Owed to the LIRR (Not a Typo)

Homeward Bound?

Not on this railroad!

(Apologies to Simon & Garfunkle)

I’m sittin in the railway station

Got my monthly to my destination

But they canceled every train

The same old LIRR refrain

And ticket prices on the rise

All we get are tons of lies

Railroad blues

We’re singing railroad blues

Late, all the trains are late now

Great will we get home now how

Please someone come and fix this God awful railroad

Tonight we’ll hear the same old song

That something, somewhere has gone wrong

Frustration brews among us all

But no one cares; who can we call

Standing waiting dead on our feet

A train pulls in without one seat

Railroad blues

We’re singing railroad blues

Late, all the trains are late now

Great will we get home now how

Please someone come and fix this God awful railroad

Perhaps I’ll take my car to work

I’ll sit in traffic like a jerk

Pollution filling up the air

But Congress and big oil don’t care

To pay for gas I need two jobs

All due to those damn Railroad slobs!

 

Railroad blues

We’re singing railroad blues

Late, all the trains are late now

Great will we get home now how

Please someone come and fix this God awful railroad!

Corporate Baggage

Airlines will make around $3B more this year charging for bags. This is a revenue stream that did not exist before deregulation of the industry and another example of a ‘BWC’ fee. That stands for my ‘Because We Can’ invention that covers every raise or surcharge or rate increase the public is forced to endure while the raisers of those costs reap ever increasing profits for ever decreasing services merely, well because they can.  Who's going to stop them?

Gold Mine for Airlines

I don’t have the exact figure on how much the airlines pay baggage handlers whose numbers have dwindled due to corporate cost analyses but I am willing to bet they don’t share in the windfall.
The airlines will say that the increase in fuel costs caused their increase in fees but the numbers don’t completely add up and even if they did why hide the fare increase?

Telling a traveler that he has to pay extra to carry some luggage is like selling a car and then asking the buyer if he’d like a steering wheel with his purchase.

But airlines are not the only culprit in this corporate scheme to milk humans out of every remaining penny they have.

Anyone alive on Long Island is well aware of the inept Long Island Rail Road and it's ever increasing fares to complement their ever decreasing level of service or competence.

Note that the railroad considers its trains to be on time if they are only 5.9 minutes late!
Most riders would not 5.9 minutes late as on-time but rather a miracle!

But I digress.

A quick check into the business world reveals that most corporations have amassed unprecedented and record profits; cash cushions of nearly unimaginable amounts all while claiming that the current administration in DC has left them with a terrible feeling of uncertainty that is causing them to NOT hire new workers.

Does not knowing if you will triple your profits rather than merely doubling them next year constitute an uncertainty?

This absurd rationalization pervades every corner of every industry and threatens to eradicate the middle class completely.

But while I and many others write about the path we’re on nobody seems to have a solution.

One reason is that a major political party doesn't see the above AS a problem to be fixed.

The Republicans feel that the business world and the banks in particular should not be regulated at all, or if so we should allow them to self regulate.

Millions of potholes nationwide

Sounds like Mr. Romney’s call for illegal aliens to self-deport and equally as naive.

One possible solution to the job loss in America is right under our noses or rather under our feet.

Suddenly not an uncommon thing

Our nation’s infrastructure (a word former President Bush had trouble even saying) is crumbling. A no-brainer (The fix, not him although...) would be to start hiring workers nation-wide to save our streets, and highways, and bridges, and on and on.

Disaster on the clock!

The amount of architects and planners alone would take a chunk out of the unemployment numbers and therein is the problem.

Allowing anything to help the economy while the right wing controls the purse strings of the House and President Obama is still in office is anathema.

To paraphrase Senator McJowls, aka Mitch McConnell, an elected official sworn to help America in return for a huge undeserved salary; free health care; retirement funds for himself and family and exceptional perks far beyond his worth, “We simply cannot give this pretender a win.”

So there goes infrastructure repair!

And with it any hope of fixing America.

But I am not just talking about the roads anymore.  Now I speak of the entire experiment that is America.

