U.S. Department of Transportation

Here's a statement from the city's Transportation Department explaining why that $4 million traffic-easing plan that was supposed to be completed in downtown Brooklyn is not finished yet.

"Capital work was delayed because the construction was more complicated than initially anticipated. Preliminary plans for all 250 recommended neckdowns were completed by DOT in March 2005, but underground utility issues led to the need for more complex designs. The project has been divided into two phases to be handled by the Department of Design and Construction. The first phase, in the capital plan for fiscal year 2008, is fully funded at $5 million and includes the construction of neckdowns at 101 locations at 43 intersections."

-- Azi Paybarah

She weathered the Staten Island Ferry storm, only to resign to.... work for CUNY.

The Mayor's statement after the jump.  read more »

- Matthew Schuerman

Yesterday we ran an item about the mysterious appearance of traffic-strips--the devices that count vehicular traffic--on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, the neighborhood where residents have been agitating for traffic-calming measures from the Department of Transportation, to no avail. Careful readers will remember that a woman was killed last month by a wayward van allegedly coming from the parking lot of the nearby newly opened Fairway grocery store.
We reported that the D.O.T. was not conducting a traffic study; we now retract that: According to a spokeswoman for the D.O.T., a study is indeed going on right now. The D.O.T. is conducting the study for the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, but not for traffic calming. That will still have to wait till fall. The D.O.T. spokeswoman said that the Greenway study is being done now because pedestrian and bicycle usage is up in these months; in the fall, when vehicular traffic is up, another study will be conducted to figure out how not to slaughter pedestrians.
-Matthew Grace

A reader writes in to note today's obituary for Anthony Ameruso, transportation commissioner under Ed Koch. Ameruso passed away in April, although his death was not announced at that time.

The Times writes:

In January 1986, Mr. Ameruso was forced from his job at the Department of Transportation after the authorities uncovered an extortion and bribery scandal at the Parking Violations Bureau, which was part of the department.

There was no evidence tying Mr. Ameruso to that scandal, but in December 1986, he was charged with perjury for failing to disclose his financial interest in a New Jersey company, Chief Realty, that did business with a contractor that won a city permit to provide ferry service.

—Nicole Brydson

Here's an interesting little sidelight to the DOT bid-rigging story:

Santo Petrocelli and Santo Petrocelli Jr., both listed as employees of Petrocelli Electric (the company accused of defraudnig the Department of Transportation) contributed a total of $4000 to Chuck Schumer, the husband of the commissioner of that department, in December, 2002.

He returned the money (the FEC has him returning twice what he was given, which seems likely to be a typo of some sort) the next year.

Schumer spokeswoman Risa Heller says the donations were returned for "administrative" reasons: "They never indicated whether it was for the primary or the general election. [The campaign] sent the checks back for clarification and they were never sent back again."

I wrote yesterday that the bid-rigging scandal is a "huge black eye" for the Department of Transportation, which was perhaps premature. The details of the case will bear on that.

Yesterday, the Bloomberg administration managed to get into Channel 4's second story that this was a joint investigation with the FBI and the Department of Investigations which put out a 6:17 p.m. press release calling the investigation "longstanding."

The best I could determine from a source familiar with the matter is that "longstanding" means "years." Unclear how many.

Channel 4 reported that the scam may go back to the late years of the Giuliani administration. In the best case for Bloomberg, the fraud was suspected in, say, 2000 or 2001, and was only allowed to continue for the authorities to gather evidence. In the worst, "years" means "two years," and the city was ripped off for half a decade before the feds caught on.

The question is whether it's fair to (partially) blame the victim, DOT, here. Is the apparent situation, in which DOT relies entirely on two contractors for street lighting, and is ripped off by them, the sort of thing that could have happened just as easily in the private sector? Or is it a function of, at the very best, shoddy oversight and a relaxed attitude toward public money? We'll find out.

Channel 4's very well-sourced Jonathan Dienst(the same guy who had last fall's terror warning story) laid out the story behind the Central Labor Council raid just now, which appears to have focused on Council president Brian McLaughlin and a set of electrical contractors who -- Diesnt reports -- allegedly conspired with him to rip off the Department of Transportation.

The FBI's "Operation City Lights," according to the report (and Dienst had cameras in place at three separate raids) targeted McLaughlin's district office as well as the Labor Council's headquarters.

