Eight LaGuardia Airport taxi dispatchers have been charged with accepting bribes from eager cabbies looking to shorten the long wait to pick up passengers, authorities say. The octet allegedly earned hundreds of dollars a day accepting $5-10 payoffs from drivers wanting to “cut the line.” Cab drivers are said to wait an average of two to three hours in a holding area before being directed to the terminal to pick up passengers. (Daily News)
An audit carried out by the state comptroller’s office revealed that subway delays have increased in the past year. From 2013 to 2014, on-time performance dropped from 81 to 74 percent on weekdays and from 85 to 81 percent on weekends. The audit found the 4 train to be one of the biggest culprits, with over 50,000 incidents of lateness in a one-year period. (CBS)
Despite rising rents being a notoriously hot topic in New York today, two cab drivers have found a path of little oversight to rent-regulated bliss. Hamidou Guira and Joe Stevens are paying a meager $226 a month for apartments in a former SRO-turned-hotel near the High Line. The two city cabbies used a section of the Rent Stabilization and New York City Administrative codes to submit written requests for permanent residence. (Gothamist)
Though the New York Giants lead in the Jets-Giants hometown rivalry on the field, the Jets have trumped their fellow New Yorkers in a separate category: number of arrests. Geno Smith jaw-breaking aside, the Jets are tied for fifth place with three other NFL teams for 11 player arrests in the past five years. The Giants, with only three arrests, actually hold the record for the longest streak without an arrest in the NFL – a whopping 600 days. (Village Voice)
Despite the upcoming U.S. Open and the newly renovated USTA center in Flushing Meadows, a hefty $10 million promise has yet to be fulfilled. A 2013 deal made between USTA and the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park community allotted just over $5 million to programming and park upkeep and another $5 million to the Parks Department for road relocation, but in true bureaucratic fashion nothing went as planned. The first batch of money has not been paid out despite the completion of the tennis center, and the conservancy which was supposed to be in charge of the road project hasn’t even been formed yet. (DNAinfo)
