Latest news with #DemetriusCrichlow
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
More bus lanes proposed for busy Flatbush Avenue corridor in Brooklyn
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) — New York City transportation experts are proposing major changes for what they've dubbed one of 'Brooklyn's most dangerous corridors.' The Department of Transportation announced proposals for new bus lanes along Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue stretching from Livingston Street to Grand Army Plaza on Friday. More Transit News 'Almost 70,000 daily bus riders are stuck waiting too long for slow buses, drivers are caught in a mess of traffic, and pedestrians are left crossing intersections clogged with vehicles,' said NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. The proposal seeks to create center-running bus lanes along Flatbush Avenue with new pedestrian spaces with the intention of improving traffic safety and reducing pedestrian crossing times. Center-running lanes would also help dramatically increase bus speeds by creating physically separated spaces for buses and reducing conflicts with personal vehicles, officials say. More Local News 'This plan will drastically improve the commute times for the tens of thousands of daily riders who live on Flatbush Avenue – many of whom rely on public transportation to get to work,' MTA President Demetrius Crichlow. Currently, Flatbush Avenue is a Vision Zero Priority Corridor, meaning it's one of the most dangerous streets in Brooklyn, with 55 people killed or severely injured since 2019. Bus speeds have also been recorded to be slower than four miles per hour during rush hours which is about the same speed as a person walking, according to the DOT. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State Buses along Flatbush Avenue primarily serve Black, female, and low-income riders, a majority of who have household incomes of less than $80,000 a year, researchers from a Pratt Center study found. Many riders in the area have complained of long wait times in extreme weather, transportation experts say. With center-running lanes, NYC DOT would install concrete bus boarding islands in the street for pedestrians. The agency plans to continue community engagement throughout the spring to get feedback from residents, businesses and commuters. Dominique Jack is a digital content producer from Brooklyn with more than five years of experience covering news. She joined PIX11 in 2024. More of her work can be found here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
MTA board looks at fare and toll enforcement and service
NEW YORK (PIX11) — Jumping the turnstile or covering a license plate will get commuters in trouble. The MTA has been increasing fare and toll enforcement. More Local News At the monthly board meeting on Wednesday, officials discussed a number of major topics. The MTA reports that fare evasion in transit is down 30 percent. Fake plates and covered licenses are also a problem. The MTA has estimated losses of around $700 million a year. Enforcement actions at the bridges and tunnels happen weekly. During a Joint Task Force Update, recent numbers show more than 1,000 drivers have been arrested, 47,000 summonses have been written, and more than 4,500 vehicles were towed during a year of enforcement. Security personnel have been assigned to some stations, and the MTA says fare evasion has dropped at those locations. Money from fares and tolls goes to the operational expenses of the MTA. Service and ridership were also discussed. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow gave a presentation with the headline 'best subway performance in a generation. ' More work is on the way. The MTA Board officially approved the capital plan. It's for a span of 5 years and amounts to $68 billion. Projects include new trains and buses, station and track work, and elevators. The focus is on the state of good repair and maintenance projects. Paying for the plan is always a discussion point. The state raised the payroll mobility tax on businesses that make more than $10 million a year. Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature also included significant funding in the budget. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Readers sound off on fighting fare-beaters, Trump's first 100 days and immigrant rights
Manhattan: Re 'Silence to fare evasion is consent' (op-ed, April 28): We're in agreement that fare evasion is a critical and sometimes overlooked issue — but not by the MTA. Anyone who thinks we haven't been giving it the same level of intensity as congestion pricing hasn't been paying attention. In fact, wide-ranging efforts to clamp down on fare evasion have been underway for the last three years, since the formation of an MTA-commissioned Blue Ribbon panel. In that time, we've been making it easier to pay fares with OMNY while making our services harder to steal — with increased NYPD enforcement, yes, but also by hiring hundreds of gate guards and making changes to the physical subway turnstiles and emergency gates. And uniformed Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication (EAGLE) teams have been working on fare enforcement on buses, where fare evasion had soared. Not to mention the countless infrastructure interventions, including anti-back-cocking and installing turnstile fins and sleeves. These interventions are