The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has tasked Jessie Lazarus with overseeing a $12 billion drive to replace New York’s geriatric subway cars and buses, aiming to swap design hand-holding for performance standards and spur fresh competition am…
The protracted nurses’ strike in New York City, now in its 22nd day, saw NYSNA and hospital management at Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore swap revised proposals—unions pushing for a 25% wage hike, management touting generous benefits. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Hospital Center faces heat for allegedly skipping nurses’ healthcare payments—a reminder that contracts, unlike patients, sometimes lapse into critical condition.
Some New York transit advocates—intrepid souls at the Transit Costs Project—suggest we swap Mayor Mamdani’s dream of fare-free buses for a more grandiose, $1-billion-a-year subway buildout, promising 41 new miles of track, 64 stations, and 40,000 affordable homes over four decades. The plan, they say, could wring federal billions, but alas, free rides may remain strictly figurative.
Subway lines, not free buses, should top New York’s transit to-do list, say experts at NYU’s Marron Institute, who argue that $1 billion a year could fund 41 miles of new track and 64 stations—connecting transit deserts, spurring over 160,000 new homes, and perhaps giving Mayor Zohran Mamdani a legacy grander than just slightly brisker buses stuck in Midtown gridlock.
After three fractious weeks that left New York’s Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals short nearly 15,000 nurses, negotiations between union leaders and administrators appear to be yielding progress, with both sides hinting at a deal to end the strike. We cheer the prospect of hospital corridors bustling again—not only with activity, but perhaps even with a touch less shouting.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget now includes a long-floated scheme to force repeat speed-camera offenders—over 3,000 vehicles last year—to install speed-limiting devices, but crucial details remain parked in the slow lane. Lawmakers like Andrew Gounardes want traffic courts and the DMV involved, lest the city chase scofflaws with little more than paperwork and wishful thinking—the road to safer streets clearly has a few potholes yet.
As New York’s left-leaning Mayor Zohran Mamdani weathered Winter Storm Fern’s fallout, fellow progressives Shahana Hanif and Chi Ossé took to X urging action over stubborn power and heat outages affecting Brooklyn for days. Meanwhile, streets languished under mounds of uncollected rubbish—a spectacle reaching eight feet in Gracie Mansion’s shadow—while city officials assured us that “Monday trash is being collected today.” Perhaps climate “resilience” simply means gritting one’s teeth.
With the number of older New Yorkers living in poverty up 40% in a decade and federal cuts squeezing food aid like SNAP, Citymeals on Wheels and Life Story Club have launched a joint effort to deliver not just meals but conversation. Since half the city’s elderly are immigrants, privacy threats and heavy bags are hurdles—so we see hope in meals that nourish both body and story, if only policymakers bite.
Applications for New York City's free all-day pre-K and 3-K programmes have opened, with over 50,000 families—presumably more eager than the children—already in the queue. Mayor Zohran Mamdani claims every four-year-old can find a spot, while places for three-year-olds remain scarcer. Choice abounds, with multiple settings and languages on offer; the application window closes February 27, but patience may run out well before the seats do.
