Photo Credit: edogisgod via Compfight cc

If I want to visit my 81-year-old grandmother in Forest Hills, Queens, from my place in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Google Maps tells me I'm approximately five miles away. What Google Maps doesn't tell me is that in order to get there I will have to fight five krakens in a moat, machete through 18 miles of poison-tipped brambles, and defeat Lord Voldemort.

Really, I just have to take the F train. But folks who want to get from Brooklyn to this part of Queens have to take the train through Manhattan and back to Queens. It would be faster to walk to Forest Hills from where I live. Backward.

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BSH Shooter via Compfight cc

For the past two years, the inhabitants of Brooklyn's finest nabes have been without a major transportation hub. But that'll all end today.

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A Honda serves the same purpose as this Maserati. You can get a Honda for about $16,000. Maseratis cost upwards of $150,000. You live in New York, where people love stealing expensive cars. Do the math.

It's a bad week to be a Maserati owner in New York City.

In the past three days, $280,000 worth of Maseratis have been swiped in the Big Apple, which may seem like a ton of money -- and it is -- but it equates to only two Maseratis.

For comparison, you could buy 17.5 2010 Honda Accords with 33,000 miles on them for the same price as the two Maseratis stolen in New York City in the last three days.

Regardless, the latest Maserati stolen belongs to a New York City corrections officer, and the way he lost it isn't nearly as stupid as how the last pricey ride got jacked.

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This is the Wuhan high-speed rail in China. It clocks in at 217 mph.

With news last week of the first major high speed rail project receiving the green light in California, transportation aficionados were ecstatic at the prospects of the project, especially as China continues to pump them out like hot cakes. But, from a New York perspective, our competitors on the West Coast hold claim to something the Empire State desperately: an extremely fast, relatively cheap mode of commute from Albany to New York. Or, as Governor Cuomo has cleverly called it, "the 21st century Erie Canal."More »

The party's over (sigh).

Starting at midnight, commuters using the Long Island Railroad will no longer be allowed to get sauced while traveling from Manhattan to Long Island on early morning weekend trains thanks to the railroad's attempt to curb "rambunctious behavior" (see several examples of the aforementioned behavior below).

LIRR officials say there were six incidents last year where railroad employees were attacked by passengers, which is the most in five years.

The ban would be applied to trains that run between midnight and 5 a.m. on Friday and Saturday mornings.

The problem with the ban, as we see it, is that there's no way to control how much commuters drink before they get on a train. In other words, unless the LIRR plans to check the sobriety of every passenger prior to letting them on the train, drunk people will still be using the railroad and the "rambunctious behavior" will continue.

See several video examples of drunken LIRR shenanigans below.

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It wasn't too long ago we brought you the latest report on how New York's airports suck. Well, today we have some more good news from the New York Times . The paper reports that the airspace that includes JFK, LaGuardia and Newark (as well as Jersey's Teterboro Airport and Philadelphia International Airport) "accounted for nearly half of all delays in the nation" in the first half of 2011. Meanwhile, those airports were only responsible for 12 percent of domestic flights. Yikes.

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As we ring in the new year, Hurricane Irene may seem like a distant memory from warmer, rainier days. But recovery from the damage is not done! And New York has officially secured millions of federal dollars to rebuild.

$90 million, to be exact. Well, to be EXACT: $89,751,296.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is awarding the congressionally approved emergency relief funds to New York State to fix the damage of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced in a press release late yesterday afternoon.

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The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers 6-2 last night to win their 11th World Series. After letting up 2 runs in the first, the Cardinals scored 6 unanswered to take the series. They were down 2-3 in the Fall Classic after losing game 5 to the Rangers. David Freese was the World Series MVP and hit the tying RBI in Game 7 with a double in the bottom of the first. Freese had hit the game-tying and walk-off RBIs in Game 6, which the Cardinals won in 11 innings. [ESPN]

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via BBC

An ultra-light airplane flew into a Ferris wheel in Australia after it couldn't gain enough altitude during take-off. How light is an "ultra-light" plane, you ask? Light enough to crash into a dinky festival Ferris wheel and not knock it over. Four people were trapped--two men in the plane and two children at the top of the Ferris wheel--but no serious injuries were reported. The pilot and his passenger were stuck in the aircraft as it dangled in the spokes of the giant festival ride for three hours while rescue workers sprayed the plane with foam to prevent a fire. The Sydney Morning Herald reports "investigators will examine why a Ferris wheel was installed next to an airstrip." The incident happened tomorrow, you know, 'cause of the time difference.

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via DARPA's news release.

An unmanned aircraft engineered to go 20 times the speed of sound was lost on its second test flight Thursday. The BBC reports that scientists lost track of the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2, or HTV-2, shortly after it detached from a rocket high above the California coast. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, published a press release saying that the "aircraft impacted the Pacific Ocean along the planned flight path."

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