NYC NOW - February 12, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: Voters will cast their ballots on Tuesday to replace the expelled former Congress member, George Santos. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Congress member Andy Kim has been selected by Democratic delegates in Monmouth County over First Lady Kim Murphy to replace Bob Menendez. Also, New York Governor Kathy Hochul aims to add 31 charges to the list of prosecutable hate crime offenses. Finally, WNYC's Sean Carlson sits down with transportation reporter Stephen Nessen and editor Clayton Guse to discuss construction at Grand Central Terminal, the MTA's new "open gangway" subway car, and the latest congestion pricing updates.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, February 12th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Voters will cast a ballot tomorrow to replace expelled former Congressmember George Santos. WNIC's Tiffany Hansen has more. Early voting in the third congressional district ended yesterday with both Democrat Tom Swazi and Republican Mazi Pilippelop County.

their votes. The district includes neighborhoods in eastern Queens and the north shore of Nassau County with a southern dip to Massapequa Park. Over the weekend, the airwaves were inundated with competing negative ads from both Swazi and Pilip. In the most recent Newsday, Sienna College poll, Swazi holds a four-point lead over Pilip, which is within the margin of error. Polls on Election Day are open across the district from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. New Jersey, Congress member Andy Kim, starts this week with a victory over First Lady Tammy Murphy. Kim dealt Murphy her first big defeat before the state's Senate primary in June. Democratic delegates in Monmouth County held a secret vote this weekend and selected Kim as their nominee to replace the embattled Senator Bob Menendez. Kim won by a vote of

265 to 181 against Murphy who lives in Monmouth County. The vote comes as Murphy has racked widespread institutional support from other county organizations. It was the first party committee vote of the cycle before the primary. A push to expand the number of potential hate crimes in New York is dividing Democrats in Albany. Governor Kathy Hokel wants to add 31 charges to the list of crimes to prosecute as a hate crime. She says hate crimes are up in recent years, and New York has to respond with stiffer penalties for perpetrators. That has to be reckoned with. This is the state of New York. We're not tolerating any forms of hate. But progressors such as Brooklyn Center, Julio Salazar say together, tougher penalties won't do anything to deter hate.

I think that we need a more holistic approach to preventing hate crimes from happening in the first place. More than a dozen Democrats are on board with Hockel's plan, which is part of the governor's budget proposal. The state budget is due by the end of March. The City Department of Sanitation says there will be no trash, curbside compost, or recycling collection today, because it's Lincoln's birthday. The same is true for next Monday for a President's Day, which is a holiday. Folks who normally get Monday trash,

curbside compost, a recycling collection may place the material out at the curbside this evening for a collection tomorrow instead. 37 with clouds now, winter storm warnings and watches kick in around midnight across the tri-state area, partly sunny and 50 today, but rain and snow tonight,

and then tomorrow a lot of snow coming. We're talking about accumulations of up to nine inches for a central park, for instance. Stay close. There's more after the break. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us, as always, WNYC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Goosa. Stephen, you started in a 55-foot hole across from Grand Central Terminal with a priest and a half dozen sandhogs. It sounds like a joke, but it's not.

You actually did this. Those are your friendly neighborhood tunnel diggers, the sandhogs. Can you tell us more about it? So for the past year, crews have dug a hole straight down, 55 feet on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street right across from Grand Central Terminal. They're about halfway through this project. So on Monday, it marked the moment when they're going to start digging towards Grand Central Terminal now. This is a $115 million project, essentially to create a new walkway,

above the seven train platform. So the sandhogs, as you mentioned, they're the ones that dig the tunnels underground. They did Second Avenue, east side access, and a big project, pretty much any project they do at this point, they have a priest come and bless the site. There's holy water, they say in Our Father. And after the blessing, we all went down and started digging this hole.

There was a very old-school drill that essentially I was told hasn't really changed in 100 years. and it just breaks through that Manhattan bedrock, which is notoriously hard to break. And I was told they're going to keep drilling all the way to 42nd Street using the drills as well as dynamite, low-grade dynamite, I'm told. Nobody should feel the rumble above ground.

And ultimately, this project is to alleviate crowding on the platform at the 7 train at Grand Central. If you've ever tried to leave during the morning or the evening rush, it's a total mess. They have MTA employees acting like air traffic control, directing people. There's even a rope line up the existing very narrow walkway so it doesn't become a total

chaotic mess. This project is expected to be done by the end of the year and another thing they're doing there to alleviate this overcrowding is adding a new escalator and that should be done by April I'm told. Now another thing we'd be hearing a lot about the MTA's newest subway car very cool. I've been seeing photos of this thing all over social media.

It's the new kind you can walk all the way through the trains are known as Open Gangway. there's a grand total of one of these bad boys out there running on the sea line. So getting a ride does feel a little bit like catching a firefly. This was the first full week. The public got a chance to experience it. Clayton and Stephen you both rode on the new model this week. What were your impressions?