It sounds like an old-time bid-rigging scam: The suggestion is that electrical contractors divvied up neighborhoods, setting "low-bids" in advance, with other contractors deliberately bidding too high on street light contracts. McLaughlin was allegedly compensated with cash, an American Express card, and the installation of his alarm system.

McLaughlin, it's worth noting, came up as an electrical worker.

Also: Another huge black eye for the city's Department of Transportation.

Last night at Community Board 3's traffic and transportation committee meeting, the issue on everybody's mind was whether to convert Avenue B into a one-way street. As it stands now, residents and business owners (with the possible exception of nightclub owners; nary a one showed up at the meeting) are fed up with traffic and nightlife-fueled problems in the 'hood.

Reactions to the proposal were mixed. Most people were worried that the character of the neighborhood would be changed beyond recognition--from the quaint village-y "Main Street" it resembles now to a thoroughfare-bisected 14-block stretch that cars would use to zoom up to 14th Street from the Billyburg Bridge (or vice versa, depending on the direction of the road).

Representatives from both the Ninth Precinct and the Department of Transportation attended the meeting, but in an advisory capacity; neither wanted to advocate, for now, a change.

According to district manager Susan Stetzer, the D.O.T. will now meet with the Police Department to try to come up with a solution to the traffic on Avenue B, and the D.O.T. will come back to the board with its suggestions.  read more »

There was consensus, though, on one issue: the need to stop approving liquor licenses for new restaurants and bars in the nightclub-oversaturated area. The first big battle is at the State Liquor Authority hearing for EU, a new club that's due to open at 235 East Fourth Street, at the corner of Avenue B, which is ground zero for traffic and noise problems according area residents. Mr. Crane and Ms. Stetzer implored everyone to show up en masse to get the S.L.A. to deny the license at the hearing, which will be on Dec. 13 at 317 Lenox Avenue (at 126th Street), fourth floor, at 11 a.m.

-Matthew Grace

As anyone who lives or works near Union Square Park can attest, cars and pedestrians—especiall  read more »

As anyone who lives or works near Union Square Park can attest, cars and pedestrians—especially at  read more »

So up in Riverdale -- look, things get slow in Riverdale sometimes -- there's quite a bit of amused chatter about the service Freddy's been getting from the Department of Transportation.

The city is repaving Palisade Avenue and Kappock Street, which intersect "right on the doorstep" of Freddy's coop, a Bronx-based reader writes. (Well, not far from the doorstep; he lives on Palisade.)  read more »

Killing him with kindness, apparently.

A city plan to remake the area around the cube sculpture at Astor Place moved into its infancy on th  read more »

We learned outside City Hall today that Molly Watkins, the longtime spokeswoman for the Campaign Finance Board and, well, not so longtime spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation, is now working with the Hillary types over at the Glover Park Group.

Our baseless Clinton conspiracy theory of the day (we're a blog, after all): Hillary's husband will be relying on Molly's expertise when he makes his late entrance into the Mayor's race.  read more »

We wish.

Another day, another clumsy contractor. Alan Hevesi's auditors issued a report today that Grace Industries, one of the city's largest heavy construction companies, which has worked on the World Trade Center recovery project, the Queensborough Bridge and plenty of other municipal projects, overbilled the state Department of Transportation for $3 million on the West Side Highway reconstruction. The audit found that it was a two-way street when it came to irregularities on the project. In addition to the company's inappropriate actions, charging the state triple the appropriate amount for their workers' unemployment insurance and double the rate for equipment costs, the DOT's engineer-in-chief was cited for preparing false certification and payment requests for timber sheeting and rodent control. Last April, Hevesi's office completed a draft audit of the company's overbilling and sent it to the state DOT for response. Two months earlier, on February 13, 2004, the timing of which may raise some eyebrows, the company's president, Richard A. Grace, contributed $1,000 to Hevesi's campaign.  read more »

Enraged Double-Parkers Take On Ticket-Writing D.O.T.  read more »

Only the Deputy Commissioner for Traffic and the city's Transportation Commissioner, Iris Weinshall,  read more »

Yasir Arafat Way? Denied. Gretchen Dykstra Way? Approved.Alhaja Kudirat Abiola Corner?  read more »