More conscientious passengers than ever before are turning in lost property they've found stuffed under the subways and between bus seats, according to the New York Post. The uptick means that more forgetful riders are being reunited with their belongings.

The New York City Transit’s Lost Property Unit recently reported that in 2012, 24,445 items, ranging from cell phones to wallets to yes, even engagement rings, were handed in to the MTA. This number has been increasing steadily—23,223 items were turned in 2011, compared with just 22,835 in 2009.

The MTA also reported returning 8,093 items to owners last year, compared to 7,438 in 2011.

The increase is all thanks to the MTA’s online lost and found claim system, which was implemented in 2009. When transit riders lose an item, they file a report with the LPU, a team of eight working in an office Penn Station—an underground lost item menagerie where drawers, filing cabinets and closets are teeming with unclaimed cameras, headphones and the like.

Of course, the LPU also sees some pretty weird stuff—everything from musical instruments to vacuum cleaners. In 2011 the Village Voice reported MTA workers have picked up teeth and prosthetic limbs. Most recently, the LPU has received several animal carriers sans pets. They also tend to get a pretty hefty sum of unclaimed cash.

Most lost items are pretty run-of-the-mill: iPhones, Kindles, wallets, etc.—items their owners never expect to see again. But, as LPU supervisor William Bonner told the Post, "There’s a lot of honest people.” Perhaps, or maybe thieves are just getting lazier?

"The results are clear and dramatic," said Councilman Brad Lander, whose office produced the report. "More than half of B61's don't arrive on time during rush hour, that's unacceptable and is failing riders." The report, entitled "Next Bus Please" harnessed a gang of volunteers to gather the information during the three month period of July to September this year, surveying the peak hours.

A bus failing to arrive on schedule may not be like a unique occurrence, but for riders of the B61, the problems are particularly acute. Last summer four bus routes in Red Hook were closed, with the only consolation being the extension of the B61, and you don't have to be a mathematician to work out what a longer route, plus fewer of buses, equates to.

"There is a lack of transportation for the people of Red Hook, these people are taxpayers and they deserve to be treated like everyone else", Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez said through shivering teeth—waiting for the bus on a cold day like today is no pleasure. Those that rely on the B61 route are currently faced with two public transport options to commute to the city either, wait on a bus or use the $5 Ikea Water Taxi. With the recent closure of Smith Street subway station, matters have only grown worse.

Some of the suggestions listed in the report are to add more peak hour services; after this happens apply a limited-stop service to help riders get to their subway connections faster; and equip B61 buses with the M.T.A.'s Bus Time, a pilot program that uses GPS to provide real-time tracking of buses, so riders know when the bus will be arriving..

"Next we give this to the transit authority and sit down with them and see what we can do to fix this" said Mr. Lander.

"These recommendations are not pie in the sky, they've been applied on other routes and have shown to help the 2.4 million riders in this city," Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives said.

As the representatives and advocates spoke, behind them not one bus arrived, no doubt a scenario that was in the minds of the organizers when they planned to hold the conference at the stop.

Some of those in wait were regular users of the route. Angel Martinez told how he seems to be "waiting all the time", and how quickly the bus fills up when it does come. "It's frustrating, because sometimes you got to wait for the next one because it's so full," he said.

Rob Esposito takes the B61 in from Bensonhurst to go and take care of his aging uncle, he told The Observer. "You'll have grey hair by the time the next one comes," he said.

Just as the Observer was about to leave the stop at Forth and Ninth avenues, the irony of all ironies occurred: Two buses came at once.

sduffey@observer.com

Though 84 percent of subway riders reported they were satisfied with the overall comfort and convenience of using the subway, the number of satisfied customers only increased six percent since last year. Overall satisfaction with local bus service also slightly increased from 62 percent last year to 70 percent.

Our suburban brethren did not have it so good.Overall customer satisfaction decreased to 78 percent on the Long Island Rail Road from 89 percent last year and Metro-North Railroad satisfaction also decreased, from 93 to 89 percent. However, as the M.T.A. explains in a press release, "Satisfaction in the railroads was adversely impacted by weather-related disruptions and other external factors." Yeah, yeah, blame it on the weather.

