On the evening of September 28, 2013, college student Luis Bravo was killed by a hit-and-run driver in my neighborhood while walking down Broadway on the way home from the supermarket. As I wrote a few days later, that part of Broadway is too broad, and has always felt dangerous to me. I asked for the roadway to be narrowed from four lanes to two, and the width given to expanding the sidewalks.
At the request of our City Council member, Jimmy Van Bramer, and other community leaders, the Department of Transportation studied the road and determined that we do not need four lanes there. Just this week they repainted it, transferring that width to a painted median and extra-wide parking lanes. Compare the above picture that I took today with one that I took last year, from just a block further west:
At 5:30, the height of rush hour, there was no gridlock, no cars backed up for more than half a block, and many gaps in between platoons of cars. The cars were moving steadily, but slower than before. There were also several bike commuters taking advantage of the extra-wide parking lanes, as you can see in the photo below (at the corner where Bravo was killed):
I haven’t ridden a bike on this section, so I don’t know how safe the parking lanes feel, but I still would rather see wider sidewalks than these painted medians and turn lanes. The real test, as my neighbor Al Volpe wrote to the Woodside Herald, is whether the paint will slow down cars at 11PM. If it does, we may well have saved others from Luis Bravo’s fate.
This weekend the New York Times Styles section ran one of their periodic stories about kids growing up and moving to the suburbs, and changing both themselves and the suburbs in the process. A while back the suburb in question (more of an exurb) was Rosendale, and this time it was Hastings-on-Hudson. This particular article was notable for its sheer number of evocations of the wacky hipster frame, and specifically the description by “futurism consultant” (sorry, I have to put that in quotes) Ari Wallach that Hastings is a village “in a Wittgensteinian sort of way.”
Blogger Kieran Healy responded by posting the “Top Ten Ways that Hastings-on-Hudson might be a Village in a Wittgensteinian Sense.” And of course he’s right that it is a very funny quote, name-dropping a philosopher that hardly anybody has read in the original, in a “Styles” article about real estate trends. I would crack up if I ever found myself saying something like that, and I hope Wallach has enough of a sense of humor to do the same.
What’s funnier to me, as I just realized yesterday morning, is that I have an idea what Wallach was saying, and I agree with him. In fact, on Sunday I was at the Lavender Languages Conference arguing that I am transgender in a Wittgensteinian sort of way. I didn’t use those words; instead I referenced George Lakoff, who got the idea from Wittgenstein via Eleanor Rosch.
I learned about Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophy of Language class 22 years ago, but that class was so rich with theories that I couldn’t keep track of them all. So now I’m catching up with the help of Wikipedia, which gives us this quote (Philosophical Investigations 66, 1953) about the idea of “family relationships”:
Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don’t say, “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games'”–but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! Look for example at board games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
I made this Euler diagram (which is not a true Venn diagram, according to the Wikipedian who made this page). Some of the games that Wittgenstein mentions, like Olympic track and field games, are amusing (in the sense of not being boring) and involve competition among players, skill and chance.
Other games fit only some of these criteria. There is no element of luck in chess or tic-tac-toe. There is no competition among players in solitaire or throwing a ball at the wall. There is no skill involved in ring-around-the-rosie. Tic-tac-toe is not “amusing.” Nevertheless, we call these all “games,” and if we tried to say that any of the four were necessary criteria we would exclude some of the games.
Similarly, these cannot be sufficient criteria either. Surgery involves skill, but it is not a game. Weather forecasting involves chance. War involves competition. Theater is amusing. That said, they are often compared to games, and described with game metaphors.
This is a good place to stop. I’ll talk in another blog post about how Hastings might be a village in this way.
For years, the MTA has been running multi-weekend repair surges on the #7 line, where they turn all the trains around at Queensboro Plaza and run shuttle buses from there to Vernon-Jackson, Hunterspoint Avenue and Court Square. Last night at a town hall organized by City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, MTA representatives said that they would have to do it again.
Joe Leader, the Chief Maintenance Officer at the MTA, explained to us that the cars currently used on the #7 train are wider than the streetcars that originally ran through the Steinway Tunnels to Manhattan, so they take up almost the entire tunnel. Unlike other subway tunnels, in the Steinway Tunnels there is no room for maintenance workers to stand while trains are passing through. Because of this, it is necessary to shut down at least one tunnel completely for any work.
As the tunnels have not been maintained on an ideal schedule since they were dug in 1907, leaks have developed and the tunnels have regularly been flooded, leading to a buildup of “muck” and debris around the rails. Since the New York subways use the rails to “return” power (actually to draw electrons from the substation to the train, which are then sent back along the third rail), the muck can short this out, reducing power to the trains, which was a major cause of the delays and outages last year.
In October, Leader said, workers shut down the subway for a weekend and cleaned 4000 feet of track in each tunnel, removing over 8000 bags of debris. They then power-washed the floors to clean out any remaining muck. Crews also repaired signal boxes, replaced sections of the old third rail and hooked up the old ones as a “fourth rail” to return power more directly.
This year, for eleven weekends between January 21 and April 2, and then for five weekends between October 6 and November 17, the MTA will shut down train service from Queensboro Plaza to Times Square. In between those times they will run trains express in one direction between Queensboro Plaza and Willets Point. There is also a plan to renovate the platforms and replace the windscreens at the #7 train station at Court Square.