One political party gets their marching orders only from the wealthiest of the country. They have now brazenly taken to fixing elections so even when the masses rise up against their terroristic-like tactics it will not be enough since their votes will not be counted.

And many on the right feel that is as it should be.  "The poor made their own beds and chose to be poor so their votes should not count!"

Never happen till Congress
finds out how to give
Exxon the profits

It is the ruling class that will decide when and where workers will be hired and what those workers should do.

There are many public works programs and ideas such as alternative energy as a way to ensure that the world as we know it will still exist in 50 years that are being blocked by the ruling class and their puppets in Congress.

They will not give in unless and until we bow to their superior intellect and allow them to reap any profits from any new industry.
We are now used to paying for luggage when we fly but until we divest ourselves of the evil and brain-dead, dead weight baggage in Congress we will never get anywhere!

I hope this is not just a
Pie in the Sky.

We've Been Railroaded Again!

The Long Island Rail Road had to suspend service again during the thunderstorm that hit us last week.

Why?

What was different about this suspension?

We can't get answers just yet because, well uh, the brain trust at the Railroad hasn't had enough time to come up with a good story.

The LIRR says it needs time to figure out what went wrong with their $56M new system THAT WE THE RIDERS PAID FOR.

Well here’s a clue – YOU DO NOT PUT THE ELECTRONIC BRAINS OF YOUR RAILROAD INSIDE A METAL HUT AND EXPECT LIGHTNING NOT TO HIT IT!

For years those of us on Long Island have been complaining about how inept the LIRR management is but we were wrong. We never realized the full extent of management’s stupidity.

After our rail system has been knocked out by repeated lightning strikes through the years wouldn’t it be a simple thing to place key elements of any expensive and new one underground?

LIRR - On the wrong track for years!

Riders of the inept rail can now expect to pay more for improvements that will be necessitated by this latest round of poor planning.

Sound familiar?

We in New York are used to idiocy when it comes to planning of that kind.

Remember the moronic move by America’s Mayor Rudolpho Giuliani placing the bombed out NYC command center back in the WTC after that first attack?  This was done even though the towers were known to be a target of terrorists the world over?

Who suggested the Mayor do so, his three advisors, Larry Curly & Moe?

We do not need a commission to find out what went wrong with the LIRR; all we need is a list of the people in charge.

LIRR ala Carte

Imagine going into a fine restaurant and ordering a 5 course meal only to be told that you must pay in advance and use a separate method of payment for each course.
Now imagine that restaurant is hurting for business, not really a stretch since that policy alone would lose quite a few patrons.
No I am not talking about the Seinfeld Soup Nazi but rather about Long Island's own MTM - mass transit moron, the Long Island Rail Road.
Once again the Metropolitan Transit Authority has shown how anti-cunsumer their operation is with their latest ruling against their most loyal of rider, the "Mail & Ride" monthly ticket purchaser.
If you are lucky enough to still have a job while Congress works on far more important issues such as how to get re-elected and help billionaires out with tax breaks then you know how expensive a monthly ticket is.
If you live in "Zone 3" for example you are charged $254 per month for the pleasure of waiting for an overcrowded, dirty, and late train every day.
But if you are also working for a forward thinking considerate employer you may be enrolled in the 'TransitChek" program which allows you to have up to $230 of pre-tax dollars per month deducted from your salary to pay for a portion of your commute.
Mind you the money is yours but can only be used for purchasing commutation so unless you buy a railroad ticket it's useless.
So how does one pay the extra amount above the $230?
Well until this month all you had to do was drop off the vouchers in a Mail&Ride envelope at Penn Station and the balance owed would be taken from a credit card you had on file with them. 
But that was way too easy for the customer so a policy change was necessary!
Now you have to go on-line and register the TransitChek card to deposit the amount into your account by the 23rd or 24th of every month and immediately mail a check for the balance.  The check must get to the Gods of the LIRR before the first of the month or your ticket will be invalidated!!!
Unlike restaurants who routinely split a bill and charge you and a friend half the tab the LIRR has not figured out how to allow the customer to use 2 credit cards for the same transaction.
And for their ineptitude you are punished!
But wait, it gets even better if you have $230 taken out of your salary for the month and you live in a less expensive zone or go on vacation and have too much money on the card.
If you do not prepare in advance you will be left with a balance on the card with no way to use it!
The railroad's response is an old one, use it or lose it!
Such compassion!
The bottom line is this: Do what the LIRR says, the way the LIRR says, and when the LIRR says or, wait for it - NO TICKET FOR YOU!

