Results tagged “delay”

One more incident like this and Delta is going to get a reputation. Just weeks after a mouse was found on board one of their planes, causing an evacuation and serious delay... it's happened again!

The animals scored another point against the humans at JFK this past Sunday. Reportedly a mouse (eek!) was running rampant around a Delta aircraft waiting to depart for London. Upon being spotted, the captain refused to operate the flight, "fearing the rodent might gnaw through some critical wiring and put the entire aircraft at risk high over the Atlantic." And now we have a new reason to fear flying.

Subway hell weekend is behind us, and now the transit system has been restored to its hyper-efficient, fast-paced glory. But were this weekend's irritating disruptions worth all the agita? The MTA, obviously, says yes, and NYC Transit's Twitter page is filled photographic documentation that workers were so totally busy repairing the infrastructure.

It's not just your self-dramatizing imagination; it really is a headache trying to fly away from New York City. Not only are our airports absolutely no fun (survey says) but there's seemingly no exit from them. A new study from the Brookings Institute confirms that New York is still the worst for on-time air travel, with 30 percent of arrivals and 22 percent of departures clocking in late. And those eggheads predict it's probably only going to get worse! Why?

The buzz was severely harshed last night for thousands of U2 fans making their way back from the Meadowlands to Manhattan. According to multiple reports, the post-concert scene was a total nightmare, with a packed mob left stranded for hours on the platforms. NJT officials tell 1010WINS there were plenty of trains, but there were too few ticket machines to accommodate the throngs of people. But one Gothamist reader describes a different scenario:

It was incredibly disorganized as there were not enough trains to accommodate the amount of concert-goers... At least a couple hundred people left during the encore in hopes of catching an earlier train and avoid the crowd, only to be met with a closed gate at the tracks. The staff didn't open the gates until people were completely pushed up against each other and 500 deep. When they finally allowed us on the platform, people shoved and pushed their way in. It was really unsafe.

We're sure everyone saw this coming: According to the Daily News, "Straphangers seeking relief from the overcrowded Lexington Ave. line may have to wait until 2017 for the arrival of the MTA's cure - the Second Ave subway, sources told the Daily News Tuesday... [After an analysis] The conclusion: the official completion date for phase one of the project should be pushed from June 2015 to December 2016, with possible future delays placing the opening in the summer of 2017, the sources said." Okay, so 2017 translated from MTA time should be sometime in 2020, no?

Ew, the Daily News uses the word "randy" to do so, but aw they tell us that the nearly 80 turtles who crawled onto the runway at JFK yesterday were there to make baby turtles! They were rudely interrupted however, when the "Port Authority workers rushed to the shell-covered runway about 8:30 a.m. and scooped up 78 diamondback terrapins." (According to WCBS 2, a "chorus of pilots" had radioed the tower to chime in about the "massive numbers" of turtles.) The breeding turtles, which are about 8 inches long and weigh 2 to 3 pounds each, were put into a pickup truck and moved back to Jamaica Bay. One Port Authority spokesman said, "Everybody had a good attitude considering it was turtles going off to hatch more turtles." And if they weren't, then what.... they get the Canada Geese treatment?

Late last month, architect Frank Gehry dismissed more than two dozen staffers working on designs for the embattled Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the Wall Street Journal reports. The terminations came despite the fact that most of the proposed $4.2 billion project—which would include a Nets basketball arena, office towers and thousands of apartments—has not been designed, as Develop Don't Destroy points out. Both Gehry Partners LLP and Forest City Ratner, the company behind the project, declined to comment. But earlier this month Forest City abruptly stopped work at the site, and they don't even have the $100 million to buy the Vanderbilt Rail Yard from the MTA. In a thorough article in this week's Observer, the venture is viewed as being on the verge of "collapse," and Bruce Ratner "seems to be rushing to patch a leaky dam." Ratner may clear the last of his legal hurdles next year, but it's unclear if he'll have the financing to move forward in this current economy.

In a striking reversal, developer Bruce Ratner has halted work at a location that is integral to his controversial $4.2 billion plan to build a Nets basketball arena, office towers and thousands of apartments in Brooklyn. Ratner has previously insisted that work would continue despite lawsuits attempting to stop the project, even vowing to break ground on the stadium this month. Now a spokesman for his comany, Forest City Ratner, tells the Daily News that "preliminary construction" at the MTA-owned Vanderbilt Rail Yards is being put on hold.

