Two weeks ago I wrote on this blog about a tragic accident involving children riding in a taxi in NYC. Sadly, a child was thrown out of a cab from the back seat. The child was on his mother’s lap, but there is no law mandating a child seat in a taxi. Realizing that it was difficult for a parent to carry a car seat for taxi travel, I put the issue out there, and wondered how to get car seats into livery cars.

Well, I am happy to learn that there is a company in NYC. They advertise “child safety seats professionally installed in every vehicle” BINGO!!! Check out the website http://www.kidcarny.com

Hey, I applaud anyone who sees a niche and runs with it!!!

This week we saw a tragic story. Not being a mom myself, I am interested in feedback from parents on this. A family was traveling in a livery cab, when the vehicle was involved in an accident, sending a young child flying out onto the street.

If it were a private car, we could say “that mom was careless and not obeying the law by not having that child in a belted-in child car seat”. But there are no such regulations for children traveling in taxis and livery cabs, and passengers in back seats are never required to wear seat belts. So in “closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-escapes” fashion, the question has arisen as to whether we should impose child-car-seat regulations for taxis and livery cabs. I am interested to find out if there are mothers out there who really do carry car seats with them, when traveling with kids. I would think the majority of these rides are short-distance hops, but an accident can happen anytime and anywhere, and even while standing still.

I am curious to hear from parents, grandparents, and other caregivers of young children who regularly travel in taxis and livery cabs.

l a cab or livery service vehicle

Today I had a really fucking awesome day. It started in sunny Florida as I headed to the airport for a 12:30 flight to La Guardia. After checking in and heading through security at about 11, I found that the flight was a little delayed. They boarded us around 1:30, and then deplaned us an hour later because of air traffic control delays here in NYC. I get it - it was raining all day. It happens. I occupied myself by listening to my fellow passengers’ theories on how the airlines are all in a conspiracy to make us late for stuff. We finally took off around 6 PM and arrived at La Guardia at 8:20 or so.

I had a reservation with the LimoRes car service (formerly Crown Limo) since I was traveling for business. The normal procedure is to call them when you arrive at the airport and they’ll dispatch your assigned car to you. I called, and they told me they couldn’t get a car to me for about 20-30 minutes, because they were delayed overall due to the rain. I’ve dealt with them before during a snowstorm - they told me it would be 30 minutes twice and then finally told me they couldn’t tell me when the car would be there and I should seek alternate transportation. I figured that would be the case again and called my trusty fiance to come get me - but didn’t cancel the car just yet. I called them again 40 minutes after my first call and, sure enough, they told me they couldn’t have a car to me for another 30 minutes. I’m glad I had a backup plan, but I need to look into some alternate options since I travel a lot.

First, a tip - the taxi line outside Terminal B arrivals, on the American end (near concourse D) had about 100 people in it and maybe 4 or 5 taxis showing up every 10 minutes or so. The one around the corner past the end of the terminal had maybe 20 people in it and a friggin’ huge line of taxis waiting to pick people up. I’ve seen this before but forgot this time. Duly noted.

Second, a question - can you recommend a car service that doesn’t suck? LimoRes is fine most of the time, but they’ve had billing errors and scheduling problems before, and I’ve used Dial 7 and Carmel and both of them are kinda dickish too. Any experiences? Or do you find that buses from La Guardia work best? Tell me what works best for you!

You are missing out on some things by not living Pittsburgh.There are some very cool things and a lot of cool people who are a little more free to pursue their personal creativity.

One of them is an artist named Tom Sarver, who was able to convince a famous center for installation art, called the Mattress Factory to give him a house, in which he has created an ever evolving personal world, that is part art studio, part installation and part museum–or sort of a deconstruction of formal museums. The Tom Museum is both cute and powerfully subversive.

Tom’s background is in puppetry and performance projects are always a big part of what the place is about. The project was originally funded for a year and though it’s now lived beyond that, it won’t last forever. At least one NY blogger liked his visit there.

I hope to have a few works by Tom Sarver in the space I’m renting in the East Village in November.

Copyrights Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press via NYTimes.com

Commuters hitting the subway stations in Brooklyn Queens and the Bronx were taken aback to learn that the subway system has been crippled due to the torrential downpour last night.

As of 7 a.m., the MTA was reporting no R Train subway service between the Canal Street Station and the DeKalb Avenue Station due to flooding at the Lawrence Street and the Canal Street Stations.

Due to flooding at the Times Square-42nd Street Station, shuttle service was unavailable between Grand Central-42nd Street Station and the Times Square-42nd Street Station. [link]

Most major lines are out in some or the other section of their route.

The MTA website was inundated with people trying to get the latest updates. Due to the overload their website went down at 8:09 am.

Traffic is a nightmare in the boroughs leading to the bridges to get into Manhattan. From my home in Clinton Hill it was a parking lot scenario on all streets leading upto the Manhattan Bridge. Thank God for my motorcycle which allowed me to zip past cars.

