Talk Bronx New York

Persistant TB Strain in Harlem, Bronx has Doctors Worried

City health officials say tuberculosis rates are down for the 15th straight year. But they are concerned about a persistent strain of the disease in Harlem and the Bronx. WNYC’s Fred Mogul has more.

In 2007, for the first time in several years, fewer than 1,000 city residents contracted the potentially-deadly-but-generally-treatable lung disease. Almost three-fourths of them were immigrants.

But in Harlem and the Bronx, a cluster of TB cases dating back to 2003 has confused local and national experts. This cluster mostly is not immigrants. According to a study of bacterial DNA, the cases are linked – but how the more than 40 people are connected to each other mostly isn’t clear.

The outbreak has become more concerning recently with the emergence of a multiple-drug-resistant version of the same strain in the same geographic area.

The city’s top TB official says the Health Department is expanding its investigation – and a public information campaign.

SOURCE: WNYC.org

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Bronx To Get City’s First Rapid Transit Buses

The Bronx will be the first of the city’s boroughs to see MTA rapid transit buses.

Beginning this summer, the new express buses will run on the Bx12 route along Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway and will be known as the Bx12 Select Bus Service.

The buses will make the same stops as the Bx12 Limited-Stop service, but will run more frequently.

Other features include onboard sensors that can extend green lights, and a dedicated bus lane.

Fares will be the same as regular buses, but riders will pay before boarding and then show a receipt to the driver.

Similar rapid transit routes are scheduled to be implemented in all five boroughs.

SOURCE: NY1.com

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A Boon For The Boroughs

Would congestion pricing ease the traffic that chokes Manhattan and is getting a stranglehold on the boroughs? Yes. Would it reduce air pollution? Yes.

But those benefits - important as they are - pale in comparison with the strongest reason New Yorkers should rally behind the concept:

Congestion pricing would produce the biggest mass transit improvements in decades.

Do you ride the E train between Queens and Manhattan cheek-to-jowl with fellow straphangers? There would be money to ease your pain.

Do you struggle to get to midtown from Bay Ridge because it takes too damn long on the subway and express bus service is poor? There would be money to help you out.

Are you stranded in the eastern Bronx? There would be money for commuter-line service.

Congestion pricing is less about auto traffic and more about mass transportation. It rightly should have been called the Subway and Bus Riders’ Convenience Package.

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 Protest For Profit .. The Walmart Expedition Reason

A brief item inside the City section of yesterday’s New York Times reports on a non-profit group in the Bronx, Highbridge Community Life Center, that, among other services to senior citizens, offers round-trip van rides from the Bronx to a Wal-Mart in Monroe, an hour north of New York City.

“The expeditions,” the Times reports, “are intended to help older residents cope with the ever-rising prices of groceries and household items.” Many of the individuals, the Times reports, “live alone on a fixed income in what is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.”

The report details one 76-year-old woman, a “retired home health aide,” buying cockroach poison at Wal-Mart for use in her apartment in a public housing project.

What the Times article omits is the reason these elderly individuals have to travel for an hour in a van in one direction and an hour back in the other direction to shop at Wal-Mart. That reason is the New York City Council.

In thrall to labor unions and other forces that are lobbying against Wal-Mart, the Democrat-dominated City Council has all but banned the nation’s largest retailer from New York City. What the report also omits is that Highbridge Community Life Center gets about $2.4 million a year — about 60% of its annual budget — from the New York City and State governments.

In other words, the same City Council that is preventing Wal-Mart from opening a store in New York City is using taxpayer money to pay a non-profit group in the Bronx to drive senior citizens an hour outside New York to shop at Wal-Mart. The city isn’t saying that’s what it is paying for, but money is fungible, and the group is 60% government funded.

So the politicians get to claim credit with the unions for keeping Wal-Mart out of the city while also claiming credit with the seniors for providing them access to every day low prices. Ordinary New Yorkers, who work and pay taxes, are the ones who pay the price.

Their city is deprived of the sales tax revenue that Wal-Mart would bring. If they don’t have two hours to spend traveling or a non-profit to subsidize their shopping trips, they can’t shop at Wal-Mart. Why not just let Wal-Mart open in New York City and eliminate the need for the van rides?

SOURCE: NYSun.com

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