Protests are expected over anticipated fare hikes for subway and bus rides, and the MTA is prepared to listen. The other day, MTA head Dale Hemmerdinger said "We're not deaf," in response to rider complaints about the boost in prices. Riders will get a chance to test that assertion tonight in Brooklyn, as hearings are held about a jump in fare hikes to $2.25 and a boost in weekly and monthly unlimited passes of......

Brooklyn Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D, 51st District) wants to ban alcohol ads on buses and subways. The ads provide just $3 to $5 million of the $100 million in revenue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gets from ad sales and the MTA has not taken a position on the proposed legislation. The state’s Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services did express support for the legislation calling it "consistent with our strategy of preventing alcoholism......

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board decided yesterday not to act on a ban of alcoholic beverages on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. Both railroads sell beer, wine, and liquor (along with soft drinks, water and snacks) from carts at Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, as well as from bar cars on trains. Sales yielded a $1 million profit for the MTA, so the decision was probably more based on pure hard economics......

A number of politicians offered their support (though not 100%) of Mayor Bloomberg's Voldemort, aka congestion pricing, today. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters appeared with Governor Eliot Spitzer and Bloomberg at a press conference today, with Peters saying, "This plan will keep the city that never sleeps from becoming the city that never moves." She also put some pressure on the state Legislature to approve the just submitted S. 6068, the NY State Senate's......

Earlier this week, the Post reported on a new trend that even "grandparents, baby boomers and even mothers with carriages" are getting in on: not paying bus fares by using the back door. Dunh dunh DUNH! Now, bus drivers tell the Post that fare-ducking riders have become more common because more people are using mass transit. Which makes some sense - sometimes those lines just to get on a bus are insane! One bus driver......

Twenty-five-year old Jared Kushner hasn't owned The Observer for a year yet (he bought it last July), but it seems he's fully immersed and determined to make it his own. He's changed it from broadsheet to tabloid-style, which has gotten mixed reviews, but hey, now it's clear that it's not Arthur Carter's Observer anymore. The NY Times, though, wonders if Mr. Kushner will tire of his trophy newspaper, especially given his only other foray into......

What a way to (almost) end 2006 - with an arbitrator making a decision about the MTA's transit workers' contract! And the decision is pretty anti-climactic - it's basically the deal that ended the strike last year, though it was later rejected by the Transit Workers Union, then passed but then denied by the MTA. Anyway, arbitrator George Nicolau said the deal was "the most just and reasonable" solution. From the AP:Both the Metropolitan......

Commuters may feel safer when they hear that the MTA is installing a million dollar chemical detection system at Penn Station. But it turns out that the MTA has been testing the system for the past two years at Grand Central, where, as the NY Times reports:Technicians found that a person walking by with a mop and bucket full of floor cleaner could trigger the chemical sensors. Now, two years after the system was rushed......

It's deja vu all over again! After the city's hot and heavy offer to pay the MTA $500 million for the West Side Railyards in July and the MTA's apparent interest in making that deal happen (because the city would help fund the 7 line extension), it seemed like West Side development was moving along again. But then it turned out the land was worth $1.5 billion (thanks to an MTA audit), and now......

If you've used the MTA this should come as no surprise to you: "Many of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's outdoor properties are poorly lighted and rarely cleaned, making them magnets for 'litterers, dumpers and graffiti vandals,'" according to a City Council survey to be released today. The worst offender? The D,M Borough Park, Brooklyn stop which got a 3.048 rating from the city with 1 being the best and 4 being the worst. In fact,......

There's something marvelous about the many new colonial walls the MTA is discovering in Battery Park (a third one was just found!). You learn more about the city's past...and it provides the great metaphor for the agency, as the Transport Workers Union is looking to convene a second vote on the contract it rejected last month. But more about the wall: Through the MTA's attempts to enhance the South Ferry subway station and build......

After hearing that the transit strike was possibly nearing an end, there reports now that state mediators have a framework in place to end the strike by the Transit Workers Union, Local 100 against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the TWU executive board has approved it. All it took was an all night meeting with a moderator and the two sides finally ironed out enough differences. While details of the agreement have not been finalized......

In a move to assert the NYPD's role and to ruffle some feathers, the Mayor is proposing that the NYPD would lead all regional authorities during emergencies. Newsday reports that this means "Ray Kelly would take charge at all big incidents in city train stations, ports, airports, bridges or tunnels run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority," which then means that both NY Governor Pataki and NJ Governor Codey would need to......

Given the loud and constant din about security concerns over the past few years, you'd think that public agencies would have already raced to assess their security risks and patch up post-9/11 terror vulnerabilities. Not so with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, evidently, which, according to Marcus Baram's piece in this week's Observer, has only spent $25 to 30 million of the $591 million it has budgeted for security. Gothamist certainly wouldn't advise the agency to......

Gothamist likes that the Times devoted part of the front-page today to Ian Urbina's article about people exacting their petty revenge on the trivial aspects of daily life that annoy them. The piece isn't about the kind of grand vengeance that one takes in fighting major career or personal battles, it's more about getting back in small, ineffectual ways at the kind of impersonal annoyances and hypocrisies that crop up day after day. Asking......

Unsurprisingly, builders yesterday were wary about making an offer for the air rights for the West Side railyards, which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has opened up for the next month to public bidding. While "licking their chops" at the prospect of such a large parcel of land on the isle of Manhattan, it's clear to developers that dousing Mayor Michael Bloomberg's dreams of a Jets stadium (and the possibility of the city hosting the......

After having been fired because of he wore a turban, and then re-hired because the firing violated his civil liberties, the next chapter of Sikh MTA motorman Kevin Harrington unfolded: The MTA made him put a patch on his turban (as the Daily News photo at left shows). For the love of Karma. Gothamist knows very little about Sikh tradition, but even we know that this seems blasphemous. Of course, Harrington, a 25 year veteran......

The MTA will vote to raise fares and tolls today for bus and subway riders and drivers. Since New Yorkers have been fussing about it since July, and maybe because we've learned that the MTA's budget problems are monstrous, the NY Times notes that these hikes are coming with " New York Region > Little Outcry as M.T.A. Prepares to Raise Fares" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/nyregion/15outrage.html">little outcry." What Gothamist finds amusing is that the MTA is trying to......

Even though Stuart Elliott's Business > Media & Advertising > Advertising: Twenty Little Questions" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/business/media/29adco.html?ex=1259470800&en=e0d1fb3a30b78143&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland">"Twenty Little Questions" in the NY Times Media & Advertising column strikes us as having only about five good questions (like wondering if Matthew McConaughey's films would go straight to video) and fifteen fillers, Gothamist was impressed that Elliott noted this:Did anyone notice that as hundreds of posters for the Akademiks clothing company carrying the headline "Read books. Get brain" were......