Yeah, I caught one the other day. And we've reported some hiccups in the initial rollout of this thing, but it's really cool. It's kind of a fascinating thing, kind of a stop you in your tracks, holy smokes. And because there's only one of these running on the line, it kind of feels like winning the lottery. And it's, you have a, it's a fun through the looking glass moment because the rest of the subway is dirty and shabby. Mostly their cars are very old. And you step on to this brand new, shiny thing. And you feel kind of like you're being taken care of for the first time by the mass transit service.

It's pretty, it's pretty kind of a wild experience. For me, you know, I've covered this so much to actually ride on one was like, and it just showed up in my stop randomly. I was like, wow. Like Clayton said, it's like winning the lottery. For me, it really popped out is what really popped out is the shiny blue seats. It's like a different color blue than we've seen. They're really shiny because they're so new. And also the open gangway is really fascinating because you can look down the whole train corridor.

And as you go around the curves, it's sort of snakes back and forth. I thought it as like a mesmerizing snake to watch. That's cool. Kind of hypnotic. And another interesting detail is the sign on the ceiling that usually just shows what train you're on actually will have an arrow pointing to which door is opening next at your station. Kind of helpful. It's left or right.

And one thing that we did notice, you know, these aren't full open gangway. Like you can't walk from the very back car to the very front car. And it's kind of an interesting reason why there's a conductor cab in the middle. The MTA has a policy. You know, they need two people to run every train. They need a driver, an operator at the front and a conductor in the middle manning the doors. So that area you can't go through. But as the MTA points out, even that five car segment, that front car segment,

all interconnected is three hundred feet. It's the length of a football field. But don't take it from us. Here's what riders had to say about it. Part of them just walking down just to have the experience of walking through the car, so it's amazing. Do you wish the MTA had more of them?

There's only one that they have. Yeah, more please. For sure. Oh, it's nice. I did see it. Felt new and renovated. It's good, pretty. First time on it, and I'm really impressed.

I'm concerned about showtime, endless show time throughout the whole train. I love it. This is my first time riding it. I often make drawings in the train. So the end of the car has always figured into my drawings. And I was like, oh, whoa, something completely different. It just feels so much less claustrophobic. So I'm a big fan. Oh, I hope they do more of these. I like it. That's David Umanski, Alison Rand, Lester Crockett, Isabel Veles, and the artist Naomi Nemtso.

They kind of get to a couple things because they just have one of these. They have a second one that they're going to roll out. We don't know when yet. But they really want to test out how these cars work in New York. There are in other cities around the world, but New York obviously has its own set of challenges. You heard one of the riders kind of talk about, okay, showtime is normally in one car. Yeah, how's that going to work? Now, I mean, now you've got 300 feet of space. How do other musicians? How do panhandlers adapt? There are also, the MTA said there's some concerns because there's one shared space of air that fire could spread quicker on them. There's questions of how do they isolate a car, if there's an odor or someone is, you know, you're sharing the same air

with something else, a foul smell. You can't just switch cars. So all these are really interesting questions that the MTA is going to have to answer, find out, as they kind of test these and roll day out in service. But it really kind of begs the question. It's like, can New York have nice things? As a journalist, I'm going to withhold any opinion on that one. We're going to shift gears here. As always, it would not be on the way if we did dedicate a few minutes to congestion pricing. What's the latest on that front? The MTA was in New Jersey federal court. There are several lawsuits now in New York and New Jersey over the plan to charge drivers to feed to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. That's the $15 toll. Judge in New Jersey set oral arguments for April 3rd.

There is some urgency because MTA lawyers say they're hoping to begin charging drivers by mid-June. Previously, the agency had sort of hedged with reporters saying maybe in the spring. So it looks like June now. In other congestion pricing news, a couple of state lawmakers. State Senator Michael Janaris and assembly member Zoran Mamdani are calling on the state to send the MTA an additional $90 million this year. So when congestion pricing goes into effect, they can boost subway and bus service. Remember last year, the state gave the MTA a one-time hit of $350 million. That was to plug in operating shortfall as well as $35 million to increase subway service. And we are seeing some of that going into effect now with more G-Train's J-M-E-M-E-Sortfall.

C and R trains as well. More coming up this summer. There was also $15 million last year for a free bus pilot for one route in each borough that recently ended. So compared to what the state gave the MTA last year, a $90 million bonus is actually a pretty small ask. Every week on this segment, we answer a curious commuter question. The one this week is from Meg in Brooklyn. I've never thought of this. She wants to know why the MTA calls riders customers, as in please let the customer.

as in please let the customers off the train first. What's the deal with that? The use of the term dates back to the 1990s. Okay. It can actually be traced to the Long Island Railroad President Charles W. Hope. He served between 1990, 1994, and he was the first one to use the term at the agency. According to the MTA and an obituary. The obituary notes, he changed the terminology, quote,

to emphasize the railroad's responsibilities and duties to those it serves. I spoke with the MTA. the MTA's chief customer officer, Shanifa Riera, who agreed that the continued use of the term is appropriate. She notes the MTA does customer service like online. It will field customer complaints 24 hours a day. So in that regard, I suppose it does treat riders like customers. WNYC Stephen Nesson. And Clayton Gousa, thanks to you both.

Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times. a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.