The agency actually got a little lucky in that regard, considering the annual survey was conducted in June, well before the disruptions from Tropical Storm Irene or the city's summer construction projects began. There was still that cursed blizzard that caught everyone flat-footed, though.

So when we all complain about the subways, are we just kvetzing out usual frustrations, or is it actually somehow better than we like to complain about?

Damon and Paquin.

Trapped somewhere in the red tape of independent filmmaking between money and marketing, Anna Paquin delivers a very fine performance in the very odd starring role of a very bewildering film called Margaret. Written and directed by the excellent award-winning playwright Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), which is one of its major draws, it was filmed in 2005, tied up for years in lawsuits, and hindered by the deaths of its two most illustrious producers, Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. Six years later and 30 minutes shorter, it is finally being released in limited runs as a 2½-hour art film that is something of a well-intentioned mess. In the time between shooting Margaret, editing it down from its original three-hour director’s cut and Anna Paquin’s emergence in True Blood, we watched her grow up from troubled teenager to vamping vampire. Some things are better off left unchanged.

Mr. Lonergan writes elegant, painfully honest, moment-to-moment dialogue that is better suited to the stage than to cinema, where pacing is everything. In this long, leisurely theater piece with camera angles, Ms. Paquin plays Lisa, a 17-year-old New Yorker who witnesses a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) run a red light and kill a pedestrian (Allison Janney) carrying a shopping cart. Feeling apathy for the driver and guilty because she was distracting him by chasing the bus to admire his cowboy hat, the girl tells the police it was an accident. Traumatized to the point of hysteria, she then sets about to change her original eyewitness account, but nobody will believe her. Distraught and frustrated, she begins to savage everyone she knows—family, friends, classmates and teachers alike. Uninvited, she attends an informal memorial service attended by friends of the victim, invades the life of the dead woman’s best friend (a superb Jeannie Berlin), convinces distant relatives to sue the Manhattan Transit Authority, threatens the bus driver, terrorizes her neurotic actress mother (a colorful performance by J. Smith-Cameron, who in real life is Mrs. Kenneth Lonergan) and wrecks her new love affair with a South American businessman (played by the famous French actor Jean Reno). In no time at all, the audience’s patience wears thin. Precocious works for a while, but this girl is opinionated, arrogant, emotionally unstable and given to talking in elliptical sentences that make you want to scream, “Stop the projector—I want to get off!” The case has been closed and the financial settlement paid, but Lisa has more things to say, more facts to correct. Flitting from one person to the next to unload her conscience, under the thin veil of getting the facts straight, Lisa rants and manipulates until she doesn’t appear to be cooking on four burners. By the time she forces another student to terminate her virginity and then seduces a sympathetic but foolish professor (Matt Damon, in a tiny cameo), claiming she’s pregnant and in need of an abortion, the character has lost all contact with the viewer and Mr. Lonergan’s screenplay has gone haywire.

Good acting prevails, especially by Ms. Smith-Cameron as the screwy mother and Jeannie Berlin, who gives one of the most complex portrayals of a stereotypically overeducated, analytical, aggressive, literal-minded, New York Jew I have ever seen. She still sounds exactly like her mother, Elaine May. But this is very much a movie about writing, and despite the sincerity of the dialogue, the style does not fit a cinematic format. As a director, Mr. Lonergan lacks the tempo that keeps audiences rapt, and he has a lot to learn about editing. As Lisa becomes obsessively relentless in her pursuit of justice, her cause takes over her life, interferes with her schoolwork and damages her mind. The script works best when it shows the difficulty of people trying to relate to each other verbally in an age of emails and sound bites, but eventually you just want to yell “Shut up!” Mr. Lonergan reduces everyone to hysterics and then leaves them stranded in their own clouded misery. There is no ending. Lisa and her mother go to the Metropolitan Opera and sob their way through Renee Fleming’s singing of The Tales of Hoffman. From start to end credits, very much an example of good work that doesn’t translate.

By the way, did I fail to mention there is nobody in Margaret named Margaret?

rreed@observer.com

MARGARET

Running Time 149 minutes

Written by Kenneth Lonergan

Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Starring Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo

2/4