The new $11 billion operating budget is actually just an ominous warning that in a year—or maybe a few months—the Transit Authority will once again cite the need to hike fares in order to strong arm Albany in finding a newer, more regressive way of funding operating costs.

They have basically promised it already:

In addition to the 2010 budget, the MTA released a four-year fiscal plan. It envisions 7.5% fare and toll hikes in 2011 and 2013 as the agency tries to establish a pattern of regular inflation-based increases.

There is really not so much inflation right now, in America, is there? (But who knows what the future holds!)

But, yes, it is insane that our mass transit is operated by a rotating cast of idiot millionaires with free E-Zpasses for life (and beyond!) beholden to absolutely no one, at all, operating with two sets of books, and yet we have to actually sympathize with them because the people who profit from the way an efficient mass transit system allows for the mobility of cheap labor don't think they should be forced to pony up any money to keep transit affordable. Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars, and Jersey dicks bemoan the tolls they have to pay to enter the city where they make all of their money while contributing nothing back.

Meanwhile, though, the MTA lies, about everything, all the time. They are saving just enough of the money from the emergency bailout earlier this year to allow them to not threaten to raise fares again for one (1) year (while fighting transit workers' promised wage increase in court). And thanks to that bailout, we only had to endure a slight fare increase with no service cuts! Except that not a single goddamn line is running on schedule anymore, ever, and that's been the case all year and it only gets worse every week.

Track and signal work must be up 1000% across the board, because there's hardly a line that isn't out of commission on the conveniently poorer or less utilizied portions of the routes these days. The F just gives up at Jay St now. The service advisories, when they are actually correctly posted, which is rarely, grow longer every weekend. If you live outside Manhattan, you better catch a train home before 11 pm, because otherwise who the fuck knows when a train will show up and where it will actually take you. Lord only knows what the hell the G train was doing last weekend, and why. Everyone, anecdotally, has noticed this. But no one has just straight-up said that these are the across the board service cuts that they promised they wouldn't need to institute once we saved them from disaster a few months ago.

It is time, now, immediately, to do a few things:

• To end the insane federal transit funding system that a) overfunds highways and b) dispenses capital project money for urban mass transit systems but forbids any federal spending on operating costs for cities of more than 200,000 people. The Reagan administration slashed mass transit funding, of course, but it was Mr. Bill Clinton who eliminated operating assistance altogether. Do you want to know about how much highway funding has increased over the same period of time? No, you don't. Real estate taxes and fares are not the proper way to fund the nation's largest subway system, especially when we will earmark federal cash for the Robert Byrd Memorial Frontage Road to the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center and Community Swimming Pool.
• To destroy the MTA. The public authorities reform bill that just passed the Assembly is a wonderful start! But the entire board needs to be dissolved and replaced with, you know, actual subway riders, elitist technocrat transit wonks, and people with experience in government management and accounting. Civil servants, in other words.
• Everyone in Albany should be tarred and feathered. This is an important part of our prescription for any local problem.
• Also fuck Bloomberg.

Anyway! No fare increases until January 1, 2011! And some day—maybe in like 2015, when you ride the robot-operated Second Avenue line to your favorite soup kitchen—there may be those little signs that tell you when the next train is coming! This "install little signs" project is only a zillion dollars over budget (so far!).

According to City Room, NYPD Chief James P. Hall told City Council today that sexual harassment was the "No. 1 quality of life offense on the subway." (That 587 number, he also added, was likely highly under-reported. New Yorkers would be too busy to file a complaint against someone who sexually harassed them.)

The average perpetrator is a 39-year-old male, while the vast majority of victims are females over 17 years old. "It's a crime that goes more to a middle-aged individual," Chief Hall said. In contrast, other crimes in the subway generally involve younger men, from 17 to 25 years old, he said.

We also learn this helpful commuting tip: the 4/5/6 lines between Grand Central Terminal and Union Square is the gropiest part of New York's disturbingly grope-y transit system. (A bit of good news: All the complaints occurred in Manhattan. G Train represent!)

Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. has a funny/good(?) idea for preventing the groping. Writes Gothamist:

Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. said, "I'd like to see a wall of shame. Posting pictures of people convicted, especially with 20 percent recidivism ... would be a useful deterrent." Hall said that women shouldn't be discouraged if they don't have a cellphone picture, "At a minimum, a report alone allows us to deploy more effectively."

