Sorry to end the work week on a bummer note, but we want to offer some different perspectives on the proposed MTA service cuts affecting subways, buses and commuter trains, which by all accounts look fairly hardcore. Mind you, we think much of the early proposals are simply political posturing to get riders worked up as they picture themselves waiting…and waiting…and waiting for that graffitti-covered G train as crackheads rummage through their purse, and force the guy pulling the purse strings to open up his satchel.

But MTA chief exec Elliot Sander is busting out some pretty grave adjectives to describe the cuts, which are designed to help make up the agency’s $1.2 billion shortfall for next year; among them, “draconian,” “harsh” and “very severe.” Price hikes, perhaps as early as the spring, will help cover the deficit too.

Subway cuts would include the outright elimination of the W and the Z (mind you, MLB was gonna “contract” the Minnesota Twins back in 2002, and they nearly made the playoffs this past year) and the shortening of the M and G, along with general scaling back of service for the remaining lines.

The NY Times blog City Room describes the commuter rail cuts thusly:

The Long Island Rail Road would cut 173 positions, cancel and combine some train lines, reduce service on weekends and off-peak hours and cut train crews. The Metro-North Railroad would cut 88 positions, shorten trains, increase the loading guidelines, slow down the restoration of Grand Central Terminal and cut cleaning and maintenance at the terminal. Fares would rise by 43 percent on the Long Island Bus.

StationStops has CBS2 reporting the shuttering of ticket offices, and committing the unforgiveable sin of calling our beloved morning destination “Grand Central Station.”

Metro-North will be eliminating three trains on the Hudson line, two on the Harlem line and four on the New Haven line.

At Grand Central Station, the station master’s office will close and the Harrison ticket office, as well as ticket offices in Crestwood and New Canaan, Conn., will also close.

SecondAvenueSagas is of course all over it like TJ on a Friday bottle of Sam Adams.

Amidst it all, it’s hard not to think about the quarter-billion paid out in those LIRR disability claims, many, many of them bogus.

That knack for when to hold out for the choice seat and when to promptly dump oneself into lesser real estater that I’d bragged about failed me this morning. I passed up on some decent ones–aisles, middle of the car–while walking toward the front in search of a winner (aisle, no one behind me, or the coup de grace–the 1-3/4 seater).

With each step down the aisle, it dawned on me that I was essentially walking the plank, and finally dropped my dejected ass into a handicapped folding seat.

So jammed is the front of the train that not only did a guy take the folding seat across from me at Valhalla (unspoken words to the dude seated six inches away: “uh…how ya doin’?), but another guy took the available eight inches on my folding seat at North White. I spent the rest of the trip folded up like Flat Stanley being mailed to his friends in an envelope.

To make matters worse, I had the whole trip to lament the (hopefully temporary) loss of my new bike light, a sweet $25 piece of hardware that flew off its handlebar mooring somewhere along Elwood Avenue. I didn’t notice it falling off, per se, but did note a fleeting awareness of having run over some piece of debris, perhaps a soda can. If I don’t find it today or tomorrow and the bike shop in Chelsea gives me a hard time about replacing it, expect to read said bike shop’s name next to unflattering adjectives for days on end. I’ve had the thing for all of two weeks.  

I guess my morning could’ve been worse–I could’ve been on an LIRR train that crashed at Jamaica.

LIRR president Helena Williams does not agree with measures the Railroad Retirement Board is taking to better oversee–er, oversee at all–disability payments made to railroad workers.

The federal RRB said it would immediately implement five changes, reports the NY Times, including more independent medical evaluations instead of doctors who are in bed with fraudulent claimants, periodic evaluations of workers on disability (you may find some playing golf at Crab Meadow), and better oversight of the board’s office in Westbury, which was raided by the Feds following the Times‘ article on rampant fraud centered around LIRR disability last month.

Williams thought the revisions unfairly single out the Long Island Railroad, despite clear evidence that the LIRR’s disability claims were absolutely off the hook, compared to every other railroad in the country.

“These steps would be beneficial toward reforming the board’s disability pension system, but they appear to unfairly single out L.I.R.R. retirees and do not go far enough to address what is a nationwide issue,” said Helena Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road.

Calling for an emergency meeting yesterday to address the ridiculous number of LIRR retirees living on fat disability pensions, LIRR president Helena Williams announced the creation of an “internal compliance unit…to work more closely with the federal government; additional ethics training for managers and union employees,” and help from Congress in the form of reform legislation.

