Recent Stories
Recent Stories / July 11, 2005

Week of July 11, 2005

7/15/05

Culture at Ground Zero
Officials will take "one last look" at moving the cultural buildings planned for Ground Zero off the site, John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said yesterday. The announcement is a result of an increasingly vocal campaign mounted by some 9/11 families who say the planned International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center seem to be preparing irrelevant, offensive and anti-American exhibits. Whitehead said there was little chance the buildings would be moved, though, citing the Ground Zero master plan's call for a cultural complex on the site. He criticized the families for spreading misrepresentations about the museums.

7/14/05

Transportation Spending Plan
A state board approved a five-year plan for billions of dollars in transportation projects and will ask voters to approve a portion of the plan on the ballot in November. The four-member panel, the Capital Program Review Board, unanimously approved a large chunk of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's plan for $21 billion worth of construction and repair projects. And it allowed the Transportation Bond Act, which would pay for $2.9 billion worth of borrowing, to go before voters on the General Election ballot. Half of the bond act money would help pay for projects like the Second Avenue subway, a connection between the Long Island Rail Road and Grand Central Terminal, and a rail link from Lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport. A similar transportation initiative was defeated by voters in 2000.

7/13/05

WTC Security Center
The U.S. Department of Transportation yesterday awarded $478 million to the Port Authority of New York and Jersey to build a security center at the World Trade Center site, redirecting funds that had been earmarked for a now-abandoned tunnel project along the site's western edge. The security complex will provide a place where vehicles can be screened before entering any of the buildings planned for the 16-acre site, which includes a memorial to the victims of the trade center attacks and the Freedom Tower. The $478 million for the center is part of an overall $899 million of transportation funding the federal agency announced.

For details, see City Hall News.

7/12/05

Security Debated
The bombings in London last week continue to play out in New York with a debate over whether the city has been doing enough. An article in the Times pointed to a collaboration between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the United States Army "to help develop novel security measures for the New York City transit system" that was abandoned several years ago, an illustration of why the MTA has been so slow in "hardening the transit system against terror threats." Stung by such criticism, the MTA took reporters on a tour of Grand Central Terminal to show them how it is "wired with sensors to sniff out deadly biological and chemical agents," the Post reports.

Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Bloomberg in effect ordered cell phones to be re-enabled in car tunnels underneath the East River, but they remain disconnected in the tunnels under the Hudson River. (Law enforcement officers are investigating whether cell phones were used as timers in London, as they were last year in the attacks on Madrid's commuter railroad that killed 200.) Given these concerns, Newsday reports, a plan to consider wiring underground subway stations for cellular phone use is unlikely to be approved when it comes up for discussion before the MTA later this month. For details on these stories, see City Hall News

Flunked
Nearly 1,000 public-school teachers have been given failing grades on their report cards this year, a 46 percent jump over last year, in response to Chancellor Joel Klein's directive to weed out incompetents. For details, see City Hall News.

7/11/05

Subway Security
With London trying to return to normal after last week's subway and bus bombings, politicians and security experts continue to express concern about security in New York City's subways. Some criticized the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for not doing more to make the transit system safer. The agency has spent only about $30 million of the almost $600 million it said in 2002 it would use to make subways, buses and bridges more secure. "Clearly, the MTA has to ratchet up the pace of increasing security on our subway system," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sunday. An MTA spokesperson said the agency will have plans for spending $400 million on security by the end of the year. In the meantime, U.S. transit systems remain on orange alert, the city has stepped up security on subways, and authorities have blocked cell phone signals in the four vehicle tunnels serving Manhattan.

For more see, the New York Times and Newsday

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