Surprisingly the traffic in the city is better than normal. This would be a wonderful case study for the congestion pricing initiative.

So, if you are at office wondering where your colleagues are, now you know

Yesterday a 40-year-old bridge in the Minneapolis area collapsed during rush hour. You had to be sleeping from yesterday afternoon until now, to not know about this. Please join me in prayer for those people and their families who died or were injured in this tragedy.

I know you can’t live life worrying about these things. But nevertheless, it can’t stop you from thinking about our bridges and tunnels in NYC. I heard that there are 39 bridges in NYC, and I count two tunnels within NYC, and two going out from Manhattan to New Jersey. So going over bridges or through tunnels is an unavoidable reality, especially for Manhattanites, who have to over or under water every time they leave or enter Manhattan, Those who feel they avoid the outer boroughs, have to think of all the times they go to/through N.Jersey, or out to the Hamptons. There are people who live in Queens and only go to Long Island, Sadly, I know some of these people. But for the other 90+percent of us, the bridges and tunnels we use are way more than 40 years old. So we continue to put our faith in the MTA and TBTA to regularly inspect and maintain our river crossings.

Travel and Leisure just released their 2007 “World’s Best Awards”, ranking the best cities, hotels, airlines, cruises, etc. worldwide. Here’s a breakdown of the Top 10 Cities:

1. Florence
2. Buenos Aires
3. Bangkok
4. Rome
5. Sydney
6. New York
7. Udaipur, India
8. Istanbul
9. San Francisco
10. Cape Town

New York is up two slots from our ranking last year as #8, a testament to the fact that the world knows just how awesome this city is!

I’m positively dismayed to have only visited two of the cities on this list (the other being San Francisco) That will need to be rectified stat–as soon as I can get the taste of my last international flight out of my mouth.

Also interesting to note, only two other cities on this list currently have Metblog sites, Bangkok and San Francisco.

Check out T&L’s take on what makes our city so list-worthy. Also, make sure to check out their Top 50 NYC restaurants.

If you’ve been to any other cities on the top 10 list, how do you feel NYC stacks up against them?

Travel and Leisure World’s Best Awards 2007 [via Gridskipper]

Photo: New York at Night [Achibase.net]

Sewage flows from a toilet on Continental Airlines flight 1970 from Amsterdarm to New Jersey on Thursday, June 14, 2007. Photo by Collin Brock.

If you are just finding your way to this story, please note that there is a now a dedicated blog about Continental Flight 71 / 1970 from Newark to Amterdam called Poop on a Plane

DIGG THIS STORY!

I don’t normally cross post things from my personal site, but seeing as this story is now the front page on the Drudge Report and has been picked up by Seattle news, I figured it was worth tossing into the NYC new arena.

On Wednesday June 13th at around 2:00 pm my boyfriend and I boarded Continental flight 71 from Amsterdam to Newark along with about 200 other passengers. Despite that fact that the flight was only scheduled to be 8 hours, it wasn’t until 32 hours later that we arrived in New Jersey. What happened in between is a tale of massive mismanagement, awful customer service and downright inhumane, unsafe and unsanitary conditions. This was a massive clusterfuck on Continental’s part–a screw up of Jet-Blue proportions; maybe even worse. It’s long and drawn out, just like the actual ordeal itself, and it goes a little something like this:
(more…)

That is, at least in terms of Brazil’s GDP. The creators of this interesting map have calculated the “GDP” of each of the fifty States, and renamed them with the names of countries that compare economically. Fun!

In what is surely going to become a political hot-potato, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going ahead full steam with his plan to decongest Manhattan by introducing congestion pricing.

The NYTimes ran a big article yesterday on this topic and covered the spectrum of viewpoints on this issue.

Mayor Bloomberg’s fast-advancing plan to charge drivers $8 to drive in the most congested parts of Manhattan may seem geared mostly toward the suburbanites whom many blame for Manhattan’s perpetually snarled weekday traffic.

Personally I am not sure if I do agree with the plan in its implementation, however good it be in concept.

Under the plan, cars would pay $8 and trucks $21 to enter Manhattan below 86th Street between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays.

If I live in Manhattan below 60th street, I should be able to drive around as I see fit. However in the mayor’s plan I will not be able to do so. I will be charged a certain amount of money to even move my car to the other side of the street for alternate side street cleaning.

They plan to monitor this by putting cameras all over the city at intersections and then software will convert images of license plates into invoices that you will receive by email for all the times you drove the car.

Privacy issues aside, I think this is crazy. It is completely unfair to be charged to drive inside the city if you are already inside, or are a resident. Yes by all means charge those who drive in from outside. But not those who live and call the island their home.

I hope the plan gets modified and they figure out a better way to enforce this.

Otherwise, I am getting a vendor license and will start selling this. And makes lots of money.