Some Park Slope activists have so little faith in the MTA's promise to renovate the dreary Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street station that they're imploring transit officials to scale back their plans and instead make a few specific improvements immediately. The massive refurbishment was supposed to begin this year and turn the "dank and dark" station into a light-filled hub with clean windows and a new copper roof. But the plans were later scaled back and postponed in the shadow of looming budget shortfalls.

The $150 million reconstruction project on the two mile esplanade between East River park and Battery Park was supposed to be done last year, but you know the drill. Two thirds of the promenade still have a long way to go, and last year the state Department of Environmental Conservation fined the city and contractor Pile Foundation Construction Company $200,000 because workers were allowing the shoreline to erode into the water. Now a DEC spokesman says the company hasn't fixed the problem and the agency wants to revoke the work permit. When asked by the Villager when the project is now expected to be completed, the foreman laughed and said he didn’t know: "New York City isn’t exactly the fastest people in the world."

Ah, the Second Avenue subway project—that mythical, subterranean Chimera that mayors and governors have spun tales about since time immemorial—is once again in danger of abandonment. With all the talk of service cutbacks as the MTA stares down the barrel of a $1 billion budged deficit, some are wondering if the transit authority should really be spending an estimated $3,000 every minute of every day to dig under Second Avenue at this particular juncture.

You’ll recall the big stink surrounding the city’s demolition (pictured) of the 1930s-era Art Deco Purchase building by the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO – preservationists fought to save it, then the city tore it down to make way for the oft-delayed Brooklyn Bridge Park. The land the building occupied was supposed to be turned into a beautiful Euro-style piazza and skating rink by fall 2009, according to estimates by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. Unsurprisingly, that’s not going to happen for at least five years because the DOT, which still owns the property, needs it to do repairs on the bridge. City Councilman David Yassky, whose district includes the park, tells the Post:

We all know how the bureaucracy works – a few years will become five years, and then 10 years, and then you can kiss that section of the park goodbye. This land was promised for parkland, and it should stay that way. Surely DOT can store its equipment somewhere else nearby.

A DOT spokesman says it’s not just about storage, but sandblasting and painting, and “the public should be nowhere near the area during this time.” The Conservancy still expects parts of the 1.3-mile waterfront park to be completed by the end of next year, but the Brooklyn Paper notes that the project, which includes luxury condos to subsidize park maintenance, has thus far amounted to a string of hollow promises; projected costs have doubled to $300 million (of which only $225 million has been set aside). “People’s expectations and hopes have been toyed with,” says Ken Baer, a Sierra Club official.

is, Netflix confirmed it had "unspecfied problems" in the past three days which have severely delayed DVD shipments. According to the AP, the "problems affected all...55 shipping centers," causing Netflix' biggest service disruption ever; it was also unable to able to ship any DVDs on Tuesday. Netflix says, "We apologize and we'll be automatically issuing credits to all of you whose shipments have been delayed. Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible and to provide a personalized email update to you if your DVD shipment was delayed." In the past, postal service employees have stolen Netflix DVDs (back in 2003, one USPS worker was found to have 700 DVDs in his home).

Passengers who boarded a Delta flight to Las Vegas at JFK airport at 10:30 a.m. yesterday had plenty of time to catch up on their Sudoku, because they ended up being stuck on the plane for over 7 hours. The flight never left JFK due to scattered thunderstorms on Sunday. Passengers were placated with water and “warm Sprite,” according to one account, and were finally permitted off the plane sometime after 5:30 p.m. A Delta spokesman could not explain why passengers were not allowed to return to the gate, and promised to refund their money. Which is a nice gesture, since airline passengers still have no rights.

A federal appeals judge has issued a delay on enforcement of the new law that would require NYC restaurants with 15 or more establishments nationwide to prominently display calorie information for all foods and beverages. The rules had been scheduled to take effect on Saturday; the new delay will last until Tuesday, when the three-member appeals court will formally consider an even longer delay.

Riders were stranded on the platform and in subway cars when a Brooklyn-bound L train stalled under the East River just after 8PM. Reader tokyohanna, who took this photograph of people waiting, wrote at the time, "There is a train stalled between first and Bedford. They stopped trains in both directions. A sea of people is on the platform and we can barely walk." amNew York reports that the train had a mechanical failure close...