NYC NOW - October 11, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Tom Donlon, the NYPD's interim commissioner, is expected to step down weeks after he first took the job. Plus, a federal appeals court is upholding the previous life sentences for a man convicted of shooting 10 people on a subway train in Brooklyn two years ago. Also, New York State is unlocking $450 million for water infrastructure in New York City. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson breaks down this week’s transit news with transportation reporters Stephen Nessen, Ramsey Khalifeh and editor Clayton Guse.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, October 11. Here's the midday news from Alec Hamilton. The NYPD's interim commissioner is expected to step down, just weeks after he first took the job. A spokesperson for Mayor Adams says Thomas Donlan is expected to leave the post. Adams appointed Donlin just last month after former commissioner Edward Caban, abruptly resigned amid an ongoing federal probe. A federal appeals court is upholding the previous life sentences for a man convicted of shooting

10 people on a subway train in Brooklyn in 2022. WNYC's Julia Hayward reports. Frank James received 10 back-to-back life sentences plus another 10 years in prison for the mass subway shooting that rocked New York City. James and his attorneys filed an appeal, claiming that the shooter did not act with a specific intent to kill. But the appeals court affirmed the sentence. The court pointed to evidence that included his weapon of choice and a string of YouTube videos he had made in the past sharing a desire to kill others. Other evidence suggests that he spent years planning the attack. This includes

purchasing smoke bombs and completing practice runs. New York State is unlocking $450 million for water infrastructure in New York City. Governor Hockel says the state Environmental Facilities Corporation approved the funding. The money will go towards 13 sewer projects. They include new facilities in Jamaica and Coney Island and a project to reduce sewage overflow issues in the Gowanus Canal. Sunny today, a high near 67, tonight low of 56, sort of a mixed bag for the coming three-day weekend with tomorrow looking sunny with highs in the mid-70s. Some sunshine on Sunday too, but it chits as showers overnight into Monday and then some more sun. Stay close. There's more after the break.

For WMYC, I'm Jene Pierre, and it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Here's my colleague, Sean Carlson, in conversation with WMYC transportation reporters, Stephen Nesson, Ramsey, and editor Clayton Goussa. Okay, the MTA is rolling out new train cars for the Staten Island Railway. Stephen, what can riders in the borough expect with the new cars? Well, there's one new train out and about now on Staten Island. It's an R-211. It's just like those new A-T trains that are out there. with the wider doors, brighter lights inside, different seating configuration.

More of them will start rolling out as the MTA completes testing, eventually replacing all of the old trains probably by mid-year next year. And those old trains, those are called R-44s. They're the oldest trains in the entire system, over 50 years old, so maybe folks want to go ride a little bit of history

before it's gone. Which is to say those trains are still in Satin Island and it's been a long time coming for those riders. And what's interesting about this is that those old trains also at the time back in 1973 replaced 50-year-old trains as well, which is to say that Staten Island only gets new train cars every 50 years. Service was so bad in the 70s when the MTAs first started taking over the Staten Island Railway that riders derisively referred to it as the Tunaville Trolley, which is a bygone cartoon newspaper cartoon. Okay. It's a little bit better now than it was then, but, you know, it goes to show how much tender love and care

or lack thereof. Staten Island gets over the decades. Yeah. And I got a chance to check out the facility where they're actually building these rail cars. It's the Kawasaki manufacturing facility in Yonkers. I went there this week. The MTA says that this facility actually can produce

one train car a day as they build them out. And executives both at Kawasaki and the MTA were celebrating the 5,000th train car nationally that this plant has built. That includes more than 3,000 cars for the MTA. But now let's remember the MTA is now pitching to purchase 2,000 new cars in their latest capital plan. That's going to cost them a bit over $10 billion. And Rams, you didn't mention that you saw a glowing A train, a C train, which we've seen before.

But be still my heart, there was one for the R line. Yes, so could be in the works. Wow. All right. Next up, the city's transportation department put out a colorful, glossy, highly detailed report for ways to improve life for communities that live in the shadow of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Stephen, you sent in on a briefing with officials. What is the future looking like?

Brighter, for one thing, quite literally. So there are near, medium, and long-term plans. And one thing the city can do soon is just use the space under the elevated portions better. So, for example, adding more lighting just to make it brighter, less dark and dingy. There's plans to spruce it up with bike parking down there, bio-swales. Those are those sort of concrete designs with plants in the middle that absorb rainwater, new benches, even markets. There's one in Williamsburg now, and they want maybe one to come to Sunset Park. Other things they're thinking about are some major street redesigns around those areas.