working. Subway fare evasion is down 30% since last year, and rates of bus fare evasion have been pushed down for the last three quarters. We agree that what's needed now is decision-makers outside the MTA to restore meaningful consequences for the crime of theft of service. New, less porous fare gates are coming. But until then, we'll continue to work with our partners in law enforcement and the criminal justice system to make sure fare evaders face accountability. Demetrius Crichlow, president, MTA New York City Transit Kew Gardens: Re 'Belichick sez girlfriend was just 'doing her job,' ' (May 1): May-December relationships can be viewed in two ways. The first is that love has no bounds, and the second is that it violates social norms. I once had a friend in a similar situation as Bill Belichick. I asked him if he was concerned about the relationship when viewed as a medical risk. He said: 'I have, and I hope it never happens, but if she dies, she dies.' Phil Serpico Clearwater, Fla.: There are two kinds of people in this world: those who sit back and wait for things to happen, and those who are driven and make things happen. Let it be said, President Trump makes things happen. His first 100 days have been a whirlwind of getting things accomplished. Despite the hateful rhetoric from left-wing, radical Dems fighting against Trump's efforts, he and his dream team won't back down. Most importantly, the border is secured and violent, criminal illegal aliens are being deported. No doubt, Trump will continue to stand his ground and fight. You can be sure he will always put America first. JoAnn Lee Frank Medford, L.I.: The media is playing up the fact that in various polls, Trump has the lowest approval rating for his first 100 days than any president of this century. Some pundits are downright giddy over it. I'm watching this media circus wondering if these people ever heard the sports axiom, 'It's not how you start, but how you finish'? Trump has on his professional and political resumes the gargantuan duo accomplishments of the greatest comeback in American business history and the greatest comeback in U.S. political history. To anyone taking glee in his rough start over trying to solve a generations-long problem of America being taken advantage of in trade, does anyone really think that dancing on his grave now is going to age well? As Ronald Reagan said about the outcome of the Cold War, 'We win, they lose!' Eugene R. Dunn Staten Island: Trump's level of understanding of any of this is way lower than anyone imagines. He thinks foreign countries will pay the tariffs (like Mexico paid for the wall) and he calls them reciprocal because he believes value-added taxes are equivalent to tariffs. Absolute nonsense. I'm not sure any of this matters, since his only concern is to replace progressive income taxes on billionaires with regressive tariffs on everyone else. Michael Rosenkrantz Manhattan: I laughed out loud at Voicer John Procida's hilarious love letter to Trump, assuming that he must be a professional comedian. No such luck. Trump, a trust-fund baby, inherited $400 million from his father and went bankrupt six times. Daddy bailed him out every time. In the real world, people like that are not called businessmen, they're called losers. Perhaps it's time for Procida to put down the Kool-Aid and turn off Fox News, whose own attorneys argued in court that they are an 'entertainment network,' explaining that they peddle their opinions as opposed to actual facts. Furthermore, adding insult to injury, they insisted that any intelligent person would absolutely recognize that what they are hearing from Fox is, in effect, fake news. Apparently, they were wrong. Or were they? Anne Stockton Merion Station, Pa.: After Mike Waltz's departure as national security advisor, will Trump politely ask Pete Hegseth to resign or will he boldly shout at our 'Apprentice' defense secretary, 'You're fired!'? It's only a matter of time until Hegseth joins Waltz on the unemployment line. Paul L. Newman Swarthmore, Pa.: Edmund Burke was an Irishman born in the 18th century, a seminal thinker often credited with formulating the modern political philosophy of conservatism. He's also credited for articulating the notion of the 'Fourth Estate.' Burke said, 'There were three Estates in the British Parliament, but in the reporters' gallery, there sat a fourth Estate far more important than them all.' He was referring to the importance of having a vibrant and powerful free press to call out the excesses and perceived wrongdoings of the government. Some cynics may scoff that the media's role in the era of a president who relentlessly undermines the press' credibility has been greatly diminished. I say it has crystalized how vital its role is. If the press is beaten into a state of quiescent submissiveness, the leap from a democratic republic to an autocratic one becomes so much smaller. Our president grasps this all too well. Ken Derow Edinburgh, Scotland: Political observers have understandably grown weary of lazy references to Hitler when trying to explain Trump. And while a few governments (sadly, including the Westminster administration in the U.K.) try to play normal even while Trump disappears U.S. citizens and protected migrants to concentration camps in El Salvador, no one but the most deluded thinks the orange menace has anything remotely akin to a rigid Hitleresque plan for