Eight Years To Build, 25 Years To Renovate

Possible campaign slogan — Michael Bloomberg gets the job done:

Twenty-five years of repairs on the Manhattan Bridge are finally coming to an end, city officials announced yesterday.

The span’s lower deck with reopen on Oct. 1, roughly two weeks earlier than the scheduled completion date.

. . .

Just four lanes on the bridge have been open in recent years. In January, the seventh and final lane will reopen. Current repairs on the bridge, which opened in 1909, date to 1982 and have totaled $829 million, according to transportation officials. The bridge’s original cost was $31 million.

Location Scout: Manhattan Bridge.

Excuse Me, Sir — What Time Will The 3:10 To St. George Arrive?

I don’t know — ask the fancy new electronic doodad:

A Staten Island City councilman has earmarked half-a-million dollars to install a device that would indicate arrival times for a train that is almost always punctual.

While South Shore Republican Vincent Ignizio calls his plan good customer service, a handful of commuters call it a waste of valuable tax dollars.

Ignizio has set aside $500,000 of his fiscal 2008 capital budget for the plan, which he assured will improve the morning commute for riders who often end up running in heels and business suits to catch a departing Staten Island Railway train.

“It’s all about ensuring that people have a better commute and one they’re more informed about. It’s arming them with info,” Ignizio said. “The point is you can look up, see the train’s coming, see if you have time to grab a cup of coffee, a bagel, in real time.”

The city only has a time-tracking device for one subway line, the L line, but the equipment is still undergoing tests. Ignizio said the technology eventually will be installed throughout the city and his plan would ensure the Island does not lag behind.

Still, a handful of South Shore commuters at the Eltingville station criticized Ignizio’s proposal as a waste of valuable tax dollars, since the rail is routinely on time.

The agency that runs it, New York City Transit, boasts 98.6 percent punctuality, according to its most recent statistics.

. . .

. . . Billy Shott of Great Kills, doubted the device’s practicality.

“The schedules are right there,” he said, waving toward the timetable encased in plastic at the platform entrance. “I think that’s a waste of money, and it’s just something the kids are going to break.”

. . .

To be sure, Ignizio acknowledged the reliability of the rail, as well as the availability of schedules posted in the stations.

But the councilman defended his plan as a guarantee the Island would not be overlooked in the future.

“This technology is going to be unveiled system wide within the constraints of budget funding and in priority order,” Ignizio said. “I don’t want Staten Island to be last on the list, so I put my money where my mouth is.”

“Floundering” In An “Ocean” — Get It?

The superpowerful lifeguard union — not for the first time a subject of criticism — gets more pressure:

The lifeguard program falls under the Parks Department’s jurisdiction, but it has been run, autonomously for the most part, by two men for 28 years. Peter Stein ran it from 1979 to 1997, until his dual roles as lifeguard coordinator and president of the lifeguard supervisors union, Local 508 of District Council 37, finally caused the city to force him to choose one or the other.

He remained as president, and another top union official, Richard Sher, took his place as lifeguard coordinator, often working in close consultation with Mr. Stein, according to people who have worked with them.

“The New York lifeguard program is run a bit like a fiefdom,” said B. Chris Brewster, president of the United States Lifesaving Association, which promotes the surf rescue standards that are followed by many of the nation’s largest lifeguard programs. “That in itself wouldn’t be of great import if, in the end, the service was delivered well, and the reality is it is not.”

Mr. Stein did not respond to interview requests, and the Parks Department would not make Mr. Sher available for comment.

For both men, criticism is nothing new. At least four reviews by the city’s Department of Investigation and by the public advocate’s and comptroller’s offices between 1992 and 1999 cited problems ranging from missing training records and inadequate supervision to widespread favoritism in hiring.

The most withering report came in 1994 from Mark Green, then the public advocate. He said the program “was floundering in an ocean of mismanagement, secrecy, favoritism and even deception.”

Oh, Sure — The Schermerhorns Down On Pearl Street Still Run The Incandescents In The Street Lamps Outside Their Federal Down By The Water . . . Wait, Where’s The Water?

The obvious follow-up question is who these five people are:

Con Ed is no longer AC/DC.

The utility has won state permission to switch off its direct current service, which Thomas Edison powered up in Manhattan 125 years ago yesterday. It now provides DC power to just five customers in Manhattan.

The Public Service Commission order is the last gasp of a century-old war between Edison, a direct-current proponent, and Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current.

New York’s Humblest

Combining the bicyclist’s smug cluck with the businessman’s argument that everyone is entitled to make a buck, we have the pedicabs:

The law cuts the number of pedicabs by a third, from 500 to 325; bans them from bike lanes and bans their use of an electric-assist motor the size of a hair dryer. Police can also ban the bike taxis’ operation from any area determined to be congested, which covers most of Midtown.

The law also forbids pedicabs from traveling on bridges, meaning operators living in the outer boroughs would face the expense of hiring a truck to transport their wheels into and out of Manhattan.

Doug Korman, co-founder of Green Transporters Association, was wearing a cap with the number 326 on it.

“I’m number 326,” he said as drivers stood behind him on the steps. “Three hundred and twenty-five for a city of 8 million is unfair and un-American.”

. . .

After the rally, George Bliss, a founder of the New York City pedicab movement, stood by his green pedicab on Broadway. Bliss suggested that as the police, firefighters and sanitation workers are known respectively as New York’s Finest, Bravest and Strongest, the city’s pedicab drivers are New York’s Greenest.

“Politicians can’t keep green transportation from happening,” he declared.