Community Board 6 Chair Mark Thompson said that while the board hasn’t taken an official position on the rezoning proposal, they are generally supportive of it. The biggest problem, he said, is that the city wants to plow ahead with the plan before allowing adequate time to answer the community’s questions and figure out how a potential business boom in Midtown would affect other city systems. Thompson said the board is concerned that the city isn’t giving enough consideration to ancillary factors like sidewalk crowding, an influx of subway and bus passengers and the impact on the electric grid and sewer systems that would come along with a rapid upward expansion of Midtown office buildings.

The board will be sending a letter to City Council Member Dan Garodnick requesting a meeting and his assistance in getting the DCP to steady the pace as they continue, and is working in conjunction with Community Board 5, which shares their concerns.

Renewed Calls for Pedicab Restrictions
Upper East Side Council Member Dan Garodnick, chair of the consumer affairs committee, has consistently called for stricter regulations of the pedicab industry, citing the high number of complaints that his committee has received from customers who feel they were ripped off. The New York Post reported earlier this week that one visiting family from Texas was charged over $400 for a 10-block ride in Midtown recently—and that the charge was completely legal. Garodnick introduced a package of bills last year that passed the Council and now require pedicab drivers to clearly post their rates someone in their cab, but the city doesn’t place any restrictions on how much pedicabs can charge, and some are getting around the rule by posting their rates in tiny lettering and not directing their passengers’ attention to it. Now Garodnick, along with many in the pedicab industry who don’t want their profession given a bad name, are calling for additional laws that will require drivers to state the charges clearly at the beginning of a ride, instead of springing a huge bill on riders when they reach their destination.

Summer Streets on the East Side
If you’ve always dreamed of zip-lining through the streets of Manhattan, your dreams may soon be fulfilled. The Department of Transportation will continue the fifth annual Summer Streets program for the next two Saturdays, Aug. 11 and 18, on the East Side, closing down Park Avenue from Foley Square downtown all the way up to East 72nd Street from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Cars will vanish and the avenue will be free to roam on foot, bike, scooter, rollerblades or hoverboard, with activities like the zip-line, a rock climbing wall and a picnic food stand area from Whole Foods at various rest stops along the way. There will also be interactive art projects and a fire hydrant sprinkler, perfect for parched kids. Complete info at nyc.gov/summerstreets.

A Comic Consolidation
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) announced this week that it will be consolidating its collections with that of the Society of Illustrators, located at 128 E. 63rd St. The two art institutions will merge their assets and become a single institution dedicated to celebrating illustration, comics and animation. The Society will continue to host the MoCCA Fest, an annual independent comics festival, and will dedicate one of their galleries to MoCCA’s permanent collection and draw from the collection for curated shows.
“The Society of Illustrators has a long, proud history of promoting the art and appreciation of all genres of illustration,” said Executive Director Anelle Miller in a statement. “We are honored to be able to spearhead the expansion and growth of the incredible foundation that MoCCA has created over the past 10 years.”

East Siders’ Ideas to Boost Second Ave.
While the businesses on Second Avenue near the subway construction have suffered in the past years, with foot traffic down by 30 percent in some spots, local residents say that they try their best to support those businesses and have ideas of how they can do even better, according to a survey conducted by Council Member Jessica Lappin’s office. Out of the 990 people who responded to the survey, 78 percent said that they shop in stores or dine in restaurants along Second Avenue. An overwhelmingly number—86 percent—also said that they’d be inclined to spend on the Avenue more frequently if merchants offered coupons or deals.

“Businesses have been hit hard by Second Avenue construction, so it’s wonderful that East Siders are supporting them,” Lappin said in a statement. “This survey also makes it clear that shoppers are looking for bargains. In this economy, who isn’t? So, going forward, this is something we can work on with Second Avenue merchants.”

The survey also found the best thing the MTA can do to help people who live around the Second Avenue construction is to provide better information for the community about what’s going on. Survey respondents chose that option 40 percent of the time, more than keeping the work spaces cleaner and being less noisy.

C Tops the List as the Worst Line in the City
Have a favorite subway line? So does the New York Public Interest Research Group, whose Straphangers Campaign released its annual State of the Subway report last week.

The Q line came out on top, with major points for a low breakdown rate, regular service, seat availability and cleanliness. Apparently, this line also has the best announcements in the system. It ranked relatively low, though, on the actual amount of scheduled service.
Probably to few New Yorkers’ surprise, the C line came in last. For the fourth year in a row, its notorious grimy cars, frequent breakdowns and infrequent appearances kept it at the bottom. It ranked second to last on in-car announcements.

by Paul Bisceglio

Have a favorite subway line? So does the New York Public Interest Research Group, whose Straphangers Campaign released its annual State of the Subway report last week.