America. However, those who still cling to the idea of a U.S. liberal democracy when late-stage capitalism is eating itself are naively, gleefully banging on about vote shares and Trump's crashing poll numbers. It's worth remembering that Hitler's Nazi party only ever achieved 37.3% of the popular vote. It almost immediately lost 2 million of those votes. What mattered was that Hitler gained power. Once there, he was unmovable, like dog turd deep in the groove of your shoe. Amanda Baker Highland Falls, N.Y.: When told that the Vatican was publicly criticizing his policies, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin famously replied, 'How many divisions does the pope have?' Trump and his slavish minions seem to want to use the same policy with American courts, ignoring them and daring some action to stop their illegal and inhumane policies. I'm not a constitutional scholar, but if the judges decide they can create a legal militia to enforce their judgements and jail Trump, JD Vance, Pam Bondi and the rest, I'll be the first to volunteer my 70-year-old services. Joe Cyr Manhattan: Mahmoud Khalil's pending deportation is entirely motivated by racism. He was never accused of inciting to riot, the only way he could have plausibly been deemed a threat. Are students and people on temporary visas barred from exercising free speech? If they're subject to our laws, they should also have our freedoms. Khalil must be set free! Elizabeth Sheffren Bronx: Why are they showing cartoons in the middle of the night? Why am I watching cartoons in the middle of the night? Mary Caggiano
The Independent
29-04-2025
- The Independent
Two teenagers killed train surfing after hitting signal bridge
Two teenage boys died in a train accident in Berlin after they hit a signal bridge while 'train surfing'. The 17-year-old and 18-year-old, who have not yet been named, were joyriding on the roof of the S1 train around 5:20am on Sunday when they collided with a steel structure, according to police. The train was travelling at approximately 60 kilometres per hour between the stops Schlachtensee and Wannsee when the fatal incident occurred. No further details have been released by the police regarding the incident. According to German media outlet BILD, the local fire department was notified of an incident at 5:24am, and one of the teenagers died upon impact while the other died moments later. Witnesses said that the 17-year-old's gym membership card was found at the scene, as well as some of his clothes. Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Michael Klein issued a warning to German media outlet RBB on Sunday, stating that trains are not playgrounds and appealed for people to refrain from such activities. Train surfing has gained popularity among young people in recent years, largely due to the rise of thrill-seeker content on social media. Berlin's transport authorities previously condemned S-Bahn surfing in 2019 when it had become a craze on YouTube, calling it 'suicidal'. And a teenage girl was killed and another was injured after being run over by a train while subway surfing in New York in October last year. The two girls were on top of a southbound train at the 111th Street station in Corona, a neighborhood of Queens, when they fell onto the tracks, in between the cars, and were struck. Police said that one girl, around 13 or 14, was declared dead at the scene while the other, 12, was left severely injured, the MTA New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NYC Transit tackles signal system challenges with training and upgrades
NEW YORK (PIX11) — The signal system keeps the subways running, but it's old and complicated, contributing to many delays. The light you see from the platform is part of the signal system that keeps the trains properly spaced on the tracks and prevents crashes. More Local News Inside NYC Transit Signal School, crews are trained on the system. It's located underground in a station complex under 14th Street in Manhattan. Signal crews are in training for about five months in the classroom and in the field. Signal maintainers learn how the mechanism works, how it operates, and what can go wrong. Most of the signal technology is about a century old, and some of the parts are 60 to 70 years old. NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow started with the MTA 28 years ago as a signal man. He celebrated his anniversary with a visit to the training center on Wednesday. He spoke with class members and discussed the challenges of the system. 'It's never just the bulb in the field. It's a complicated system of old relays and track wires that tie into them. They don't know what's causing a failure. We have different crafts to identify the problem and get the right tools there,' he said. NYC Transit stages response teams in busy areas or places with complex operations. In 2009, signal technology was introduced along the L line. Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) is also installed currently along the 7 line. The upgrades allow more trains to run. Maintainers and signal crews are trained in the old and new systems. Projects to install the new signals along the Culver Line in Brooklyn and along the Queens Boulevard line have been funded. More than $5 billion of the next $68 billion capital improvement plan would be spent on new, upgraded signal technology. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