Honestly? There should not only be Wall of Shame, but some sort of annual festival where these creeps are paraded down Fifth Ave. and all New Yorkers can throw rotten produce at them, like a Puerto Rican Day Parade of Justice. Gross crimes demand gross punishment.

1010 Wins says a dead body was found on the tracks. No word on whether or not it was the result of a suicide. But we'll go ahead and post all these tips, just to illustrate how messed up a city can get by one single incident...

These videos are not the most enthralling things ever. Watch them if you will. But we got this report from a person on the train in the video:

The L train stopped underground between the Bedford and the 1st Avenue station around 10:44a.m.- give a few minutes here or there. Being just prior to 1st avenue, we waited underground for 15 minutes if that, and moved a couple of inches every few minutes. The announcement was then stated that we were to be evacuated onto a train in front of our own... I'm assuming that it was backed up into the tunnel to provide a link for us to arrive at 1st avenue by foot. The train operator having come out from the conductors closet told another passenger that "no, someone isn't sick... it's an injury". This was my first understanding of what had caused us to halt the transit. When we all had quietly and patiently (I felt quite in awe by the patience of the crowd) onto the 1st avenue platform we came upon a grouping of New York's finest, all guarding the first train car. There were stretchers and such. I couldn't say for sure if someone was laid out on the seat in the first train car, nor if they were alive, though that was the glimpse of things, and based on assumption that someone was injured, it seemed that car was providing the medical and emergency assistance either he or she required. We stepped above ground just after 11am.

And, we heard from another L train rider who told a similar story about going to work this morning—probably on that very same train:

I was riding on it, toward the back of the train. Train slows down,
then just stops. The front cars reached the First Avenue platform, the
back cars—where I was—were still in the tunnel. After a couple of
minutes of delay, they said there had been an "injury" to a passenger
and we would have to all evacuate. Anyway, since the back of the train
wasn't even at the platform, we all had to walk toward the middle of
the train and get off there. We were at the far end of the platform
and had to walk down.

We got off, and then it was all crazy. Dozens and dozens of firemen
(carrying axes, which was particularly odd) and lots of police
officers.

They had a gurney laid out near the front of the train, but again, had
no idea what happened from there

How bad was it? Another L train passenger tells us that much later, everything was still totally fucked: "I was actually one of the hundreds of people waiting for the L to arrive at 1st Ave, around 12:30. The station was open, and there hadn't been any announcement over the loudspeaker, but they didn't have that countdown to the next arrival displayed. Then there was an announcement on the screen that usually displays the next arrival, saying there was an investigation at 1st Ave. But I didn't see any cops, paramedics, or anything on the tracks or anything like that."

Posted on:10/7/2009 12:10:01 PM

Due to a police investigation at the 1st Avenue Station, there is no l train service in both directions between the Bedford Avenue Station and the 8th Avenue Station.

Please expect delays in l train service at this time.

Notification 1 issued on 10/2/2009 at 12:15 PM. Emergency personnel are on the scene of a subway smoke condition near West 53rd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. The F and V trains are suspended in Manhattan. B and D trains are diverted onto the A line between West 57th Street and West 4th Street.

"[There is] no indication that she was [manhandled]," [New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly!!] said of Brooklyn blogger Chrissie Brodigan.

So now The Fuzz thinks they can intimidate citizens, pug dog owners, pukers, and bloggers alike by trotting out the "big guns" to try to shut down our protests? So Ray Kelly thinks this is "an appropriate issue for the Civilian Complaint Review Board to handle," eh?

Well that's actually pretty reasonable.

But dog-in-a-bag L train riders and their supporters will not be muzzled! Ray Kelly, we demand that you—and, hell, Mayor Bloomberg too, at this point—clear your schedules immediately to answer the following interrogatories:

FIRST: Why would you want anything bad to happen to a poor sick pug dog?

SECOND: Do you think pug dogs are cute, or just weird looking?

AND FINALLY: Have you ever gotten sick on a train? If so, explain in humorous detail.

Justice for L train dog puke victims—now and forever!
[NYP]

Chrissie's version: Her pug got sick on the subway, so she took it out of its bag, then a cop ran up and grabbed her and harassed her and arrested her and said anti-woman things!

The cop's version, courtesy of the New York Post, obv: Chrissie Brodigan is a crazy anti-Semite who went wild on the cop in question—NYPD's first Hasidic cop!

But a witness, Viane Delgado, said Brodigan was the one out of line. Delgado said Witriol "repeatedly" asked the woman to place the barking pug in a carrier she had. But instead, she allegedly insulted him with anti-Semitic slurs and tried to walk away.