I’ll say more about this soon.
The MTA is doing track work on the #7 line to improve speed and reliability. That’s good. As they have done for previous track work projects, they will be shutting down the line between Queensboro Plaza and Times Square for the next seven weekends. That’s bad.
The N, R and E trains will be running, and people coming from points east will be able to transfer. The MTA usually runs shuttle buses for people to get to and from the three stations in Long Island City with no service. That’s good. But the transfers can add five to ten minutes to a trip. Worse, the shuttle buses don’t go to Manhattan; they stop at Queensboro Plaza, where passengers have to change for the N. For the next several weekends, people who are normally fifteen minutes from Grand Central will spend fifteen minutes on the bus just to get to the N, which doesn’t even go to Grand Central. That’s bad.
What’s especially frustrating for LIC residents is that many of them live only five minutes by car from the Queens Midtown Tunnel. If they could walk through the tunnel, they could get to Manhattan faster than by taking the shuttle bus. Those who own cars can drive into Manhattan if they want to deal with the traffic and the hassle of finding parking. Those who don’t own cars are stuck with the shuttle bus.
Last year, in response to a previous service disruption, Councilmember Eric Gioia held a rally asking the MTA to run buses through the tunnel to Grand Central. Cap’n Transit took that a step further and suggested running the buses on the 34th Street bus lanes to Penn Station, so that travelers could switch to the subway at Penn Station, Herald Square or Park Avenue. He produced maps showing that, according to Google directions, when there is no traffic (as on weekends), buses can get to Penn Station in ten minutes from Ravenswood, Dutch Kills, Sunnyside or Greenpoint. In fifteen minutes they can get to Penn Station from the Triboro Bridge, Jackson Heights, Maspeth, Bushwick or Williamsburg. Of course, if they made stops in between it would take a little longer; the point is that lots of people want to go to Manhattan, and a bus could get them there pretty darn quick.
Map: Cap’n Transit
As far as I know, the MTA never responded to Gioia or to Cap’n Transit. They ran the inconvenient shuttle buses, and that was it. Now they’re planning to do it again. This morning, Gioia’s successor, Jimmy Van Bramer, held another rally asking for a tunnel bus. He was joined by Astoria Assemblymember Mike Gianaris (who has announced that he is running to represent this area in the State Senate next year), Assemblymember Cathy Nolan and Council Chair Christine Quinn.
WNYC’s Brian Zumhagen was actually able to get a response from the MTA. An unnamed spokesman says that “shuttle buses directly to Grand Central would create big traffic tie-ups in Long Island City and on the East Side of Manhattan.” It’s not clear why they would cause any more tie-ups in LIC than the buses to Queens Plaza, or why they would cause any significant tie-ups in weekend traffic. That comment shows that the MTA is looking for reasons not to accommodate riders.
At this point it remains to be seen whether all that star power will have the desired effect. If you care about this issue, I suggest that you contact Jimmy or Cathy and ask how you can help.
Decentralized cooperation: our capital will soon have its streetcar line. The French company Lohr, based in Strasbourg, will construct it.
Translohr in Padua. Photo by Ambrosiana Pictures (G) / Flickr.A signing ceremony for two agreements towards this goal was held by Malian head of state Amadou Toumani Tour?. The initiative is part of the cooperation framework that has been established between France and our country. The signing took place in the Koulouba palace, in the presence of government ministers and the French ambassador to Mali, Michel Reveyrand De Menthon.
The first agreement was signed by the Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation, Ahmed Diane S?m?ga, and the representative of the Lohr Industrie corporation, Jean Fran?ois Argence, for the delivery of the equipment. This was the first step in what will be the first streetcar line in Bamako, which the French representatives explained would be compatible with the particular requirements of the District and its population. In fact, Strasbourg has not only a streetcar network but also a factory that produces streetcars.
Bamako is currently grappling with three problems: health, urban mobility and urbanization. The city is modernizing, but improvements are lagging. The other accord, within the decentralized cooperation framework, signed between the mayor of the District, Adama Sangar?, and his counterpart from Strasbourg, Senator Roland Ries, was aimed at improving the existing physical plant and bringing modern infrastructure to the District.
Mr. Ries, who is on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, thanked President Tour? for the warm welcome he had shown the delegation from Strasbourg. He announced that the agreement had already been ratified by the Strasbourg city council. He reminded the audience that Strasbourg has extensive experience in public transit that it wants to make available to our country.
President Tour? explained that Bamako’s transportation needs are constantly growing. “We will no longer be satisfied with minibuses and other mass transit vehicles. This is why I wanted to bring a streetcar line to the District. The city of Strasbourg, which generously agreed to a preliminary technical consultation, wants to give its best to ensure our satisfaction,” he enthused. Mr. Tour? expects to double energy production here by 2012 to power the tramway.
A note on cooperation: many French towns have sister-city agreements with cities here. The relationship between Angers and Bamako, for example, is long-lasting. President Tour? wants to guide the country towards a more open form of partnership. He observed with pleasure that the decentralized cooperation between our two countries is very dynamic.