Remember, those were neighborhoods cut up by the BQE, the Moses-era Highway. Famously, infamously, yeah. And the DOT can pretty much implement those whenever it's ready. So places like Park Avenue and Fort Green, there's a crossing there to Commodore Berry Park. It has a bike lane, but it's dark and it's a long crossing, so they want to shorten it, make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists. And maybe the biggest, most ambitious project in this plan is capping sections of the BQE where there's a trench or a sunken part of the roadway. There's actually three sections they're considering Williamsburg, Carroll Gardens, and Bay Ridge. The DOT says it will likely only have funding for two out of those three sections.

And to cap it, of course, would require extensive study, planning, and lots and lots. of money. And quite frankly, those seem like pie in the sky dreams at this point. But the next step is really to just keep studying this. And they have a $5.6 million federal grant to study ways to improve the communities around the BQE. Right. So it's very much a plan to study.

And, you know, you show me a new, shiny new planning report and I'll show you a dusty old can being kicked down the road. It's we we still don't have a solid plan for a lot of this. And this is all getting away from the big problem with the BQE, the triple can of lever in Brooklyn, that they need to repair. They're still not planning to do that for several years down the road, even though they were going to do it previously. So a lot is being discussed about the future of the BQE, but we don't have any hard, hard ways to put shovels in the ground on it.

Switching things up, folks probably know that it's a real fuss to get to airport. Any airport, take your pick in New York City. Like to get JFK, there's not just a one-seat train right. You get up, get to the air train from the subway. There's straight up no train to go to LaGuardia, right? But over the last week, tech companies have started pitching some novel solutions to make trips easier? What's the deal? Yeah, there are a few services that have been bubbling around online that you can see that some companies are planning to launch. Alternatives for calling a car are just taking the air train to JFK, for example. So Uber actually has revealed this Uber shuttle is what they're calling it.

And they want to roll it out that would cost $18 per person from the city, and it would service rides every 30 minutes from what they call major transportation hubs throughout the city. Also, a few weeks ago, I got the chance to sit in on this concept of an electric helicopter, one, their marketing is quieter than a normal helicopter. It was on display at Grand Central Terminal. The company is called Jobi, and it's in the final stages of getting certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, and could possibly be seen flying, you know, in the next few years. They say the aircraft can get from Manhattan to JFK in seven minutes, seven,

and they hope it'll cost the price of an Uber-Black car service. That's per seat. It's a funny thing that big tech likes to do with transportation problems. Joby is calling their service an electric flying taxi. It's a helicopter. Uber is calling there's a shuttle. It's a van. I mean, it's really a bus.

A bunch of people riding in the same vehicle to preset destinations. It's a bus for 18 bucks. It's kind of a common thing that we've seen a lot of the companies come and say, I have a solution. You're really reinventing the wheel, giving it a different name at a higher price point. Okay. Well, back to the classics. train is back up and running for service after closures over the summer, create a lot of nightmares for some rhiners.

Though now it appears that more work needs to be done. Ramsey, what is going on with the cross-town train line? Yeah, like you just said, this summer, there was closures across the line in different parts, and they wanted to upgrade to new, more modern signals, and they celebrated that they got that work done in just about two months. But it actually turns out that there's still planned work that needs to be done around the line for the time being. that's going to be weeknight and weekend closures for the foreseeable future.

So look, you heard that right. The new signals, they said that those are going to go live in actually 20, 27. And it turns out not a lot of riders actually knew that. They thought that once the G train was closed for the summer, they'd come back and we'd see all these new things. So the empty is saying that the summer closures were going to accelerate the work, but that they still had work, that they need to finish up. So I spoke to a bunch of riders this week, and honestly, they were shocked to find out that the summer of pain is now turning into the autumn of adversity. It's crazy. I would appreciate if they would have let us know that all at once, you know.

The weekend is horrible. It's like it's non-existent. Does it exist? Where is the G-train? I wasn't aware that it was going to happen, and I've been surprised every time that it has happened. It seems also unclear to me what nights there's no service, what nights there are service, if it's all nights. So that was Isaiah Smith, L, Tiar Joseph, and Clinton crude. I caught them at Court Square this past Tuesday during the morning rush. So now every weekend for the rest of October and the first week of November, the MTA will shut up. down the line south of Bedford-Nostron station. That's WMYC Transportation Reporters, Ramsey Caliphate, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Gusew, talking with my colleague, John Kalsing. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC.

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