The Multi-Tentacled Reach Of The Most Insidious Lobby Around

The filthy pedicab industry not only has its dirty paws in everything, it has its dirty paws in literally everything:

While the city tries to clamp down on all the pedal-powered taxis clogging Midtown streets, the state has made a pedicab driver its tourism pitchman.

A helpful pedicab driver carting tourists down a busy Manhattan avenue is featured prominently in an “I Love New York” TV ad produced by the state — sharing equal screen time with Knick star Stephon Marbury.

“It seems problematic to promote pedicabs to tourists and then restrict them so that when tourists arrive in New York, there won’t be any pedicabs for them,” said Chad Marlow, spokesman for the NYC Pedicab Owners Association.

Hubris Compounds

The problem with never admitting you’re wrong is that hubris compounds. For example, you can’t suspend alternate-side parking if you never admitted there was a storm in the first place. The only obvious course of action to follow is to tell ’em to quit their bitching:

As drivers dug themselves out from Wednesday’s modest but messy snowstorm, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg found himself on the defensive over the city’s decision not to suspend alternate-side parking rules. That move had residents complaining that their cars were ticketed after plows buried them in snow.

The mayor was at times curt, testy and defensive as he answered questions from reporters at a Sanitation Department garage in Woodside, Queens, yesterday, even suggesting that New Yorkers stop “griping” about the situation.

Mr. Bloomberg said the Sanitation Department had done “a spectacular job” of clearing the streets. There were “a lot of fender-benders,” he said, but no major accidents. “We want to get the snow and ice off the roads as quickly as possible so emergency vehicles can get through, so that you can get to work, so that the kids can get to school,” he said. “And if we all do it together rather than griping, we’ll be better off.”

. . .

“I have to dig out the car, and where am I going to put it?” Carol Jolley, 50, asked in frustration. A stay-at-home mother in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, she used a garden shovel to excavate her Volvo sedan from a two-foot snow mound.

“Take a look around,” she said. “I have no place to put it. And then when I come back, this spot will be gone. All my good work for nothing.”

Step Aside, Let Passengers Off, Move All The Way Into The Car, Eat Something — Anything — Even A Slice Of Bread — Before Leaving In The Morning

MTA statistics show yet again that sloppy dieters are making you late for work:

Sick straphangers, including those who faint from dieting too strenuously, are among the top causes of subway delays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

After track work and signal problems, ill passengers rated among the main reasons for train disruptions between October 2005 and October 2006, according to an analysis of MTA statistics.

Asim Nelson, a transit emergency medical technician, said that fainting dieters topped the “sick customer” list: “Not eating for three or four days, you are going to go down . . . If you don’t eat for 12 hours, you are going to get weak.”

Though the MTA keeps no official record of the nature of rider illnesses, the paper said that an average 395 delays each month are caused by ill riders.

Any Slower And We’d Be In A Permanent State Of Carnaval

Last year’s slowest bus was the M34 (3.4 mph). This year we see some improvement, as the M14A checks in at a 3.9 mph clip:

The crosstown bus moves — if you can call it that — across Manhattan’s 14th St. at an average speed of 3.9 mph, earning it bottom honors in the annual Pokey Awards, handed out to the slowest coach in town.

Dishonorable mentions also were handed out yesterday to New York’s most unreliable and off-schedule routes by the Straphangers Campaign and other public transportation advocates.

“There are 2.5 million New Yorkers who ride the buses each day, and they deserve better,” said Paul White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

The ceremony took place in Union Square, just feet from where the M14A crawls by, and featured advocates dressed in tuxedos and handing out Golden Snail awards after each drumroll.

Cue elderly and/or infirm:

“They go slow because of the traffic,” said Phyllis Casper, 79, a retired bookkeeper from Manhattan. “I could walk faster if my feet didn’t hurt.”

The subways are not an option because Casper has difficulty with the stairs.

“I hate to say I’m an old lady, but I am,” she said.

The best double-barreled middle finger of the day comes from the Transit Authority:

The Transit Authority agreed traffic is a problem, but in a statement tried to put the ultimate positive spin on the daily bus commute trauma: “Slow and unreliable bus service is very much a product of the city’s vibrancy.”

Rain, Sleet And Snow Are One Thing, But Stoops And Smells Are Quite Another

After earlier drawing the line at “smell,” apparently some Brooklyn mail carriers are also balking at “stoop”:

Neither snow, rain, nor gloom of night will stop letter carriers from completing their rounds. But brownstone stoops in Brooklyn? Well, that’s a different story.

The residents are complaining that mail carriers have been dumping letters by their garden gates rather than making their way up the brownstone steps.

Letters, catalogs, and magazines delivered to certain streets in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have been rained upon, blown away, and destroyed. Some residents who filed official complaints with the postmaster found that their mail stopped coming around at all for several days.

Postal workers complain that trekking up the steps is treacherous business, especially in the ice and snow.

When the sidewalk mailbox belonging to Elizabeth Juviler, a real estate agent in Bedford-Stuyvesant, recently fell off, her attempts to replace it with a box inside her foyer failed because her letter carrier refused to use it.

“Our mailman said he didn’t climb stoops,” Ms. Juviler said.

. . .

As part of the move to phase out stoop service, when new residents move in to a brownstone they are not guaranteed mail delivery to the top of the stoop, according to a customer service agent at the Postal Service.