Crosstown Traffic

The Daily News discovers that crosstown buses are good for the elderly and infirm but not much else:

Passengers on the M34 are living life in the slow lane.

The crosstown bus – the slowest in the city – inches along 34th St. at a pace so snail-like that a Daily News reporter yesterday gave it a run for the money during a river-to-river dash.

In a race that stretched just over 25 minutes, the mammoth machine needed a last-second burst of “speed” across Second Ave. to hold on for a dubious win – by all of 46 seconds.

“Sometimes this thing is so slow, that even I can beat the bus,” said Frank Fellippello, 46, who rides the bus daily.

And even fat-ass reporters can nearly outwalk a bus:

The contest began at 34th St. and 11th Ave., with a News intern boarding an 11:41 bus, and a reporter setting off on foot.

The M34 shot out of the starting blocks, leaving pedestrians in the dust with an unspectacular view – a rear-end bus ad featuring the scowling mug of actor Don Johnson.

Man and machine would trade the lead a few times as they approached busy Herald Square, where the bus finally got jammed up by a long red light and a traffic cop’s whistle.

Fighting urges to stop for a chocolate chip cookie and a cheesesteak at favorite spots along 34th St., the reporter held the lead even as the bus lurked dangerously close.

But the bus finally won out near the finish line, zooming into the winner’s circle as the hapless pedestrian staggered across Second Ave.

Meanwhile, the Post notes that the M34 often is too slow for even the elderly and infirm:

The M34 is so slow that in Herald Square last night, an 84-year-old woman with a cane said she’d be better off walking.

“I’m late for an appointment. I don’t think I can get there any faster with the bus,” said the woman, who didn’t give her name.

Other s l o w lines include the M66, the M23, the M14s, Brooklyn’s B63 (5.2 mph), the Bronx’s Bx19 (4.9 mph) and the Q58 International “Express” (6.9 mph).

That Whole Sharing Classified Intelligence Thing

Gentlemen, it’s not a freakin’ Scruples question (“Your security clearance allows you access to intelligence detailing a terrorist attack on the city in which your son lives . . .”)! The federal employees who E-mailed everyone they knew in the New York metropolitan area warning them not to ride the subways last week have been stripped of their security clearance:

Two federal employees have been stripped of their security clearance for allegedly tipping friends and family to the New York City subway terror threat, sources said yesterday.

William Ross, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain now working for the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Safety Administration, was being questioned for allegedly alerting his son of a possible terror attack – three days before Mayor Bloomberg and the FBI went public with the warning, sources said yesterday.

“As some of you know my father works for Homeland Security, at a very high position and receives security briefings on a daily basis,” his son, Nick Seligson-Ross, who runs a dance troupe, wrote in an Oct. 3 E-mail – one of two electronic messages sent out to big shots in the city’s arts and business communities.

“The only information that I can pass on is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subways for the next two weeks,” the E-mail warned some New Yorkers before Bloomberg was fully briefed on the threat.

. . .

The second tipster, who has high-level security access, has been transferred to a division that does not deal with sensitive information as the investigation continues, sources said.

The tipster’s information allegedly found its way into an E-mail sent out by production company owner Tony Micocci Oct. 5.

“I have just received a most disturbing call from one of my oldest friends … who, by dint of his position, has access to the highest level of intelligence traffic,” Micocci wrote. “He called with a very specific caution to not enter the New York City subway system from Oct. 7-Oct. 10.”

That E-mail circulated in the New York arts and business community a day before the public was notified of the threat.

The Shakedown

The Times profiles one of the Department of Finance’s parking ticket adjudicators, whose job is to help you avoid your day — er, a day in court:

Mr. [William] Beaman works for the city’s Department of Finance as part of its parking settlement program, which was started this year in all five boroughs as a service to parking ticket recipients waiting to contest their summonses. Mr. Beaman offers a driver the option of pleading guilty immediately and paying a reduced fine – avoiding the wait for a hearing and the risk of a guilty ruling from the judge followed by the full fine.

Mr. Beaman offers a deal prescribed by the city for each violation. For example, the $115 penalty for double-parking or parking at a bus stop would be reduced to $95, he said, and the $35 for an expired parking meter would become $26. Some offenses, such as parking in front of a fire hydrant, in a crosswalk or on a pedestrian ramp, are not eligible for a deal.

