ARTCAL reports on nbPAC’s successful launch.

BEDT State Park is still closed, and the prospects of it opening anytime before April seem to be getting slimmer faster. As the News reports, the sticking point is the inability of Friends of East River State Park to secure the necessary insurance. The insurance requirement is an annoyance, but not an unreasonable request on the part of the State. And it shouldn’t be a deal killer here – from what I understand, Friends has a lot of offers to help secure the necessary insurance. As it stands, we’ve lost a month already, and will probably lose another one.

Its just a form of nihilism.

Jose Sucuzhanay was the father of two children, who live with their grandparents in Ecuador. He came to the United States a decade ago in search of work, became a waiter and got his real estate license three years ago, eventually starting his own agency.

Wow. That didn’t take long. The package redesign was pointless and confusing, but I fully expected to be looking at pointless and confusing orange juice cartons for years to come.

[via DF]

The neighborhood needs toilet paper and paper towels more than another bank.

Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, though the article could have been written about any neighborhood in NYC (curiously a lot of banks popped up around Havemeyer and Broadway, but only one in the Northside – do hipsters not bank).

Ridership on the City’s subways is at its highest level since 1950. And the L train has the fastest growing ridership:

The subway line with the largest weekday growth from 2007 to 2008 was the L line, with an 8.5 percent increase in ridership. Seven stations, situated all along the line, had more than 10 percent growth: First Avenue in Manhattan, and the Bedford, Wilson, Bushwick (Aberdeen Street), Atlantic, Livonia and New Lots stations in Brooklyn. Weekday ridership on the L line has grown 29 percent since 2003 and 79 percent since 1998 [emphasis added].

79%! In 10 years, ridership on the L has almost doubled. But that’s no surprise to the TA:

“The L line’s growth is not surprising, given that it has been the fastest growing line in the system for years,” said Howard H. Roberts Jr., president of New York City Transit.

Ever hear the phrase “past performance is no guarantee of future results”? Sounds like MTA’s long-range planning involves looking at what happened last year and waiting to see if it happens again this year. I guess City Planning forgot to tell the MTA that they were adding 10,000 housing units to the Brooklyn side of the L line. Even with a slowing economy, you have to figure someone is going to live in these buildings that are still going up at the rate of two or three per block. And you also have to figure that a lot of these people are going to be taking the L train to Manhattan (or Bushwick).

And its not just the L – ridership at the Bowery Station of the J/(formerly)M/Z line was up 16%. I’d like to see the stats for the rest of the line – Bowery is one of the least used stations in the system (the TA was talking about closing it 5 years ago), so any increase would be statistically significant. But I suspect ridership on the J/M/Z is up pretty substantially overall. Its certainly a lot more crowded at Marcy Ave. in the morning.

A bad rip off, poorly copy edited.