With most of the above-ground construction of the Second Avenue subway wrapping up soon, the city is planning a major overhaul of the busy Upper East Side corridor.

PenneyVanderbilt

If you’ve been on Second Avenue recently, you know it’s a mess. But now the city’s Department of Transportation is preparing to clean it up.

“It’s a vibrant street – a lot of restaurants, a lot of retail – it’s really kind of a front door for the community,” said DOT Deputy Commissioner Ryan Russo.

The plans will be unveiled at a community board meeting Wednesday. They call for a protected bike lane, one parking lane, three travel lanes, and a lane for buses – all stretching from 105th to 68th streets.

The redesign will essentially be a continuation of what Second Avenue looks like now above 105th Street.

That part of Second Avenue has already been reconfigured, making it look similar to other redesigned avenues across Manhattan.

Transportation officials insist those redesigns have made the streets safer.

“We’ve seen a 20 percent reduction on average in injuries to all…

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Metro-North is implementing changes for NTSB after accidents

PenneyVanderbilt

MTA Metro-North Railroad has completed permanent changes to its signal system to ensure automatic speed enforcement at five critical curves and five moveable bridges in New York and Connecticut, the railroad announced yesterday.

With the completion of work at the Devon Bridge in Stratford, Conn., late last week, all signal modifications ordered by the Federal Railroad Administration in December have been completed well before the FRA’s Sept. 1 deadline, Metro-North officials said in a press release.

The FRA ordered the work after a December 2013 accident in which a Metro-North train derailed on a curve near the Bronx, N.Y., resulting in four passenger fatalities.

“The complete implementation of the requirements of the FRA’s Emergency Order 29, issued on Dec. 8, 2013, brings us another step closer to a safer railroad, which is our No. 1 goal,” said Metro-North President Joseph Giulietti.

Signal engineers first designed modifications to the circuitry at…

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Cuomo unveils plan to expand Long Island Rail Road

PenneyVanderbilt

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo yesterday announced a renewed effort to expand capacity on the MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Main Line between Floral Park and Hicksville by adding a third track.

The project, which calls for building an additional track along that portion of LIRR’s line, will allow the railroad to increase service, reduce congestion and train delays after incidents, and enable “reverse-peak” trains to run during traditional business hours, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officials said in a press release.

The proposal also is aimed at providing a more attractive alternative to driving and thereby reducing road traffic on Long Island’s major east-west highways.

In addition, the expansion project will complement the East Side Access project, which is slated to double LIRR’s capacity into Manhattan by building a new terminal underneath Grand Central Terminal.

Cuomo’s plan reduces the length of the LIRR expansion in prior proposals from 11.5…

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Michael Weatherly Leaving NCIS At Season’s End – Today’s News: Our Take | TVGuide.com

The Tony Burgess Blog

Michael Weatherly concludes his run on NCIS this season after appearing in every episode for over a decade.

Source: Michael Weatherly Leaving NCIS At Season’s End – Today’s News: Our Take | TVGuide.com

To do one role for over a decade is a fete in modern TV when there is such flux and fluidity in the medium. Best wishes to Mr. Weatherly and Agent DiNozzo

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Post 1022 plus one new piece of art.

Dougstuber's Blog

For those keeping score, I’m up to 1022 posts now.  I blew past 1,000 without fanfare.

That’s it for today, nothing special.  23 degrees Farhenheit, on a nice sunny day in Durham.

Here’s a new one, better in photo form than the original, as the dang stretcher bars warped while I was outta town for the holidays.

Plenty of leaves used in this one.  60 by 48 inches.

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Wonderlost Wednesday: Mackinac Island (guest post)

Wanderlust: Becoming a Traveler

Hello there! Melanie here. My dear blogger friend, Pernnille, asked me to do a guest post on her blog, Wanderlust, because I hail from the United States of America, a place she has yet to travel. Now, you may be expecting something about a big city: Chicago, L.A., New York. However, I would like to discuss a much smaller place because it’s near and dear to my heart.

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My family was never one for traditions. However, one vacation we took every year was to Mackinaw City for Labor Day Weekend. This is the last weekend of the summer before school starts back up in the United States and it’s also the only time of the year that the Mackinac Bridge (the bridge that connects the upper and lower peninsulas of the state of Michigan) is open to pedestrian traffic. We walked the five-mile-long bridge almost every year. (Some years it was windy…

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