Open Letter to LIRR

The Long Island Rail Road is having trouble figuring out why their ridership is down.

What with oil and gas prices in the stratosphere they wonder why more people are getting in their cars and driving to work rather than use their mass transit rail service.

They scratch their empty heads as they search for ways to fill the ever increasing revenue gap.

And speaking of gaps notice how management fixed the physical gap problem.  For those of you lucky enough to not use the LIRR the gap between the trains doors and the platform is terribly wide at many stations.  Management now has recorded announcements telling riders to step over the gap.  (Much cheaper than actually fixing the problem.)

So let me see if I can help these ostrich types of our Metropolitan Transit Authority with a few suggestions.

First and foremost we must examine their ability to run a reliable and trustworthy business.

When people tell their mortgage company they will pay on time they are expected to do so.  The bank will not accept 5 or 6 days late as on time and will charge dearly for the tardy behavior!

The LIRR seems to consider anything up to 6 minutes late AS ON TIME!

They even have the nerve to boast on-time service based on this faulty premise.

As for overall service, when it rains somewhere in the tri-state area riders are hit with immediate delays, cancellations and disruptions.

Again the LIRR takes no blame claiming rather that the weather is an act of God.

One wonders if they have ever hear of contingency plans?

BREAKING NEWS – THERE WILL BE SNOW THIS WINTER!

They constantly ask riders to keep the trains clean and keep their feet off the seats.  Frankly most trains are so filthy to begin with riders don’t even like putting their butts on the seat.

Enter at own risk

Now I agree that some of the blame for the filthy condition of railroad cars must go to the ridership but people sense conditions when they enter the cars and tend to act accordingly.

But the final nail in what should be managements coffin is their constant indifferent stupidity.

They act as though customers are mindless sheep and will do whatever they are told to do.

It’s not bad enough that their mentality forces them to raise rates when ridership is down in order to continue making money but they have made it impossible for riders to exist!

Long Island is comprised mainly of large middle class working communities.  The people in these communities who still have jobs are making less money than before as business owners see the high unemployment rate as an excuse to pay lower wages.

So with less cash in their pockets workers are faced with the new LIRR policies that force them to rethink their commutation plans.

Many of the new regulations for LIRR tickets is not only bad business but it borders on absolute insanity!

Tickets now have very short expiration dates from time of purchase.  If you buy it today in anticipation of travelling in two weeks you lose out completely as the ticket will no longer be accepted.

The opposite to that way of thinking may be seen at the US Postal Service.

The Post Office sells stamps they hope people will collect and keep and never use. But those stamps are good forever at face value so if a collector decides to use them he will pay the difference and move on. The Postal Service makes a nice profit with that strategy and keeps its customers happy.

Back at the 'caveat emptor' LIRR refunds for accidentally purchased wrong tickets now cost more than the tickets themselves.

In other words if you plan ahead you are screwed.  But if you do not plan ahead and must purchase your ticket on the train you had better be carrying enough cash to make a mugger’s eyes light up!

The bottom line is simply this, for some reason the LIRR management feels that the best way to maintain the railroad is to treat the customer like dirt and continue to charge them more for it!

Take responsibility and seek out ways to actually make the railroad better.

Fight FOR ridership not against.

Unfortunately my voice is not important to these well to do anti-social types and rates will most assuredly rise in the coming years as those leaders continue to scratch their aforementioned collective empty heads over lost revenue.

