​A preliminary audit commissioned by the board of the Port Authority has found that the institution is "a challenged and dysfunctional organization suffering from a lack of consistent leadership, a siloed underlying bureaucracy, poorly coordinated capital planning process, insufficient cost controls and a lack of transparent and effective oversight of the World Trade Center."

As costs for construction at the World Trade Center continue to rise, the Port Authority finds itself under increasing scrutiny. The audit also found that the PA suffers from inadequate cost-controlling methods, and often awards its employees excessive or unnecessary benefits.

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​Remember, back in the day, when you used to go outside and scamper around the streets of New York with all the other rosy-cheeked neighborhood kids, playing stickball and tag and hopscotch as the summer sun sank gently into the horizon?

No? Well, not to worry, Runnin' Scared doesn't either -- and we can't really imagine New York being the kind of place where youngins would want to play outside, considering that NYC traffic puts speed over pedestrian safety. (It's even worse if you're a child from a lower-income household: Studies show that vehicle crashes disproportionately affect youth from poor areas.)

But a coalition of New Yorkers wants to change this.

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Who said train conductors were mean, boring stickler-ish types shushing you in the quiet car, punching your tickets through a thinly disguised veneer of hatred, and kicking you off the train after you pee drunkenly in the vestibule? Train conductors are fun, too! Some of them are even sort of comedians. Like this guy in a video posted on YouTube yesterday. "I was born to be a clown," he says, "but I found this job instead." Indeed.

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​A baby boy was born on a PATH train en route to Manhattan yesterday, allowing for all sorts of hilarious "express train" jokes from the dailies. Rabita Sarkar and her husband, Aditya Saurabh, New Jersey residents, hadn't expected the baby for another two weeks, but, as they say, the baby waits for no train. The couple had been on the way to the doctor to check on Sarkar's "false" labor pains, which, as it turned out, were quite real -- and they hadn't wanted to take a car lest their baby be born in it. So they took the train instead.

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​According to this year's annual "Pokey" award, the slowest local bus route in New York City is the M50, which travels crosstown on 49th and 50th Streets between First and Twelfth Avenues, clocking in at just 3.5 miles per hour at noon on a weekday, according to Straphangers Campaign staff and volunteers. The slogan for the winning (losing?) route, which was awarded a golden snail on a pedestal: "You Could Push a Lawnmower Faster Crosstown Than M50 Travels." It's also "barely faster than a pedestrian's typical 3.1 mph speed," explains the Post.

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via Subwaycrush.net

​Are you dashingly handsome, the type that everyone assumes, immediately, must be a model, or maybe a professional athlete? Are you well-dressed, or perhaps sweatily clad, so coming from your athletic endeavors, and, yet, that is only a benefit to your fine self? Are you a person who takes the subway? Someone is probably taking your picture! (Maybe you are taking your own picture!) The Daily News has discovered Subwaycrush.net, which they dub the "racy new website" that "has straphangers snapping photos of 'hot guys' on the subway." Oh, you straphangers!

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A rupture in a nearly 100-year-old water main near Central Park West and 106th Street just before 11:30 a.m. yesterday led to scenes like the above in the streets, as well as 10 feet of flood water on the tracks of the A, B, C, and D trains (and, obviously, suspension of service). MTA workers worked all night pumping out the water, and all was back to normal as of about 5 a.m. this morning.

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​Jay Welder, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at the endlessly frustrating (and poor!) Metropolitan Transportation Authority since 2009, has resigned, reports CBS New York reporter Tony Aiello via Twitter. Governor Andrew Cuomo praised Walder's "commendable job rooting out waste and cutting costs" when he took office, opting to keep Walder in the top spot, though today saw the announcement of $2 billion more in cuts over the next five years. We'll update with more information as it becomes available.

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​This should absolutely not come as a surprise, but anyone who uses the New York City subway system will experience some trying times this weekend. Do you take the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, A, C, D, E, F, G, L, N, Q, or R trains? Sorry 'bout that. For us Williamsburgers, this is par for the course. The reason for the L's un-usability between Lorimer and Broadway Junction this weekend : rail work at Myrtle Avenue and Halsey Street. But why does this keep happening, over and over again? And why must we always be trapped on the weekends? (For this, I'm limiting the scope to the subway and not the buses, although bus riders: we feel you).

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Well, every MTA rider has, at one point or another, been too close to a temper tantrum, but now thanks to the internet, we can all experience the unpleasantness together from the comfort of our own computers. Whereas the haughty NYU girl on Metro-North was laughably arrogant but unthreateningly angry, the above woman, pissed that the bus driver asked her to stop playing her iPhone out loud, is fuming and flinging the f-word with real venom. "You are a hater, you are a hater, you are a hater," she screams, high on adrenaline but low on creativity. Then she calls the driver a "honky."

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