NYC NOW - May 24, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan will offer free tours to all eighth graders in city public schools starting next year. Meanwhile, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan urge Mayor Eric Adams to protect the city’s shade-providing tree canopies. In other news, the Prospect Park Zoo will reopen Saturday after eight months of storm damage repairs. Plus, in this week’s transportation segment of “On The Way,” reporter Stephen Nessen discusses the $19 billion JFK renovation, including two new terminals and roadways, and the MTA’s measures to stop fare beating.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, May 24th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan will offer free tours to all eighth graders in the city's public school starting next year. WNYC's Jessica Gould reports. Museum leaders say eighth graders will be able to learn about prejudice. prejudice, propaganda, the rise of the Nazis, and the Holocaust, as well as the bravery of those who work to save the Jews.

The free tours are part of a new initiative to combat rising anti-Semitism in the city and across the country. According to the NYPD, there was an 85% rise in anti-Semitic incidents between the October 7th attacks and March of this year, compared to the same period the year prior. While admission to the Museum of Jewish Heritage has always been free for students, the museum with foundation court will also cover transportation costs for schools that opt in to the program. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and city council member Shaker Krishnan are calling on Mayor Adams to do more to protect the city's shade providing tree canopies. They sent a letter to City Hall that was shared exclusively with W.N. Misei, calling for more

state and federal grant funding along with increasing access to jobs in tree services. The letter also reminds the mayor of his campaign promise to dedicate. 1% of the city's entire budget to the Parks Department, as Parks is facing $55 million in potential budget cuts. The mayor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Tomorrow's opening day for the Prospect Park Zoo, it had closed eight months ago to repair storm damage. A new small species of deer native to Chile will be on display, as well as a young baboon born during the extended closure. Heavy rain from tropical storm Ophelia have flooded the zoo's basements last year, wrecking electric and boiler system.

The zoo is again welcoming visitors while repairs continue. The total price tag to fix the infrastructure and protect against future flooding is some $20 million. The New York Rangers will look to tie up the NHL's Eastern Conference finals tonight. The Broadway Blue Shirts are down one game to none in their best of seven series against the Florida Panthers. They were shut out at home on the Madison Square Garden Ice in game one. The winner of this series advances to the Stanley Cup. They all drop the puck at the garden tonight just after 8 o'clock. It's muggy out there, 67 and partly sunny, going up to 87 today.

It'll be mostly sunny. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way. Covering All Things Transportation, that's after the break. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment unpacking all things transit in New York City. Joining us is WNYC's transportation reporter, Stephen Nesson. David, you spent this week at JFK Airport checking on the status of construction projects there. And you ended up getting a preview of what summer travelers can expect.

Tell us what you found out. Well, if you haven't been to JFK for a minute, let me tell you, brace yourself. Okay. The port is building two new international terminals. They're in various states of completion. And the whole project is actually including renovations at two other terminals, some new roadways. It's slated to cost $19 billion. dollars. You can reassure our listeners. Most of it is privately funded. But the Port Authority is fully

expecting when it's done. It's going to be one of the nicer terminals, if not in the country, maybe in the world. And this is not so far-fetched. Remember LaGuardia was once the laughing stock in the country? Biden called it a third world airport, a problematic phrase, I know. But that's done now, that renovation. And it's rated one of the best new terminals in the world by a prestigious airplane rating, airplane terminal rating group, which is all to say, the Port Authority fully expects JFK terminals will be just as glamorous. They're going to be open in six years. And let me just remind folks, you know, last summer was one of the highest travel records ever at JFK airport.

They're expecting even more people this year. 18 million travelers. And some of the most disruptive construction work is coinciding with that peak travel season, the summer. So speaking of the summer, this weekend, kind of the unofficial start of the summer, a traveler is going to be affected by all this work this weekend? Well, the port is warning, absolutely. Yes, John. The port's warning people getting in and out of the airport. It's going to be challenging. Some of the roadways are closed or under construction. A bunch of the parking lots are already closed. So the Port Authority is urging everyone to take mass transit to the airport. And that's not just taxis. That means, I mean, it's not taxis. It's subways, buses, and the air train. And this is useful information right here. If you get dropped off at the Lefferts Boulevard Air Train Station, the air train is free to board there. There's also going to be a parking lot there that's used. It used to cost money, but starting in June, it's going to be free for people to pick up and drop off folks there. So you mentioned LaGuardia and the radical transformation we've seen there at that airport, but I think folks probably can remember when that was all going down.

It was a real pain getting the LaGuardia folks abandoned taxis on the highway to walk to LaGuardia. Is that something we can expect here? Well, the Port Authority executive director Rick Cotton told me he prays it doesn't happen again. But he's not just praying. He says they also have a 24-7 traffic monitoring operation underway to avoid just that. He says they did learn lessons from that. But I asked him, if he really wants to encourage people to take mass transit, maybe we can waive that $8.50 cent air train fee because it really is a lot, especially for like a family of four or five. And he told me he's thinking about it.

We're going to consider every option. The fact is the air train, even for a family of four, is going to be less expensive than. an Uber trip. But we are evaluating, I would say, everything. And just real quick, you know, I did get an anecdote from a listener, Lisa, who told me she recently flew into JFK and tried to catch an Uber. It took an hour just for the Uber to travel 450 feet in JFK because of the traffic. Yikes.

Okay, this week the MTA announced it will try some new methods to prevent fair evasion, particularly in city subways. I feel like we've heard this before. or how is this going to be any different than previous attempts? Well, for many years, the MTA has complained about fare evasion. And it really has spiked before the pandemic. 6% of subway riders skip the fare. Now it's about 13%.

So MTA chair, Janelle Lieber, is really fixated on one aspect of it. The emergency exit gates. He calls them the super highway of fare evasion. And he's actually quite livid about seeing people holding what he calls expensive lattes in one hand, metro cards in the other, and just strolling through. an open exigate. Here he is at this week's board meeting. That's a person who probably plays by the rules in every other part of their life, but they've become an opportunistic fair of it. And that's where the problem has grown. So to that end, he wants to add a 15-second

delay to the exit gates. He thinks this will stop people from casually using them as an exit, which also lets people in. The EMT is actually doing this at three stations, but they need state approval to expand that to more because of fire safety codes. Has it the NYPD been sending more officers into the subways? Have they made any difference? Well, they have issued a lot of tickets, over 100,000 last year, but the MTA reported this week that only half of people who get one of those tickets actually pays them. And, you know, in the end, this really is costing the MTA a lot of money. They say it's $800 million a year to subway and bus fare evasion. But this obsession with fair evasion,

on the subways comes, I wouldn't say at the expense, but they're not really looking at buses. And remember I told you 13% of subway riders skip the fare? Well, half of bus riders skip the fare. And so some MTA board members are noting there's maybe a bit of a disparity in the effort here. Here's board member David Jones, who calls it an equity issue, since most of those people I mentioned are ticketed. He says are people of color.

I want us to look at this holistically. I don't want to reinforce the issue that. that this is black and brown young people jumping over turnstiles, which in the public imagination is what fair evasion consists of. MTA chair, Janelle Lieber, says they are doing some efforts at bus fare evasion, but it just started six months ago. That's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WN.

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