NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Another Tech Outage at Newark Airport, NYPD Detains 14 at pro-Palestian Protest at Brooklyn College, Chinese American Railroad Workers Memorial Day and NYC’s Streets Plan on Hold

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Federal aviation officials say Newark Airport was hit with another tech outage Friday morning, the second such meltdown in as many weeks. The NYPD arrested more than a dozen protesters at Brooklyn College Thursday night. Plus, May 10th is now officially Chinese American Railroad Workers Memorial Day. And finally, the Sunset Park community board adopted a plan to redesign Third Avenue under the Gowanus Expressway but they recently learned the plan is on hold.

Another tech outage at Newark Airport. NYPD detains 14 people at a pro-Palestinian protests at Brooklyn College. Chinese American Railroad Workers Memorial Day. And New York City's streets plan put on home. From WMYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jinnay Pierre. We're learning more about that mess at Newark Airport. Federal aviation officials say the airport was hit with yet another tech outage Friday morning,

marking the second such meltdown in as many weeks. The outage around 4 a.m. affected the Philadelphia-based air traffic control center that manages the flow of aircraft in and out of the airport. The Federal Aviation Administration says the outage lasted for 90 seconds. A similar 90-second outage occurred at the same control center on April 28th. Lawmakers are calling for improved telecommunications technology and controller staffing after the previous meltdown in hundreds of recent delays and cancellations at Newark. Brooklyn College demonstrators say they'll continue to organize against the war in Gaza.

The NYPD took more than a dozen of them into custody Thursday night from campus. Videos and photos on social media show a few dozen protesters rallying, praying, and setting up several tents on the Flatbush campus' East Quad. A college spokesperson says the tents violated school policy and were removed by campus security and NYPD officers following verbal warnings. The NYPD says, have you been able to be. NYPD says half of the people who were detained face charges like trespassing and disorderly conduct. The others got summonses. New York City will recognize the hard work of Chinese immigrants who built the transcontinental railroad. May 10th is now officially Chinese American railroad workers Memorial Day.

WMYC's Elizabeth Shui explains. Councilmember Susan Zwang represents parts of Brooklyn with significant Chinese American populations. She explains why it's important now to commence. the 12,000 or so Chinese American railroad workers who helped connect the western and eastern part of the country together in the 1860s. That was right before Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Today, people talk about immigrants with fear, fear, and sometimes hate. It's not new. The Chinese American railroad workers in American history had the same problems. These workers worked just for a few cents a day. Suang's resolution passed the city council,

so with a unanimous vote. Candidates running for mayor say the Adams administration has fallen short of the city's streets plan. Coming up, we visit a stretch of 3rd Avenue under the Gowanus Expressway that's been a point of political contention for decades. More on that after the break. Third Avenue in Brooklyn's Sunset Park is one of the busiest and most dangerous arteries for traffic in the five boroughs.

A year ago, the local community board adopted a plan to redesign the street, reducing traffic and adding a protected bike lane. But they recently learned that plan is on hold. WMYC's Bridget Bergen has this report on who hit the brakes on this redesign plane. I'm standing on the northwest corner of 60th Street in 3rd Avenue on a recent Thursday morning. Cars, huge tractor trailer trucks,

and lots of pedestrians are all trying to navigate this busy intersection below the rumbling Gawanas Expressway. It's very scary. My wife's. brother actually got hit by a car down there a long time ago, yeah. This whole 3rd Avenue, this area is very dangerous. That's Luis Arcee, just one of the hundreds of parents rushing to drop their kids off at PS939 on the corner behind me.

He ran with his 5-year-old across 3rd Avenue's nine lanes. This tension between pedestrians and cars on 3rd Avenue has been going on for more than 80 years. Since Robert Moses erected what was first known as the Gowanus' parkway on top of the road in 1941, driving more trucks through what was a residential area to the industrial waterfront. In his lauded Moses biography, the power broker, Robert Carroll wrote, if Third Avenue was the heart of the neighborhood, Moses tore it out. I came here to meet Julio Pena III, the current chair of Community Board seven. He points at the intersection.

