Commuters Uneasy About New LIRR Volunteer Program

Taking its cue from the Parks Department and Board of Education, the Long Island Rail Road recently instituted a new volunteer program to encourage community participation and trim costs:

A witness has told police that a Long Island Rail Road engineer let a passenger operate a train bound for New York City.

MTA Police Chief Michael Coan says the train ran smoothly and no one was injured.

The witness told police that he saw another passenger in the cab without the engineer during part of the run on July 2.

The double-decker train left Port Jefferson at 6:45 a.m. It normally has about 400 passengers and goes up to 80 mph.

Now You’ve Heard Everything

Pleasurecraft docking in that big oil spill between Brooklyn and Queens:

It’s one of the most polluted waterways in New York — a fetid stew of oil, sewage and sludge.

But Newtown Creek is paradise for Max Mulhern.

The 47-year-old London-based sculptor is spending part of his U.S. vacation docked at the notorious waterway separating Brooklyn and Queens as part of a quirky family boat trip.

“I like to stay off the beaten path,” Mulhern said on Thursday aboard his 40-foot sailboat. “It leads to much more interesting encounters.”

Keeping his boat tethered to a crumbling cement wall in an industrial section of Long Island City has another key perk: he’s staying in the city rent-free.

Mulhern, an accomplished skipper on an artist’s budget, seeks out the desolate and sometimes very dirty nooks as he travels along the East Coast en route to Maine.

On this, his second such boating trip in as many years, Mulhern has already spent two days docked at another unlikely locale, Coney Island Creek.

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

Independent! Disingenuous! Effective!

It’s not good enough to willingly give unions 4 percent raises and then come back with the argument that they were somehow forced to do the same for managers:

A little before 5 p.m. on Friday, when much of the City Hall press corps was headed home for the weekend, the Bloomberg administration disclosed the raises — 4 percent retroactive to March 3, 2008, and another 4 percent raise effective this past March 3.

Senior aides to the mayor stand to gain the most. Deputy mayors, for example, will receive raises of more than $15,000. The salary of Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, will rise to $245,760, up from $227,219. Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, will make $212,614, up from $196, 574. The mayor’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, will earn $200,096, up from $185,000. The mayor himself takes a $1-a-year salary.

Aides to the mayor said the increases were long overdue. Traditionally, City Hall staff members, ranging from lawyers to secretaries, have received the same raises as members of District Council 37, the city’s biggest municipal labor union. Last fall, the mayor gave the union workers back-to-back 4 percent raises, but withheld raises from managers because of the souring economy.

Thompson should have said something along the lines of anyone can placate the unions with 4 percent raises in an economic downturn — we really need Bloomberg for that?

And Here I Am, About Ready To Put On My Wonder Woman Outfit . . .

You need a license? Seriously? Apparently so:

Their comic-book adventure went awry when cops approached the dynamic duo on 43rd Street to see whether they had the required license to perform in costume in public . . .

There are probably too many police officers.

When You’re Sliding Into Home And Your Pants Are White With Foam

I suppose it could have been worse — going all the way to the Supreme Court, for example — but there seems to have been a settlement:

Yankee fans are now at liberty to go to the bathroom during the playing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch, thanks to a settlement reached yesterday in Manhattan federal court.

Signing off on the deal were the Yankees, the New York Civil Liberties Union and Queens resident Bradford Campeau-Laurion, who was thrown out of Yankee Stadium last year after trying to hit the head midtune.

Location Scout: Yankee Stadium.