Same-Sex Marriage Bill REJECTED in New York State Senate
UPDATE: City To Remove 14 Blocks Of Bike Lanes On Bedford Ave.
Hamster Rides The 4 Train
Bouncer Beatdown at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club
Obama's Afghanistan Plans: 30,000 More Troops, Withdraw By July 2011
The Metrocard is dispensable in ways that the MTA probably never guessed. In fact, the subways seem to be the transport of choice for suspected sex attacker, Peter Braunstein, who has been dodging the police for the past two weeks. The NY Post says that the NYPD has been able to track Braunstein's whereabouts because he purchased an unlimited Metrocard with his credit card, putting him at West Fourth Street and near Richmond Hill on various days. But the lagtime between receiving the information and getting detectives there takes a while - and Braunstein's unlimited card expired. We supposes the MTA never installed a special alarm if someone's card was swiped through, sort of like a "You're the millionth shopper" acknowledgement.
Other Metrocard news:
- Various city and state health agencies, plus the NYPD, will crack down on the illegal selling of Metrocards by a hot dog vendor outside of Bellevue that the Daily News reported on yesterday.
- Seniors will get 50 cent subway and bus fares during the holiday period; the MTA is already offering $1 fares and reduced unlimited Metrocard fares during the weekends between Thanksgiving and New Year's, plus the week between Christmass and New Years. The MTA is pulling out all the stops for this promotion: Santa Claus and advertising will be used to let New Yorkers and out-of-towners know. Hilariously, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly says, "We feel it's money well spent in order to make sure all of our customers know about the significant thank-you discounts that they're getting," which seems counter to MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow's statement that the discounts were insignificant. All in a day at the MTA!
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A "significant thank-you" would be to instead fix up some stations that really need fixing instead of a practicaly useless "discount" which is only being done to try to make the MTA look good.
For all the overblown hysteria about things like the Patriot Act, this is a good example of how citizens surrender their privacy and subject themselves to alarming levels of government monitoring voluntarily in the name of convenience. If a U.S. administration suggested monitoring New Yorkers' exact transit patterns, some would scream bloody murder and invasion of privacy. Yet, it's something a lot of NYers submit to without a second thought for the convenience of paying for an unlimited card with a credit or debit card instead of cash.