We have nine travel lanes of traffic. We have a major entrance to the beach. We have a major entrance to the BQE towards Staten Island here, which everyone uses coming from the south, coming from the east to get onto the highway. And then if you can see, we have a broken traffic light on 4th Avenue, which even makes it even worse. Data from the city's Department of Transportation show 87 injuries at this intersection alone between 2018 and 2022, and 14 deaths over the same period along 3rd Avenue stretching north to Prospect Avenue. That's more than three times the number of deaths as the equivalent stretch on nearby Fourth Avenue in the same time period. Pena says officials have been clamoring for a safety plan for decades. About two years ago, DOT finally came to the table with a safety improvement study that resulted in the proposal for the reduction of a travel lane in the bike lane.

The board voted overwhelmingly, almost unanimously on the proposal. The new bike lanes wouldn't reach this intersection, but Penaett says other smaller safety. improvements would, like wider medians and longer signals. But after the board approved the plan, Pena says businesses began pushing back. So DOT told us that they're pausing on any work for the rest of this year and possibly until the next Mayo administration. Mayor Adams once pledged to be the city's bike mayor, but he's faced withering criticism from street safety advocates for the delays implementing other street redesigns over the course of his three years in office. Most of his would be successors, including city controller, mayoral candidate, and fellow Brooklynite Brad

Lander, say the city should be moving faster on this. The Adams administration has fallen woefully short of the NYC Streets Plan and even of their own promises for delivering on the bus and bike lanes that all New Yorkers deserve. The DOT says they're still collecting feedback in Sunset Park while they work on other projects in the area, like new concrete medians. curb extensions and signal crossings along 3rd Avenue to enhance pedestrian safety and reduce crossing times. Speaking for local business leaders, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President Randy Peers, said over email that the redesign vote was premature and called the plan, quote,

a big disregard to the generational businesses that have been a part of Sunset Park longer than most of the board members themselves. The name of my store is Frankles. I found myself in one of those generational. operational businesses during my walk. Went a corner of Third Avenue in 40th Street. We're here 135 years. We sell car heart and safety club clothes, boots and stuff, stuff like that. That's 84-year-old Martin Frankel.

His family has owned this store since 1890, selling work clothes and now also Vietnamese coffee and tea. He says the neighborhood has changed a lot as the rents have risen. I used to go to work here every day with two guns, a bulletproof vest, and say, who got shot over the weekend. Every weekend somebody got killed in this neighborhood. Now the most dangerous thing in Sunset Park now is gluten. There's also traffic fatalities, according to the statistics.

But Franco says he's got other concerns. You want to take our parking away, basically. It's all about control, and it hurts. Another group representing other local businesses was actively part of the 3rd Avenue redesign planning process. Jesse Solomon leads the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development, Corporation, which is working to maintain and grow the industrial working waterfront that sits to the west of 3rd Avenue.

I think where SBADC stands is that it shouldn't be a zero-sum game. Like we desperately want a need to see safety improvements to the corridor. She says to keep businesses in the area, people need to get around. They want a safe bike network. But she's also heard concerns about a bike lane here from businesses in the so-called IBZ. industrial business zone. We want to see Third Avenue still be conducive to the movement of goods throughout the IPZ, while also finding solutions for folks to get to work. For now, those solutions are likely on hold until after the election, which starts with the primary next month. Among the

major Democratic mayoral candidates, all voiced support for the community board's redesign plan, except former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said he would come up with a plan supported by everyone. That's WMYC's Bridget Bergen. Some sports news for the Orange and Blue. The Knicks are back at Madison Square Garden Saturday for game three of their playoff series against the Boston Celtics. The Knicks have battled their way to a 2-0 lead in the Best of Seven series,

nearly giving myself and other fans a heart attack. The Celtics now face a pivotal contest at MSG after New York beat the defending NBA champs twice in Beantown. The Knicks are currently undefeated on the road this postseason. Tip off at MSG is 3.30 this Saturday. A quick note before we kick off the weekend, we're dropping another episode for you this Saturday. And it's an interesting one about a suspended Columbia University student who created an AI-powered app that helps you, as the tagline puts it, cheat on everything. Crazy, right? Be on the lookout for that in your feed first thing Saturday morning. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Have a nice weekend.