“It’s a set price,” Mr. Beaman said. “If I could negotiate, I’d be here all day.” He estimates he sees about 100 tickets an hour. “It gets crazy out here and I’m sort of the triage,” he said.

The pitch is simple — you won’t win and you should quit wasting everyone’s time, including your own:

“Here’s the deal,” he told a woman wearing a “I Met My Sweetie in Tahiti” T-shirt and holding a double-parking summons. “You see the judge and win? You walk away owing nothing. You lose? You owe $115. I’m offering you $95 right here, right now. You with it? You feeling me?”

She paused and Mr. Beaman said, “Think about it, you got till 5 p.m.” She wound up accepting.

Often, people are geared up for a showdown with the judge and scoff at first at Mr. Beaman’s offer. He might nod and say something innocuous: “Well, if you think you can convince the judge . . .,” his voice trailing off. A woman walked up armed with a packet of photos and documents atop a thick law book. She sniffed at Mr. Beaman’s offer and strode into the hearing area. “Some people have stronger cases than others, but whether you are a contender or a pretender, I have to offer you a deal whether you want it or not,” he said.

When It Doubt, Use It As A Cooler

The Times profiles those jack-booted thugs who pick through your trash to determine whether you’re recycling correctly:

It was not yet sunrise in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, when Sgt. Christine Pascall pounded on the darkened front door of the three-story house on 47th Street.

A middle-aged woman wearing nothing but a bath towel stumbled to the door and opened it.

“Shoes are not recyclable,” Sergeant Pascall informed her.

The woman’s puzzlement quickly turned to annoyance as the sergeant, a member of the Department of Sanitation’s enforcement division, explained that she had found other unacceptable items in the blue recycling bag: Chinese food containers with rancid stripes of fried rice, and plastic foam meat trays and egg cartons.

The woman, who spoke little English, abruptly closed the door, refusing to reopen it. Sergeant Pascall finished writing a summons for mixing garbage with recycling, an environmental offense in a city where nearly all household trash has to be exported out of state at great expense. Then she taped a pink carbon copy of the $25 summons to the homeowner’s door.

The City collects $250,000 a year this way. But we digress:

After a year on the recycling beat, Sergeant Pascall has developed a keen eye, and when she sees a multifamily house with just one black plastic bag on the curb, she stops.

“My antennae are going up,” she said. “It’s recycling day and they don’t have anything out.”

She untied the black bag and found water jugs mixed with plastic hangars, a dirty aluminum tray and a bag of household garbage.

Another summons.

As the morning wore on, some residents stood alongside their recycling like students at a science fair waiting to be judged.

“This is a good effort,” Sergeant Pascall told Phillip Simpson, who towered over her.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Simpson said.

When she got to John Garcia’s house, though, he was scowling. “They give out tickets even though they are constantly changing the rules,” he said. “That’s a real pain.”

The sergeant inspected his recycling, rejecting metal salad tongs and a lasagna pan still specked with food. (No tongs, and the pan can be recycled only if clean.)

But sometimes the rules are too elusive even for her.

“What about this?” Mr. Garcia asked, holding up a bag of old cooking pots.

“Garbage,” she said.

“I thought any metal at all could go,” Mr. Garcia said, shaking his head.

He was right. The Sanitation Department chart says that old pots can be recycled.

But any confusion over metal is nothing compared with the misinformation about plastic. Sergeant Pascall finds unacceptable plastic in almost every bag.

“We don’t recycle Kitty Litter boxes,” she said as she poked through Felicita Jurado’s neatly bagged recycling.

“But this is plastic,” said Mrs. Jurado, wrapped in a flowered house coat and pink flowered sandals. “They say plastic recycles, so I put it in the plastics.”

“You have to look at the pictures,” Sergeant Pascall said, referring to the city’s recycling decal, which indeed does not picture cat litter.

Flustered, Mrs. Jurado removed a plastic bin the size of a picnic basket that had once held several pounds of cat litter. As she did so, John Tracey, a neighbor, walked by.

“It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he said, commiserating.

Then, pointing to the cat litter box, he asked Mrs. Jurado, “Are you going to use that?”

She said no and he took it happily, planning to recycle it in an old-fashioned, unofficial way dictated by necessity, not law.

“I’ll use it as a cooler,” he said.