Should they keep on their current course I foresee a time in the not so distant future when the seven remaining customers are paying $50,000 each for one way off-peak tickets purchased three minutes in advance at a ticket machine that only accepts cash.

Oh, and they needn’t rush – because the train will be on-time.

MTA - Lost Their Way

It’s going on a week since our latest weather event on Long Island.  Many of our streets are still dangerously slippery with snow banks blocking parking spots or passing lanes for that matter.

Parking lots in most of the shopping malls are nearly clear but the Long Island Railroad has not finished their work.

Well, that last part is not exactly true.  The LIRR, part of the MTA has finished what they set out to do, raise fares!  (In case you are not from around here - the two acronyms are supposed to stand for the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Long Island Rail Road.)

With the memory of yet another terribly amateurish attempt at running ‘on or near’ schedule still fresh in the minds of the riders the LIRR has just raised the cost to use their service.

Service?

Is it fair to call one word an oxymoron?

For the LIRR "on time" means being less than 6 minutes late!  Imagine telling your bank you were only $6 short on your mortgage payment!!!

What nerve these arrogant bastards have!

But they have not just raised the fares; they have completely canceled trains and combined others on their schedule and basically lowered the expectation of fairness system wide.

If you'd like to see how they don’t care one bit about their customers you need only look at the list of their new surcharges and fees.

For example if you accidentally purchase a wrong ticket for let’s say $6 and wish to return it you will get your money back LESS A $10 SERVICE FEE!

In other words the great folks at the LIRR will take your ticket back IF YOU PAY THEM $4!!!

Oh, and if you wish to buy a couple of extra tickets because it’s a pain to wait on line at the last second you now have only 1 week to use them before they expire!

And don’t even think about buying a ticket while on the train unless you have access to a home equity line of credit and can pass a Homeland Security background check!!!

While there are many more fees and service charges that could make a normal commuter’s blood boil we must still remember that the LIRR is part of the MTA which has added its own set of ‘screw you’ fees.

If you wish to have a Metro Card in order to ride the subways plan on keeping it forever.  And leave that valuable piece of paper in the will for your children.

The MTA, (Going Their Way – Not Yours) is now charging an extra dollar for new cards claiming that the tiny bits of nothing cost too much to print and are not environmentally friendly!

As if the MTA EVER gave a rat’s ass about the environment!

The bottom line is simply if you live on Long Island the experiment is on to see how much can be stolen from your wallets before you are forced to drive everywhere.

And with the price of gas about to top $4 per gallon (it’s already averaging $3.50) that plays right into the hands of George W Bush’s friends, the Saudis.

The consumer really has only one way to show his or her dissatisfaction with something, boycott.

Unfortunately in this case it is very hard to get around without using one of the MTA’s services.  So the next best solution is to leave Long Island; New York City; and New York State altogether (Leslie Nielson would now be waiting for all of you to repeat that last part so…)

The acronym at the top can now be explained to mean Much Too Arrogant!  And its subsidiary stands for Life Is Really Rough here.

So as much of Long Island grays the easy life of ‘early bird’ specials and hanging chads beckons.  And it’s only a matter of time before those of us with any brains and a small amount of pocket change leave this overly-expensive over-taxed under-funded wasteland.

Eventually only migrant workers cleaning the pools and trimming the summer lawns of the uber wealthy in the Hamptons will remain.

