NYC NOW - October 4, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: New York City Sheriff’s deputies are cracking down on unlicensed weed stores but say they lack staff to serve orders of protection for domestic violence victims. WNYC’s Caroline Lewis reports. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department seeks federal oversight of two New Jersey veteran care facilities for “inadequate infection care” during the pandemic. Plus, the Mets beat the Brewers 4-2, advancing in the playoffs. Finally, in this week’s “On The Way” segment, WNYC’s Stephen Nessen and Clayton Guse get reactions from former MTA heads on the agency’s $68 billion capital plan, discuss Amtrak’s proposal to expand Penn Station, and examine the city’s high subway construction costs.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, October 4th. Here's the morning headlines from Tiffany Hanson. New York City Sheriff's deputies have been busy cracking down on unlicensed weed stores, but they say also the agency doesn't have enough staff to properly serve orders of protection on behalf of domestic violence victims. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more. A New Yorker can request an order of protection when they're being harassed or abused,

and it requires the recipient to stay away, at least until the case is heard in court. Sheriff's deputies say they're supposed to make three attempts to serve the orders, but they often can only try once. A sheriff's office spokesperson says supervisors make sure deputies carry out all their duties. But deputies say they're stretched thin, due to vacuble. and weed duties. The office plans to bring in a class of 90 deputies to boost staffing. The U.S. Justice Department is calling for federal oversight of two long-term veteran care facilities run by the state of New Jersey. The department says Veterans Memorial Homes in Menlo Park and Paramus provided inadequate infection care during the pandemic.

The complaint says management and accountability problems persist and calls for a federal monitor to oversee the facilities. The Justice Department says deaths in the two homes were among the highest of all long-term care facilities in the state during the pandemic. The recommendation still needs to be approved by a court. The State's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department also asks for an independent monitor to oversee improvements. And the New York Mets are moving on. Pete Alonzo's dramatic three-run home run in the ninth inning put the Mets ahead in their winner take-all playoff game last night in Milwaukee. The Mets hung on to win four to two. They knocked out the Brewers and that propelled the Mets to the next

round. Well, they'll play the Philadelphia Phillies. Game one against Philly is Saturday. That's also, by the way, when the Yankees host the Kansas City Royals for their playoff series. Forecast, partly sunny skies expected today with a high near 74 degrees. Right now we're sitting at at 60 degrees under a fair sky here in Soho, 60 degrees in Central Park as well. 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. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's Friday, which means it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news.

Joining us is WNYC Transportation Reporter Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Gousa. All right, let's start with you, Stephen. You recently sat down with two former transit presidents of New York City Transit. That's basically the MTA division that runs city buses and subways, right? You spoke with Richard Davy and his predecessor, Sarah Feinberg. What do they have to say? Well, you know, officials are always a little more candid after leaving office. Certainly. So I wanted to ask them about the MTA's next capital plan. That's the $68 billion list of projects that they are trying to sell on the public and maybe most importantly to Albany lawmakers. So I asked the transit presidents, is there something that can be. done just to make it easier for the MTA. So they're not always begging hat in hand for money from lawmakers. Here's Sarah Feinberg, who let me quickly remind listeners, started as Head of Transit in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

And she stayed on throughout that very difficult year. I always felt like when I was at the MTA, one of the biggest talking points that could be used against us was, you know, every time we're out there asking for, you know, taxpayer dollars, it's very easy for taxpayers or anyone who wants the money to go elsewhere. to say, but it's not on time, it's not on budget. This doesn't cast blame on any specific person. Everyone's guilty of this. It's been going on for way too long, which is, you know, feed the MTA, feed the beast. And the beast, like, isn't always the best arbiter of, like, the tax dollars. Doesn't always use the tax dollars in the most efficient way.

Pretty candid stuff. Yeah, for sure. Well, what about her successor, Richard Davy? Did he agree? And what did he have to say about the latest capital, but? So Davey was pretty much in agreement with Sarah. And just a reminder, he served as the transit president for the last two years. He stepped down just in June. And when it comes to the capital plan, especially as someone who just left the job a few months ago, he disagreed with some of the things that the MTA decided to include in the plan, including Governor Hokel's Pet Project, the IBX, that is the new light rail line that would run from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Jackson Heights and Queens. He says even accessibility projects should maybe not be in the plan. Let's hear what he had to say. To me, it's all. about state of good repair, right? You don't want the summer of hell to return. And I know that that's like a fearmongering, but it frankly isn't. It wouldn't happen tomorrow, but it would happen over 10 years if investment isn't occurring in the state of good repair. You know, the unsexy work that doesn't get elected and others to do ribbon cuttings, right? You know, and obviously the MTA, I think, has made a laudable commitment around accessibility, but that's

not state of good repair. You don't want a future where our customer who is disabled can finally get on an elevator and get down to a subway station and have their train breaking down every 10,000 miles, right? And to be clear, the MTA is planning to spend over a billion dollars on this IBX plan, and Second Avenue subway, even though the money from congestion pricing was going to fund it, the MTA says they're still pushing to do it. You know, as, as Stephen pointed out, Davy's able to say things that people currently at the MTA can't or won't because the Interboro Express is Governor Hockel's pet project. It's something she's announced spearheaded since early in her administration.