Regarding “ethics training,” all LIRR employees will receive training geared towards “stressing the obligation of all LIRR employees as public servants to safeguard public funds and to comply with both the letter and spirit of the law” regarding disability. In short, don’t claim a sore back if your back isn’t really, truly sore.

The compliance unit will “act as a watchdog,” said Williams, and will review all correspondence from the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, which had signed off on all the dodgy disability claims.

Williams also encouraged all Dudley Dorights to use the MTA Inspector General’s toll free number to blow the whistle on fraudulent coworkers.

If you ride the Long Island Railroad or Metro-North, or in any way pay taxes in America, spend the next 20 minutes reading this because some fat Long Island golf guys are stealing your money.

The NY Times has flat-out blasted the L.I.R.R. in a front-cover, 5,000-word story on the scam railroad workers are pulling to command massive paychecks after they’ve retired.

In short, just about every career LIRR worker claims medical disability when he or she retires, and unless they completely botch the paperwork, they get it. Last year, 94% of career LIRR employees who retired after age 50 got disability benefits; fully 97% qualified in 2004. That’s on top of a retirement package that would be the envy of just about anyone I know.

The Times sicced a crew of eight reporters on this one, and they delivered the goods. It appears arthritis and rheumatism is the malady of choice for retiring LIRR guys. From 2001 to 2007, LIRR had 753 claims for both. By comparison, Metro-North–a railroad of a similar size, with similar staff duties–had 32. 32!

If you don’t ride one of those two railroads, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with you. Well, those claims are paid out in part by Social Security. In fact, Social Security–your retirement home in Boca, your Schlitz money for the final decade of your life–coughed up $3.6 billion on the railroad’s disability claims that were signed off on by the Railroad Retirement Board.

The Times bloodhounds trace the Railroad Retirement Board, a federal organization created in the ’30s, to a crummy insurance office in Chicago. It’s manned by three presidentially appointed employees.

Aptly named Retirement Board inspector general Martin Dickman offered a classic case of passing the buck in his defense of the Board’s nearly 100% approval rate of disability claims (they are only turned down when an applicant fails to complete the paperwork.)

Dickman…acknowledged in an interview that the retirement board’s rejection rate was “almost nonexistent,” but he added: “If Congress wants to change the statute and raise the threshold, that’s up to Congress. That’s not up to us to do.”

The story also unearths some extremely dubious overtime loopholes that are built into the LIRR contracts. It sets the microscope on one Edward J. Koerber, an engineer who routinely got paid for four days while working one–all legal, thanks to arcane LIRR contracts.

Koerber worked his scam–actually, not even a scam, all legal–to boost his annual nut to $276,456–mighty close to LIRR president Helena Williams’ salary of $287,658. Koerber, a heavy-set fellow with a walrus moustache, would quadruple his pay by operating a train with an electric engine (not part of his job duty, extra day’s pay), moving said train to the service yard (not part of his job duty, another extra day’s pay), and accumulating “penalty payments” for things like skipping lunch. (Judging by the Times photo of Koerber, I don’t think he actually skipped too many lunches.)

Edward Koerber, Quarter-Million Dollar Man

Insiders commenting on behalf of LIRR say the railroad is essentially powerless to fight this costly waste, due to the threat of a strike. If the fat-ass engineers and conductors choose to strike, the Metro area is crippled, and the public doesn’t care who’s right or wrong–they just want their 7:07 from Huntington back.

And what do all those able-bodied-yet-disabled retirees do with all their free time? They play golf…for free, no less, thanks to an “Access Pass” for all disabled persons that allows them free activities at state parks.  

Scuzzbags.

Metro-North actually comes across as a band of gentlemen, compared to those Long Island scalawags.

“We don’t have full-day penalty payments here,” says Jane Murawski, assistant director of labor relations at Metro-North. “It would never be that the person works their eight-hour shift and then they get another eight hours and another eight hours for other things. That doesn’t happen here.”

Metro-North, formed in 1983 from the old Conrail commuter lines, largely inherited the work rules of its parent, which was mostly a freight railroad. But because the L.I.R.R. has always been primarily a commuter railroad, many existing labor agreements remained after the authority took it over in 1966.

The disparity in pay between the two railroads is considerable. At the L.I.R.R, 107 nonmanagement workers earned more than $150,000 in 2006, compared with only a handful at Metro-North.

“We have the best work rules in the industry nationwide — I would say worldwide,” said Mr. Quinn, the official with the Long Island chapter of the engineers union. “They’ve never been able to negotiate them away from us.”

