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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Sam Levin

New "Citi Bikes" unveiled at City Hall today.

The city will officially launch its bike share program in July -- and Mayor Bloomberg might actually give one a ride...at least once. But that's only so that if someone asks him how it is, he'll be able to respond.

"I will certainly pay and ride one," the mayor told reporters this morning, standing in front of the new bicycles. "Am I going to do it often? Probably not. But I will certainly do it right away...so that I can say I did it."

That way, the mayor said, if someone asks him what it's like, he can describe his experience. You hear that folks? He's just a regular guy like us.

When a reporter later suggested that maybe he wanted to give one a try right there and then, Bloomberg declined: "I gotta get myself a helmet first."

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Sam Levin

City Comptroller John Liu, with State Senator Diane Savino (left) and City Council member Debi Rose at the Ferry Terminal in Staten Island.

City Comptroller John Liu took a trip to Staten Island today to criticize the city's management of new ferry boats that he says have been chronically out of service and have wasted taxpayers' dollars.

The announcement was a chance for Liu, who is expected to run for mayor in 2013, to get his name out on a transportation issue and appeal to the outer boroughs. But the comptroller also has a legitimate history with the topic -- he chaired the City Council Transportation Committee and convened several public hearings about the Staten Island Ferry before he became comptroller.

Liu's office argues that three "Molinari Class" vessels, which were put into service in 2005 and 2006, have been dysfunctional and have generated significant cost overruns. Liu also said he's not convinced that the city's Department of Transportation has any long-term plan to address this ongoing problems, which he says continue to impact commuters and waste public money.

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via Facebook

​Thanks to a devastating blackout six years ago, biking in Queens in 2012 might become a little bit easier.

In 2006, a major electrical power outage hit Western Queens in a damaging nine-day blackout that impacted 174,000 people in the borough.

Six years later, those neighborhoods in Queens are getting rewarded for their troubles. Through an initiative called the "Greening Western Queens Fund," -- an $8 million effort to invest in energy-efficiency and environmental projects in the affected areas -- a fairly diverse group of local organizations are now pushing forward with projects aimed at greening Queens (the borough deserves some love, guys!). The funds are part of a community settlement with Con Edison and are being administered by North Star Fund, a local granting agency.

This month, the organization gave out its second round of grants through this fund, totaling $2 million, to 16 groups.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan watch the "Python" fill a pothole in Queens.

Outdoor press conference!

Taking a break from his typical indoor news conferences, Mayor Mike Bloomberg today took advantage of the absurdly beautiful March weather outside to unveil a new pothole filling machine and to launch "road paving season," when the city resurfaces streets across the five boroughs. (Fixing roads, i.e. totally the best part about spring).

Reporters gathered around the "Python" on a blocked-off street in Flushing, Queens this morning to watch as a Department of Transportation worker demonstrated how this new piece of technology fills in potholes. The Python, a truck that basically unloads fresh material over a hole in the street and flattens it out, is designed to fill holes with fewer crew members and only block one lane of traffic during repairs.

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Yesterday, Runnin' Scared reported that Transportation Alternatives wants the NYPD to give out more speeding tickets, telling City Council that hurried, harried drivers cause unnecessary deaths.

By the group's calculations, more New Yorkers were killed in traffic -- 3,647 -- than
murdered by guns -- 3,558.

Indeed, TA is lobbying the City Council to put an end to dangerous driving, and told the Public Safety Committee on Thursday that cops just don't do enough to prevent people from going over the speed limit.

After the meeting, Juan Martinez (TA's general counsel) told Runnin' Scared: "We need data-driven traffic enforcement policies to figure out what's killing people in traffic."

"There's education that the NYPD can do," he said, pointing to successful anti distracted-driving campaigns. "Really, it comes down to enforcement. Everyone who speeds thinks that they can speed because they wont get a ticket. Once people get a ticket, they won't speed."

And it looks like key Council Members are on board with TA's thinking -- and are continuing the momentum from a recent transportation safety hearing.

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Well, here are four words we never thought we would type: Save the G-train?

Brooklyn's straphangers, known to love the looping line as much as they hate it, are now rallying in support of the G: District Leader Lincoln Restler has organized a petition to keep the MTA from cutting off full Church Avenue-to-Queens service. Nearly 1,200 have signed the online petition, which began Sunday. The move comes as communities continue to feel the effect of MTA cuts -- which resulted in the loss of two subway lines, 36 bus routes, and 570 bus stops in the last several years.

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By now, you have probably heard about proposals to redesign the Prospect Park loop, which were discussed at a public meeting last night.

You see, the Prospect Park Road Sharing Taskforce has been seriously considering changes after several recent accidents left two with severe brain injuries.

The coalition announced yesterday that it wants to double the space allocated to cyclists and pedestrians -- so there would be one lane for each group and one lane for vehicles. The move would get rid of one car lane.

Transportation advocates seem to think the changes, which could take place as early as this spring, are a step in the right direction, but would still prefer an outright ban on cars.

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Wood

Carol Wood has been hit by cars while riding her bike.

"When it happens, you really don't know what to do. There simply is no information out there from the City," the Midtown resident told Runnin' Scared.

So Wood, who just got a master's degree in journalism, decided to write her thesis on car accidents -- and develop a website with non-commercial info for victims.

That project, NycCarAccident.net, launched this morning.

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Last week, a 12-year-old girl was struck and killed as she crossed Delancey Street on the Lower East Side, in an area that has a reputation for being dangerous for pedestrians.

Now, an advocacy group has said that this tragedy is part of an alarming trend -- that young children in low-income neighborhoods are disproportionately at risk.

A report released yesterday by Transportation Alternatives, called "Child Crashes: An Unequal Burden," suggests that crashes occur at a much higher rate in poorer neighborhoods.

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