But several MTA construction officials have either overtly or kind of implicitly suggested that this project, albeit would serve a big connection in transit deserts, is not the priority that they need to get the existing transit system into a state of good repair before they expand it, kind of like saying, you know, you can't expand your house while the plumbing in your current facility isn't working. So but Hockel is nonetheless still putting a lot of pressure on the MTA. this capital plan, as we've reported, is still largely unfunded. It's kind of in her court and lawmakers in Albany's court to figure out how to fund it, fund it. So we'll kind of see how this shakes out

in the next year or so. Yeah. Okay, this week Amtrak released a report that looks at how to run more trains out of the perennially backed up Penn Station. Listen to this show, if they listen to the regular transit reports, know that well enough. Stephen, you're at that briefing about the report. What do they find? So the problem they're trying to solve is what to do when the gateway project is done. Remember, they're building a new tunnel under the Hudson River, fixing the current one that's damaged by Sandy. That's going to be done in maybe a little over a decade. And when it is, it will double the number of trains that can come in and out of Penn Station, going from 24 an hour to 48 an hour. But the question is, where do all those trains go? So the report basically rules out two options that

are being floated. One is just building more tracks under the existing Penn Station. Okay, that's too costly and too messy. The other option they ruled out is something called through running. This is popular with transit advocates. It would basically mean instead of New Jersey transit trains dropping people off at Penn Station and then turning around and heading right

back, which takes up time and space in the station, the trains would keep going. They would drop people off and then just keep going out to Queens. Maybe running on Long Island Railroad tracks and dropping people off. This is not a crazy idea. They do this in Paris, London, Seoul, Tokyo. but it is an idea that was shot down.

And the reason it was shot down is the engineers say, in order to do that, they would need to expand the width of the platforms. And in order to do that, they would have to knock out thousands of columns that support everything above Penn Station. That's, you know, Madison Square Garden, the subways on 8th Avenue, even the Moynihan Train Hall. And that would take over 12 years. And basically they said, that's not feasible. And what I kept telling Steve in yesterday is that this report felt like, an episode of Door the Explorer.

It says you can't go through it. It says you can't go under it, which leaves the only other option to go around it. Sure. It doesn't say that. They're saying, well, they're saying, hey, we have to expand the footprint of Penn, which is highly controversial. The gateway tunnels are going to come into Manhattan below 30th Street, which is south of Penn.

Amtrak for a long time and other state officials have pitched this Block 780 project. People in Midtown know what this is or people paying attention know what this is. That's the plan to build Penn Station South by essentially raising a block of Manhattan, not raising art with a Z. Tearing down a block of Manhattan. Local community members hate that idea. They don't want to see this. There's a church there. There's all these businesses.

There's housing. And they really don't want to see part of their neighborhood turned into a construction site. So we'll kind of see how that plays out. Hoco and other officials have to make a decision soon to figure out what they're going to do. do with these extra trains that are going to come through the gateway tunnel. But also, this assumes that ridership is going to grow by a large factor at Penn Station over the next 20 years. Right now, Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit ridership is about 70% of what it was before the pandemic. This is saying that's going to, you know, grow and grow and grow precipitously and people will return

to the zone and population will boom. We'll see if that's necessary. Some advocates say, hey, we don't need this extra space at Penn because those writers are never going to come back. So there's a lot for government officials to decide in the coming years on the future of that neighborhood. Interesting stuff. Okay, before we let you go, every week in our on the way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This week, Puneet, Manhattan, who writes, I've read a lot about how building subway lines is more expensive in New York City than anywhere else in the world. Is there any hope in bringing those costs down? Well, Punez right. And there's actually a study out of NYU called the Transit Cost projects that's found as much. The Second Avenue subway phase one, for example, was about eight

times as more expensive to build per mile as comparable projects than Germany in Italy. That report blames, you know, high consulting fees, two overtly large stations, kind of onerous bureaucracy that rises these costs. The MTA, for its part, has said, hey, we're aware that construction costs are high, but we have to deal with these building codes. We have to deal with labor unions in New York. We, unlike European countries, don't have government subsidized health care in the same way. So they're saying, hey, we're more focused on preventing projects from running over budget. That doesn't mean that the initial cost of them is going to go down, but they are kind of having this in mind. Well, thank you for Peneet for the question. And thanks to WNIC's Clayton Gousa and

Stephen Nesson, you can stay in the know in all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way. Clayton, Stephen, talk to you next week. Thanks, John. 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.