It is features such as this that make me uneasy to think about the massive layoffs hitting the newspaper industry. Who besides the NY Times has the resources to put into such a story, and who’s even going to think about doing such enterprise reporting five or ten years down the road?

[top image: NY Times. Disabled LIRR guy Joseph Rutigliano playing golf on your dime.]

The cover of today’s AM New York caught my eye as I breezed past the news rack at Hummerville station. “Penn Libation,” it bellowed. “After dark, a party breaks out in the station.”

My first thought was that it was one of those Improv Everywhere stunts that have seen people freeze in place in Grand Central and show up en masse at Best Buy in blue polo shirts and tan khakis, much to the confusion of shoppers.

In fact, it’s a story on the drunks heading home after a night of partying. “It’s beauty coming in and the beast coming home,” eloquently states one engineer about the harsh effects of alcohol on the young female form.

“It is all business during weekdays,” the story teases, “but on the weekends the bridge and tunnel crowd comes dressed to party and leaves partied out.”

Alas, the feature reflects what those in the media called a slow news day–despite the monolithic financial institutions crumbling around us. While reporter Garett Sloane clearly states that the true crazy stuff happens around 2 or 3 a.m. (when the Long Island Railroad turns into the “vomit comet,” according to the same eloquent engineer), it appears the reporter has made like a Mineola 20-something who has to work in the morning, and busted out of Penn Station around 1 a.m.

Too bad, he probably would’ve had some crazy stuff to write about if he’d stuck around.

Here’s some video of the giant boring machine digging out a new tunnel 140 feet below Manhattan.

It’s part of the $7.2 billion project to link the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central (Nooooooo!!!!)–and, presumably, vice versa–by extending the subway tunnel.

The 200-ton machine was shipped in pieces from Italy, then reassembled in Long Island city.

[image: nagra.ch]

Cool story in Friday’s NY Times on a local Arena Football wide receiver who’s also studying to be a doctor. By day, Chris Anthony hauls in touchdown passes and gets slammed into the boards for the New York Dragons. By evening, he’s studying sickle cells under the microscope at Hunter College.

Anthony uses his bicycle, the Long Island Railroad and the subway to bridge his two passions.

Writes Alan Schwarz:

“On Tuesday, wearing khakis and a black riding helmet strapped beneath his chin, Anthony rode his 24-speed cyclocross bike from his Brooklyn apartment to the Long Island Rail Road, rode that for 45 minutes, and then hopped on his bike for another 15 minutes to the Nassau Coliseum for practice. First came a film session, where he took notes on Tampa Bay’s “zone-to-zoom zag” and “two-way go” defenses, and then a full-pad run-through.

At 2 p.m., Anthony biked past the Escalades and assorted S.U.V.’s in the players’ parking lot and back to the L.I.R.R. to drop off his wheels in Brooklyn. He grabbed a sandwich, headed to Hunter on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and by 5:45 was sitting anonymously in a bio lecture, scribbling notes on apoptotic cells and peptide fragments.

I have two thoughts on Mr. Anthony. One, it’s great that this guy gets from Brooklyn to Long Island to Manhattan and back to Brooklyn with just his bike, the subway and a Long Island Railroad ticket.

Two, get a car, dude. Really. You’ll pay it off in no time once you’re a doctor. Youre carbon footprint is negligible. You get plenty of exercise playing pro football, not to mention “dissecting a fetal pig” and “scribbling notes on apoptotic cells and peptide fragments.”

[photo: New York Dragons]

Former cop John Clifford, who seemingly terrorizes his fellow Long Island Railroad riders who talk on cellphones, apply makeup and invite friends to barbecues, had charges of assault, larceny and disorderly conduct thrown out against him yesterday at Manhattan Criminal Court, the NY Times reports.

Clifford has been arrested on the train several times for screaming at fellow passengers who, in his mind, break the social code of keeping one’s noise to oneself on the train. He admitted to slapping the hand of a female passenger as she reached across the aisle to give a business card to a fellow rider.

“I stand up for my right to be let alone,” Mr. Clifford, a retired New York City police sergeant, declared from the witness stand at his nonjury trial on charges including harassment and assault.

We can all relate to the frustration Mr. Clifford feels. But he loses on on a few points in Anemona Hartocollis’ article. First off, the fucker demands five seats for himself, thanks to a tall frame and a bad back.

Secondly, he compares his plight to…wait for it…Rosa Parks.

Outside court, he compared himself to Rosa Parks, fighting for his right to sit where he wanted in peace.

“Look what happened to her,” he said, pointing out that Parks was punished for her stand against discrimination.

