Midtown Sidewalk Collapse Injures Two

As the Gothamist Newsmap noted, two construction workers fell through a sidewalk at 148 West 36th Street this afternoon. The workers had been jackhammering the sidewalk, when, as WNBC 4 reports, "the ground they were on gave way." The workers were immediately pulled from the 10 foot hole and are at Bellevue. Scary, but not as scary as the incident where a woman simply walking in Midtown fell through the sidewalk grating into an electrical transformer vault in May.

As it happens, City Council member David Weprin has recommended that a commission be formed to study the aging infrastructure. According to the Sun, the commission would " study electrical outages, the city's steam piping system, bridge and tunnel safety, the sewer system, and road maintenance." Huh, you'd think there was already a commission on this.

Mayor Bloomberg's response? Via spokesman Stu Loeser, ""We've already spent 300,000 hours over the last 18 months creating PlaNYC, which is a master plan to meet the City's infrastructure, transit, environmental and other needs. We don't need another commission to study the problems, we need funding for the solutions and we welcome any and all help in that area." But did PlaNYC predict the steam pipe explosion or subway meltdown? We think not!