News to Ponder - Pt I

I have much on my alleged mind and that is the main reason for the following post.  But the ulterior motive is that I can no longer stand to see the photo of that incredibly ugly person on the post below this one.  Aside from her looks being repulsive she is a terrible human being (making an assumption there) and I don't wish to scare away any readers.
There are too many stories to place on one post and although I won't make them long I will separate them into two posts.
You may follow up on any tidbit I place herewith by "googling" for more or where I add a link to the actual story if you so desire.  I just couldn't believe what I was reading in the news today and all the injustice finally screamed to be let out to breath.  So take a deep breath and read on.
PART I:
Grave robbers struck in East Farmingdale stealing the corpse of an Italian lady dead since 1998.  Seriously?  What, there aren't enough brain dead people around so you have to disturb a grave?  Sick bastards!
NY Governor Paterson has been found to have received tickets to a World Series game without reporting it or paying for them.  OH MY GOD! Quick, get out the pitchforks!  I realize no elected official should accept gifts from potential recipients of  favors later but is this the issue to stop the presses on?  Do we have to waste so much time and effort and money on this one?  Do we not have more pressing problems perhaps?  Such as:
Lindsay Lohan and mom will be getting a radio show on 105.3 FM.  This proves that if you are totally untalented, ugly, stupid, and a low-life trash who continually acts poorly you can strike it rich!  So mark your calendars for some time later this year to carry a radio while eating your big mac and strolling the aisles at Wal*Mart.
Indians refuse to collect the lawful and legal tax on cigarettes sold to non-tribal buyers.  The amount lost to NYS amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.  A perfect solution would be to charge the tribes the total amount of sales tax that would be collected on all the cigarettes they buy then offering them a rebate of that sales tax upon delivery of audited proof of sales to tribal members.  A bit cumbersome but the only way to keep the peace without having to smoke anything!
The LIRR states that the cost of the recent track fire will be incredibly high.  Does the railroad not have insurance against this sort of accident?  Are we to expect to see the ticket prices go up due to their inept handling of the rails? It is bad enough that their workers are among the highest paid - AFTER they retire but do we have to foot the bill every time they do something wrong?
American Airlines decries a $24M fine for flying unsafe planes and not telling anyone about it.  They cancelled hundreds of flights while they kept the lid on the problem.  In trying to get out of paying the fine spokesman Tim Smith said, "These events happened more than two years ago..."  Well there you have it if you can stall and obfuscate long enough you can get away with anything.  (It seems as though American Air is taking a page out of the Republican's playbook!)

Taken for a Ride

When a passenger enters onto a Long Island Railroad (LIRR) car he is tacitly agreeing to pay for the service he is about to receive.  If he cannot offer a ticket upon request by the conductor he could be subject to fine and imprisonment for theft of services.

Photo credit: Newsday File, Alejandra Villa
MTA workers work on LIRR equipment
at the Hillside facility. (March 11, 2010)

The union members who have been gaming a system they helped break by claiming and accepting overtime when none was warranted or documented are also stealing.  Their supervisors who at the very least have been looking the other way aided and abetted the crime.

These workers are as guilty of theft as are the un-ticketed passengers and should be subject to the same legal scrutiny and possible prosecution.

According to an audit of the MTA & LIRR as reported by Newsday nearly 3,300 employees took overtime pay that equaled more than half their yearly salaries!

Making an assumption that one of those average workers was making $80,000 per year (believe it or not a conservative estimate) that would amount to a minimum of $264,000,000 paid out in excessive overtime payments!  The LIRR is claiming as justification to raise fares and lower services a shortfall in the amount of $900 million!  I believe we just found a huge chunk of that shortfall.

And note the theoretical amount of $264 million that was basically stolen from the pockets of Long Islanders is comprised of only those workers whose overtime claims were more than 50% of their yearly salary.  It must be assumed that if all the overtime over-payments were added up the amount would be far greater and possibly enough to forego many of the service cuts or fare increases.

A further investigation found that 77% of the overtime allowed for payment was undocumented and should not have been claimed!

To those who may point out that there is a contract that allows for overtime and it was fairly negotiated between the unions and management I submit that fraud trumps contracts.  And we have precedent for an argument that questions, “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is!”

If further investigation reveals that the smoke is indeed fraud prosecution must be sought.

At a time when so many American workers are being forced to accept 10% salary cuts or join the millions on unemployment and the entire economy is struggling to stay away from the abyss it must be comforting to know that a large chunk of workers in New York are going to be receiving automatic yearly raises in the amount of 4%.

The bottom line is as a result of these findings each and every overtime payment that has been made must be scrutinized.  If it is determined that the overtime was unwarranted or faked the worker must return the amount and face whatever further legal penalties our system decides!  The supervisor who allowed the irregularity must answer for his part in the alleged crime as well.