Clifford also lambasted the MTA for not enforcing its own noise codes, even bringing a decibel-reader on board to take measurements.  

So, the question of the day: is John Clifford a complete jerk, or a defender of Everycommuter’s civil rights?

I enjoy a post-work commutation lubricant as much as the next passenger, but the drinking on the train may be getting out of hand. Last night I was a party to two situations where the police were summoned, all within the space of about 40 minutes.

Granted, the first incident was set on an Amtrak train, not an LIRR rattletrap. On the three-hour haul from Washington, a group of four was getting increasingly louder as the three men—apparently two twentysomethings and a guy in his thirties—downed more beers. They had a running joke where they’d call each other slang names for female genitalia. This was on a packed train, scheduled to arrive in New York at 8:30.

Finally, one woman asked very politely that they refrain from using words like twat, poontang, vagina or crim. Which prompted the eldest of the bunch to start getting abusive, telling the middle-aged, well-dressed woman that she could just go find another seat and to get out of his face. And then he and a buddy started up again with gleeful cries of “Muff!” and “Beaver!,” like 12-year-olds on a backyard sleep-out.

When we got to Penn, I started to exit the train and found myself between the head dope and the woman. He started in again, telling her, “Hey, you have a nice night now,” and laughing in a menacing way.

I couldn’t help myself.

“You out to be ashamed of yourself,” I told him.

And then I was the target. Though other people on the train chimed in, and soon he was hurling abuse at several more people. I could see that two of them, both young women, were clearly scared.

I didn’t take his taunts. Instead, I walked up to a conductor outside the train and told her, “Look, this guy is threatening us. I think you need to do something.”

She was nice, but said the window of opportunity for her was closed.

So I trudged on, heading up the escalator. Sure enough, he was waiting for me at the top of it, and started in again. I cut him off with, “The police are on their way.” He dusted.

Curiously, I did see a cop right then and stopped him. I explained what happened, and he clearly didn’t care if I had a knife sticking out of my back. He wasn’t going to be bothered. He treated me like a crazy person.

So off I went to the LIRR section of Penn Station to complete my journey home. The 8:49 was loading, and I could see that it was a crowded train, with lots of kids tugging balloons on ribbons. There must’ve been some type of event at the Garden.

I sunk down in an empty two-across and cracked open a beer. All was right with the beer until the low-level hum of dozens of conversations was interrupted by a very loud, “Fuck you! You ugly piece of shit! You pimply fat-assed, ugly bitch.”

I looked to see a guy who looked like Vito from The Sopranos. He was standing near the door, yelling at a heavyset woman, about 5’ 3”, sitting about three seats away.

The guy kept at it. There was a kid on my car who looked like she was ready to break the window and jump out, she was so scared. And the yeller’s anger was clearly climbing as his control seemed to be slipping away.

Finally, he crumpled up his beer can and threw it at the woman, who reminded me of the nurse at my grammar school. And then he stepped toward her.

In front of the woman was a middle-aged couple, a guy who didn’t exactly sport the build of a gym rat and, we were to learn in a minute, his wife.

The husband told the yeller, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The guy kept coming, now threatening the husband. So the hubby stood up, in an act of courage that went beyond admirable. Because there was going to be trouble, clearly.

I and another guy walked over, though I had no idea what I was going to do.

Meanwhile, the woman who’d been the target of his abuse slipped into the next car. Soon a conductor charged into the car with a kid in a knit wool cap and jeans. He opened his coat and showed his badge—an undercover cop.

The abuser immediately turned into an altar boy, denying that anything had happened. But now the hubby and his wife were telling the cop what happened. At that point, the doors opened at Auburndale, and people started to get out. One of them was a tall lanky guy who said to the cop, “I saw exactly what happened.”

The abuser smiled and told the cop, “Now you’ll get the real story,” as if he was suddenly in the clear.

The guy exiting turned to the drunk low-life and said to him, “You were a threat to this car, and what you did and said was outrageous.”

Then he turned to the cop. “You should arrest him.”

With that, the guy exited. Unfortunately, the rest of the crowd was not as sympathetic. The cop told us that the train would have to be held there until backups arrived, and he turned to the wife whose husband had stood up to the creep and said, “You’re the one who wanted this.”

I could see that the cop was losing his enthusiasm for doing right.

The husband suggested that the perpetrator just be kept off the train and that the train proceed.

Unfortunately, the perpetrator’s stop was Auburndale, so he got off essentially scot-free—no doubt to tell the tale the next night over a few beers down on Track 16.

–PeterFromPort