Anthony Weiner, who was last seen sending inappropriate photos of himself to women and had to resign from Congress, thinks that enough time has passed and that he can and should be mayor of New York City.
He's released a video indicating his intentions, while addressing that he's made mistakes.
He's got nearly $5 million in a campaign warchest that he can use to inject himself into the middle of what has otherwise been a bland race. All that money can make people who want to forget about his indiscretions choose him over the other candidates in the race, which includes Christine Quinn (NYC City Council Speaker), Bill Thompson (former Comptroller who nearly beat Bloomberg last election), John Liu (current Comptroller), Bill de Blasio (Public Advocate), Sal Albanese (former Councilman) on the Democrat side, and Adolfo Carrion (former Bronx borough president), John Catsimatidis (owner of Gristedes supermarkets and real estate developer), Joe Lhota (former head of the MTA), and George McDonald (businessman).
But they shouldn't.
There's a good reason he had to quit Congress. He engaged in wholly inappropriate acts, and he showed poor character and even worse judgment. There's no reason to think that he's changed or that he wont show similarly poor judgment going forward?
The sad thing is that his wife, Huma, would make a far more compelling and extraordinary candidate than Anthony. Or most of the rest of the race.
At this point, the polling shows that Lhota leads the lackluster field on the Republican side, but things are more spread out in the Democratic race. While Christine Quinn leads all of the recent polling, her edge will be cut significantly by Weiner's entry. Behind Quinn, it's essentially a tossup between de Blasio, Liu, Thomspon and Weiner, with nearly 30% undecided.
It takes 40% to avoid a runoff, and unless we start seeing candidates drop out, it's going to be hard to avoid a runoff with this clown circus of candidates.
Showing posts with label Joe Lhota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Lhota. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Monday, November 05, 2012
Making Hash of the Commute
I'm so glad I'm not commuting into NYC this morning.
NJ Transit is an absolute mess. They claimed that they had service restored on a couple of lines, but here's what that meant.
For Main/Port Jervis, it was 7 trains inbound in the morning, and 3 would get to New York City after what's normally considered rush hour (10-11am). No reverse commute trains. In the PM, you'd have the same situation - 7 outbound trains, with staggered times that include times outside rush hour.
Those attempting to do the commute found themselves in a mess - serious overcrowding. The overcrowding was so bad that #NJTransit suspended service on the North Jersey Coast Line service and customers utilizing the Woodbridge station were told to use Metropark station for service to/from Newark and New York.
Meanwhile, bus service isn't much better. Mrs. Lawhawk who had to get to court this morning, had to let three buses pass her by with standing room only before she found one with a seat. That's crazy.
But, once she got into the city, the commute was much smoother. The MTA has done a phenomenal job in restoring service, including to Lower Manhattan and service was being added faster than the MTA cartographers could update their service maps (which are being updated daily). When you think of all the millions of people who rely on the subways, Joe Lhota has done a tremendous job in getting service restored, even though some stations may be out of commission for a while - particularly in the Rockaways and South Ferry. Other lines are being bypassed because of lower ridership and the need to concentrate on the routes that have the ability to restore service to the greatest numbers of people in the shortest time. It means that some areas are still cutoff, including Williamsburg, Coney Island, and parts of Lower Manhattan, but if someone did a time lapse of the service maps, you'd see just how fast the service was restored.
Now, going forward the question will be how to prevent the disruptions we've seen from getting as bad as they were.
For starters - the feds and states ought to consider legislation requiring all gas stations to retrofit with generators (and in flood-prone areas - sufficiently elevated to reduce chances for disruption). That would allow people to refuel, and to power their generators to get power back quicker. It would alleviate traffic considerably and hasten the recovery rather than lose time to waiting in lines for gas.
New York should have implemented even/odd gas fill ups just as New Jersey did for affected counties. It's alleviated some of the lines around Bergen County - but restoring power does that even more.
New York State has to pony up to fund the MTA to get more storm mitigation in place - better drainage/pumping systems/flood gates to prevent the tunnels from getting swamped.
And in New Jersey, they've got to take a critical look at NJ Transit and how they were ill-prepared to deal with the storm and the after-effects. Did they not realize that people would attempt a commute during rush hour and the limited trains they would run would get overcrowded due to conditions.
It's the same problem they had after last year's storms (Irene and Lee). Now, we're going to see just how slow NJ Transit will be in restoring service, though it's not all their fault - PSEG has to restore power so that NJ Transit rail signals/gates can function. But that's another place where backup generators could make a difference.
NJ Transit is an absolute mess. They claimed that they had service restored on a couple of lines, but here's what that meant.
For Main/Port Jervis, it was 7 trains inbound in the morning, and 3 would get to New York City after what's normally considered rush hour (10-11am). No reverse commute trains. In the PM, you'd have the same situation - 7 outbound trains, with staggered times that include times outside rush hour.
Those attempting to do the commute found themselves in a mess - serious overcrowding. The overcrowding was so bad that #NJTransit suspended service on the North Jersey Coast Line service and customers utilizing the Woodbridge station were told to use Metropark station for service to/from Newark and New York.
Meanwhile, bus service isn't much better. Mrs. Lawhawk who had to get to court this morning, had to let three buses pass her by with standing room only before she found one with a seat. That's crazy.
But, once she got into the city, the commute was much smoother. The MTA has done a phenomenal job in restoring service, including to Lower Manhattan and service was being added faster than the MTA cartographers could update their service maps (which are being updated daily). When you think of all the millions of people who rely on the subways, Joe Lhota has done a tremendous job in getting service restored, even though some stations may be out of commission for a while - particularly in the Rockaways and South Ferry. Other lines are being bypassed because of lower ridership and the need to concentrate on the routes that have the ability to restore service to the greatest numbers of people in the shortest time. It means that some areas are still cutoff, including Williamsburg, Coney Island, and parts of Lower Manhattan, but if someone did a time lapse of the service maps, you'd see just how fast the service was restored.
Now, going forward the question will be how to prevent the disruptions we've seen from getting as bad as they were.
For starters - the feds and states ought to consider legislation requiring all gas stations to retrofit with generators (and in flood-prone areas - sufficiently elevated to reduce chances for disruption). That would allow people to refuel, and to power their generators to get power back quicker. It would alleviate traffic considerably and hasten the recovery rather than lose time to waiting in lines for gas.
New York should have implemented even/odd gas fill ups just as New Jersey did for affected counties. It's alleviated some of the lines around Bergen County - but restoring power does that even more.
New York State has to pony up to fund the MTA to get more storm mitigation in place - better drainage/pumping systems/flood gates to prevent the tunnels from getting swamped.
And in New Jersey, they've got to take a critical look at NJ Transit and how they were ill-prepared to deal with the storm and the after-effects. Did they not realize that people would attempt a commute during rush hour and the limited trains they would run would get overcrowded due to conditions.
It's the same problem they had after last year's storms (Irene and Lee). Now, we're going to see just how slow NJ Transit will be in restoring service, though it's not all their fault - PSEG has to restore power so that NJ Transit rail signals/gates can function. But that's another place where backup generators could make a difference.
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