situation where, between 4:30 a.m. and noon, we are not staffed to deal” with that, the president of New York City Transit, Howard H. Roberts Jr., said at a meeting with the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. (Mr. Roberts’s exact choice of words, which included a relatively graphic description of the events, elicited grimaces from many of the spectators.)

The Daily News confirms it was “human feces,” obviously the best kind of feces.

Admit It: “Inspired By Bogota” Sounds A Lot Better Than “Rehashed Mayor Lindsay”

Maybe it was “inspired by Bogota” — Bogota being the place where all those exotic, sexy ideas come from — like Bus Rapid Transit! — but Mayor Lindsay also tried it out in 1970*, right when his political career was starting to implode. Hahahahahaha:

Traffic on Park Avenue may seem lighter in August than in much of the year, thanks to the summering habits of its well-to-do residents. But much of the boulevard will have no traffic at all on three Saturdays this summer, as the city shuts down 6.9 miles of Manhattan roadway in a reprise of last year’s Summer Streets program.

In its debut last August, the program attracted about 50,000 bicyclists and pedestrians on each of its three days to a path from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street. This year’s events, announced on Monday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, will take place on Aug. 8, 15 and 22, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Citing a positive response to the program — an idea inspired by a recreational experiment in Bogotá, Colombia, that began in the 1970s — the city has expanded it to smaller stretches of the other boroughs on weekends throughout the summer. The program will reach 13 neighborhoods, although none of the additional street closings will match the size of the main Manhattan route.

*Back then it involved closing Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 57th Streets, and the idea was referred to as a “pedestrian shopping mall” — which, if you think about it, is basically what it amounts to.

Emergency Third Rail Power Trip

Anecdotes from the New York City Transit Learning Center’s Track Safety class, mandatory for anyone working on New York City Transit proerty, including actors:

Kevin Bress, the senior director of Track Infrastructure and Maintenance Support Training for N.Y.C.T., said, the other day, at the agency’s headquarters, at 2 Broadway. The class, he explained, takes eight hours and is mandatory for anyone working on N.Y.C.T. property. Of the curriculum, he said, “The main theme of the class is teaching people how not to get hit by a train.”

René Corcino, a course instructor, added, “We also identify areas that the homeless may tend to get comfortable in before the police chase them out.” Other topics: the third rail, tripping hazards, how to scoot up the platform ladder from the tracks. “You have to kind of put your foot sideways,” another instructor, Joseph Lupo, said.

. . .

Lupo continued, “[Nicolas] Cage was especially interested in the third rail. He had this big thing about the mystical power of electricity.”

Don’t Say This Kid’s Not Ambitious

If you can’t figure out the impasse in Albany, tackle something truly baffling — like why the F train continues to suck:

The “performance and infrastructure” review, which goes beyond the agency’s normal oversight of the Coney Island to Queens line, came after state Sen. Daniel Squadron cornered the MTA’s Albany-based lobbyist and demanded action.

“I have been getting increasing complaints about the F line from my constituents and, no less important, my fiancee,” Squadron told The Brooklyn Paper. “So I asked the MTA to do a full review, and they agreed.

“There was definitely a sense in March and April, judging from the e-mails to our office, that something was wrong — the delays were longer, the trains more overcrowded,” Squadron added. “When I brought it up to the MTA, they did a quick search that suggested, at first glance, that something was wrong.

“That’s why they agreed to a full review,” he added. “I’m happy that they’re being responsive.”

(That said, Senator, you might want to carefully consider how campaigns like this craft your public image especially while things are so topsy-turvy.)