We pay to keep the MTA and LIRR running not only with our ticket purchases but with our taxes.  We are therefore entitled to know exactly where our money is being spent or thrown away.  And if the accounting shows irregularities those responsible must pay!

The State and Local governments owe that to those of us who have not yet left Long Island but may be forced to do so shortly.

Cost of Leaving - Long Island that is

The Long Island Rail Road made some drastic cuts in service and schedule this week in order to close a huge budget deficit they caused by their own stupidity and horrible management.

Having said that (I hate that phrase) the time has come to attempt the needed fix and the easiest way to start that journey is on the backs of the ridership.

Regardless of which side of the tracks you live on having to fork up more cash for less service can easily derail a formerly good day.

Ultimately when a business of any kind needs to make more money they have two choices, cut costs or raise prices.
However for a service company such as the LIRR doing either goes directly to the bottom line, but doing both is like main-lining.

Luckily the geniuses at the LIRR have not gone whole hog switching over to a pari-mutuel system of charges like they do at another mismanaged government operation, the Off Track Betting Corporation, OTB.

Assuming a one-way ride from Babylon into Manhattan costs the railroad $10,000 (total fiction) and they wish to have a hefty profit of $5,000.  They charge the 1000 passengers on the train $15 each.

Now assume the same trip is made during a less crowded time period and only carries 500 passengers.  The railroad would have to charge each rider $30 to make the same amount.
Of course with my luck I’d be the only jerk on the train and be asked to fork over all $15,000 by myself.

You would sit in the waiting room at your local station waiting for a more crowded ride watching the odds change for an affordable trip into the Big Apple.

But the pricing schedule is far more complicated than that and includes all types of fares even ‘un’ ones.

The other side of the coin is that many of the cuts should have been made years ago.  Train schedules are not written in stone and should be altered with shifting ridership.  Someone at the LIRR was asleep at the switch.

Personally I rode on many trains where the workers outnumbered the passengers.

Of course the trains must get to the other end of the line in order to carry riders back.  The practice known as 'dead-heading' is used by the airlines.  Many trains will therefore be fairly empty but there are always alternatives.

Since they have similar problems the LIRR should take its cue from the Airline industry.  No I don’t want them to start charging for carry-on bags but they should utilize their hub at Jamaica a little better.

Having trains stop and turn around at that active station would create a sort of shuttle into Penn Station that could operate more frequently than the longer rides heading ‘out east.’

Many riders would complain that they had to get up or rather wake up in order to switch at Jamaica but they would get over the inconvenience when they realized the savings.

Before making any cuts the head of a company always says “Nobody wants to see anyone lose their job but…”  That is PC speak for, “We have to fire someone so I can keep making obscene amounts of money.”

Of course without knowing the exact amount of money the top people are pulling in at the LIRR or Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA it is hard to rail against them.  But it is easy to realize that their salaries added to all the perks and benefits and healthcare and retirement incentives they receive make the job a very lucrative and desirable one.

Frankly they’re doing a heck of a job!

So isn’t it time they started to do better?

But the shame is when those at the top make all the wrong decisions it is the loyal workforce and customer that gets thrown under the bus, or train for that matter.

At the end of the day (I hate that phrase also) it is always the little guy that gets the raw deal, the wrong end of the stick, the higher priced ticket.

Cost Cutting Measures for Terrorists

According to the news reports today our government has deciphered on-line chatter and determined that Al Qaeida may be planning a terrorist act on the Long Island Rail Road.
Do they not read the papers? I would say the LIRR personnel are doing a pretty bang up job (sorry about that) themselves without any outside help.
Times are tough for everyone these days. Al and his Qaeida friends should just sit back in their caves and enjoy the chaos without the expense.

(After writing this I learned of the latest cowardly attack by the lower than scum of the Earth so-called terrorists. India was attacked and any human being is upset by that. Obviously the attackers are jealous of and do not like any civilized beings. I trust I did not offend anyone with my flip remarks about the LIRR but if so it was unintentional.)