"You f—-ing Jew, you're not even human," Delgado quoted Brodigan as saying.

She repeatedly said, "Jewish people think they own everything," a source said.

Ha, really? A little extreme, no? Chrissie denies saying this. Do people really say that, in Williamsburg? Pug owners? It seems doubtful. We're just reporting, here.

No word on whether the pug is still puking, but we will bring you word as soon as this important saga develops further, puke-wise or otherwise.
[NYP. Pic via Gothamist]

Was arrested by police at L train today - ffor a 15lb pug that I took out of his tote bag for throwing up and overheating. Held for very long time - photos and video and about 12 cops involved. Pug okay,. but me, very sad,

Her pug dog threw up in its tote bag on the L train between First Avenue and Bedford Ave, then when she got off the train a cop came up to her and asked her for her ID and she didn't have the ID and the cop cuffed her and pushed her against the wall and said "If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman," and people were taking pictures and they arrested her and gave her three tickets and said they were going to have her puking pug dog put down but when she finally got to the police station the dog was just behind the desk and the cops were playing with it.

The state of her fellow subway riders is unknown.
[Free Williamsburg via Animal NY]

Yoshitomo Nara was in town for his gallery opening in Chelsea last month, and got a little drunk and went on down in the L train and drew a smiley face on the wall and was promptly handcuffed by the fuzz! Here is why New York City's War on Art will simply never be a success:

1. Your arrests just give the artists mad props where they live, in the streets!

Staff at the gallery declined comment yesterday, but a Japanese television crew doing a piece on Nara said the arrest would only give the artist more street cred at home.

"He's going to get big notoriety for this here and in Japan," a crew member said.

2. Your arrests just give the artists mad props in the other place they live, the media! Look at Poster Boy, for fuck's sake. And if Yoshitomo Nara had never been arrested, we never would have had the chance to bring you his delightful work.

3. NYC could be making some money off this!

The offending piece of graffiti has been erased, but given the value of Nara's other works, it likely would have been valuable, Oksenhendler said.

"It probably would have been worth ten grand if you or I got our hands on that brick," he said.

Don't be like that store owner who whitewashed the Banksy, Mayor Bloomberg. The value of that one little Yoshitomo Nara scrawl could have paid for a full day's cleaning of the hipster stench of the Bedford Ave. L train station. Do the right thing: legalize crime. [NYP]

Or at least that's what Matyjewicz's friends told the New York Times.

“Poster Boy can be anybody," said Moni Pineda, one of the people behind the event where Matyjewicz was nabbed by the cops.

A guy named Henry — he could be any old random Henry, mind you! — phoned the Times and said Matyjewicz is part of, uh, basically an autonomous collective:

“Henry is one of many individuals who believe in the Poster Boy ‘movement,’ ” the man wrote later on Tuesday in an e-mail message, referring to Mr. Matyjewicz in the third person. “Henry’s part is to do legal artwork while propagating the ideas behind Poster Boy. That’s why it was O.K. for him to take the fall the other night.”He added, “Henry Matyjewicz is innocent.”

Interesting! But it would have be nice of the illegal portion of Poster Boy to do some signature pieces while Matyjewicz was at Rikers Island just to, you know, underline his innocence.  

(Image by Poster Boy)

Even the totally uncool New York Post hops onto the Poster Boy train today, ID'ing him with his government name: "Henry Matyjewicz, 27, of Bushwick, Brooklyn." Why, we remember way back in '08, when we first met PB, before all the fame and cops and paparazzi came into the equation. Those Banksy comparisons may prove to be more accurate than we ever wanted. Let's focus on the good; five newer pieces from Poster Boy's Flickr stream, below:

Poster Boy In Action from ANIMALmagazine on Vimeo.

[Animal NY]

[via Flickr]

[via Flickr]

The New York City Transit campaign was set into motion after a study last year by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer found that 10 percent of women surveyed reported having been sexually abused in the subway and 63 percent claimed to have been sexually harassed.

Stringer recommended a public awareness campaign, which NYC Transit quietly prepared. The agency made it as far as developing mock-ups, which never went to print.

Sources said the agency held off on launching the campaign out of fear it could actually provoke deviant behavior.

I'm thinking the slogan "Rub against me and I'll expose you" is the problem here.

[NYP]

[Flickr via Thighs Wide Shut]