The report ranks subway lines from best to worst by compiling MTA New York City Transit data from 2011 in six categories: amount of scheduled service, regularity of service, breakdown rate, chance of getting a seat, interior cleanliness and in-car announcements. The list includes 19 of the 20 major lines across the city — all except the G, for which reliable crowding data is unavailable, says the report.
The Q line came out on top, with major points for a low breakdown rate, regular service, seat availability and cleanliness. Apparently, this line also has the best announcements in the system. It ranked relatively low, though, on the amount of scheduled service.
Probably to few New Yorkers’ surprise, the C line came in last. For the fourth year in a row, its notoriously grimy cars, frequent breakdowns and infrequent appearances kept it at the bottom. It ranked second to last on in-car announcements, which tend to sound like the conductor is speaking cyborg from a mile away while gargling marbles.

The 7 took second place, despite having the worst announcements on record, and the J and Z’s clockwork-like regularity helped win it third. The 4 and 5 were third and second to last, respectively, both weighed down by heavy crowding.

The MTA released a tepid reply to the rankings, emphasizing that progress was being made across the board.

“While we appreciate the positive results of the Straphangers’ latest survey, those results do not tell the full story,” they said in an official response. “We believe that NYC Transit’s Key Performance Indicators methodology, reported monthly in the Committee Agenda, offers a fairer and more complete assessment of subway service and includes information gleaned from actual customer surveys taken from the passengers’ point of view.”

They also noted that service frequency for each individual line is affected by other lines that share the same track. “The Straphangers report would be more relevant if it viewed service by corridor rather than by individual train line,” they claimed.

Nevertheless, they acknowledge that there is work to be done. “Continuing our commitment to improving service, 300 new subway cars are currently on order for lettered line routes, and their arrival will help further modernize our car fleet by allowing us to retire C Line cars (R32s), which are the oldest in current operation.”

The new C line cars will not arrive until at least 2017, so it’s likely that the C is not at the end of its losing streak.

Quick-Change Robbery
Resting on a park bench is normally a stress-free activity, but a 36-year-old Upper West Side resident felt otherwise last Monday night. She was sitting on a bench outside Central Park, near West 61st Street, when a young man grabbed her purse and fled west. A witness saw the suspect dash into a parking garage on West 65th Street, switch to a different shirt, ditch the bag and keep the contents before running out of sight. The victim cancelled her credit cards and didn’t lose anything of value.

Sticky Pretty Fingers
Last Tuesday at around 12:45 a.m., an employee at a Duane Reade on Amsterdam Avenue watched as a very specific robbery unfolded. A woman, described as black, 130 pounds, 5-foot-4 with a short ponytail, walked over to the cosmetics aisle carrying a brown purse. She then loaded her bag with 261 bottles of O.P.I. brand nail polish worth a total of $2,218. After she cleaned out the shelf, she sauntered past the cash registers and right out the door.

Picture Perfect Crime
A local man was dismayed to find that his apartment had been burglarized in the hour-and-15-minute window he was gone last Thursday. The victim left his home on West 64th Street at 10:30 a.m. and came back at 11:45 a.m. to a kicked-in window fan. The unknown burglar stole $6,150 worth of camera and computer equipment, including a $2,000 Canon camera, a $1,700 lens, a $1,250 iMac and flashes, filters and memory cards.

Gang-Up on the Train
A bumbling group of 15-year-olds were arrested for grand larceny last Thursday afternoon when they were caught stealing an iPhone from a woman on the C train. The 30-year-old victim was sitting on the uptown train at about 2 p.m. and the five kids, four boys and one girl, were standing near her. When the train pulled into the 72nd Street station, one of the boys snatched the woman’s phone and they all fled. The victim identified them all when police found them a short time later, and the phone was recovered from the girl’s purse. She said that one of the boys had grabbed it, but the whole group was arrested.

Shady Withdrawals
An employee at a Chase bank branch thwarted a fraudster from stealing from her elderly victim for a second time in one day. The swindler had possession of her 84-year-old target’s social security number and had forged an ID, entering an uptown branch of Chase and withdrawing $3,500 from the woman’s checking account. But when she went to another nearby branch to try and withdraw $4,000 from the woman’s savings account, the bank teller grew suspicious and denied the request. The bank then informed their customer that she had been robbed and closed down both accounts to prevent it from happening again. Police are still searching for the thief.

For two years in a row, the Straphangers Campaign called the C train the worst subway line in the city in its annual report card.

The line stretches from the tip of northern Manhattan, through the Upper West Side and through the rest of the borough into Brooklyn, ending in the East New York neighborhood.

Compared to the subway system average of 21 train lines, the C train had a lower regular scheduled service, more delays from mechanical breakdowns and garbled subway car announcements. The survey also found that the C trains are dirty. One of the only benefits of the C train is that a rider is more likely to get a seat.

The scores were ranked with a MetroCard rating, in dollars and cents. The C train had a score of 55 cents.

Other Upper West Side train lines fared much better than the C line.

The local 1 train that runs up Broadway was rated the third highest line in the subway system. The express 2/3 trains that also run on Broadway scored a little lower.

The 2 train was considered less clean and slightly less reliable than the other lines. The 3 train was cleaner than the system average, but breaks down as often as the average subway line.

The local B train, which also runs up Central Park West, was tied for 15th place in the subway system ranking.

Overall the report found that this year, the subway system improved. Nearly all the train lines are cleaner, half had clearer subway announcements and 16 subway lines broke down less than last year.