Dockless bike program hasn't gone as planned

From PIX11:

It's less than a week old, but some Rockaway residents want to put the brakes on a new dockless bike program after the two-wheelers started popping up in some very unusual and inconvenient places.

The great thing about the dockless bikes is that riders can pick them up anywhere. They just need to find the closest one by using the GPS built into each of the apps.

When riders are done, they can park them anywhere.

While that's convenient for the rider, it's also causing frustration for those in the community. On the Facebook Group Friends of Rockaway Beach, residents posted photos of Limebikes abandoned all over the neighborhood. One was ditched in the dunes, while others were left blocking driveways and sidewalks.

The problem is one Limebikes has experienced before. There's an entire Twitter account with the handle @DocklessBikeFail that showcases problems parking the bikes in Seattle.

Sometimes the bikes end up in trees, underwater or stacked on street corners.

Wow, what a great idea!

City Council Member proposes app for trash truck tracking

From CBS:

They’re a welcome sight when garbage piles up on the sidewalk, but getting stuck behind a sanitation truck is no fun for city drivers.

“Cause I always get stuck behind a garbage truck and it always makes me late in the mornings,” Tamara Mose told CBS2’s Jessica Borg.

Especially — she said — while driving in her neighborhood, on narrow one-way streets, like in some Brooklyn neighborhoods.

“It’s the most frustrating thing as a New Yorker,” City Councilman David Greenfield said.

Greenfield said he has a bill that would bring that frustration to an end.

On Wednesday, he proposed making it a requirement for the Sanitation Department to publicly release its GPS data on trucks so that drivers can see exactly where trucks are in real-time.

“It’s really a win, win, win. A win for the drivers, it’s also a win for the sanitation workers, it’s very frustrating when you’re trying to do your job. People are honking, they’re yelling,” Greenfield said.

Greenfield said the GPS data could then be used to create navigation apps to warn people about what streets to avoid.

No left turn GPS option could improve road safety

From CBS New York:

Many people turn to Google for answers, and now two New York City Council members say the technology giant has the answer to making city streets safer.

As CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported, members Brad Lander (D-39th) and Ydanis Rodriguez (D-10th) have asked Google maps to include an option for drivers to select a route with reduced left hand turns.

The councilmen believe the request falls in line with the city’s Vision Zero plan to reduce the number of deaths on city streets.

According to the NYPD, so far this year there have been 62 pedestrian fatalities, and 5 bicyclist fatalities. The Department of Transportation’s stats show that approximately 10 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 18 months involve left turns.

Legislation proposed to improve truck safety

From CBS 2:

There is a growing danger on the road in the New York area. Trucks have been hitting overpasses at an alarming rate, causing delays on your ride to work.

Tractor trailers have had their roofs torn off and hurled debris everywhere. On the Northern State Parkway traffic was backed up for miles after one such incident, part of the New Jersey Turnpike was shut down for hours after a truck had its cargo hold torn off.

Experts said that not all commercial drivers are prepared, and that many don’t use specialized GPS for trucks.

“Eighty-percent of low bridge strikes are caused by truckers who are looking at GPS systems that don’t warn them off the highway, that don’t warn them the bridge is too low,” U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

Sen. Schumer is pushing for nationwide standards for GPS devices that will do a better job directing commercial drivers.

Tracking stolen Rx

From Fox News:

Police in New York City plan to combat the theft of painkillers and other highly addictive prescription medicines by asking pharmacies around the city to hide fake pill bottles fitted with GPS devices amid the legitimate supplies on their shelves.

The New York Police Department believes the so-called "bait bottles" could help investigators track stolen drugs and locate suspects.

The NYPD has begun creating a database of the roughly 6,000 pharmacies in the New York City area with plans to have officers visit them and recommend security measures like better alarm systems and lighting of storage areas. Kelly says it also will ask them to stock the GPS bottles containing fake oxycodone.

"In the event of a robbery or theft, we'll be able to track the bottle, which may lead us to stash locations across the city," he says.

There have been similar attempts to track prescription drugs on a limited basis but the NYPD claims this would be the first widespread effort.

Big waste of money for tracking systems

From NY1:

Two new audits by the City Comptroller John Liu's office show the city has wasted millions of dollars on global positioning systems for fire and sanitation trucks.

Liu says the pricey systems are faulty, showing tracking information that sometimes indicated the trucks were in the water.

The units installed in some sanitation vehicles cost more than the vehicles themselves, according to Liu.

He also says the New York City Fire Department spent more than $7 million to outfit fire and EMS vehicles, which works out to more than $10,000 per unit.

Terrorism update

From the AP:

Efforts by terrorists abroad to radicalize and recruit U.S. residents are an evolving problem, three top Obama administration officials told Congress on Wednesday.

The threat posed by homegrown extremists shows that the battle against terrorism has become more complex in the past year, underscoring the challenges of pinpointing and blocking terrorist plots, said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

"Groups affiliated with al-Qaida are now actively targeting the United States and looking to use Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures," FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"It appears domestic radicalization and homegrown extremism is becoming more pronounced," Mueller said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said al-Qaida has inspired an array of terrorist groups.

"We are all seeing more diverse activity" by a more diverse collection of groups, Napolitano said.

From the Daily News:

Homeland security officials will hand New York $18.5 million today to keep the city's prototype dirty-bomb detection system running, the Daily News has learned.

New York lawmakers had to battle the Obama administration for the money, putting it in the federal budget last year after homeland security officials stripped it.

Run out of an operations center in the city, the effort features more than 4,500 pieces of radiation detection equipment, many equipped with GPS locators.

It's all aimed at sniffing out a nuke or dirty bomb before it can get across a bridge or tunnel and be detonated in the city.

Terrorism experts warn that the Holy Grail for violent extremists is getting their hands on a weapon of mass destruction.

Even a dirty bomb, which does little explosive damage, could be devastating to the city and economy if it contaminates vital areas with radiation.

Wow, I feel so much safer now!

Ambulances still lack GPS technology

From AM-NY:

Cabbies have them and you probably do, too. But believe it or not, city ambulance drivers don’t have GPS systems to help them respond to emergencies.

EMT crews are sometimes forced to use paper maps to reach victims, resulting in delays when responding to life-and-death emergencies, workers and union leaders say.

“It’s just a day-to-day occurrence of guys saying, ‘I have to look it up on the map.’ That adds a minute or two,” said Patrick Bahnken, president of the union that represents city EMTs.

Some crews resort to bringing their own GPS devices, but that’s against the rules and they could be punished if caught, Bahnken said.

They do have a hypothermia machine on board now, however.

Car break-ins rattle Norwood Gardens

From the Queens Chronicle:

Residents of Norwood Gardens in Astoria have been advised to keep a close check on their cars and GPS, after a rash of auto break-ins has made them nervous about leaving anything valuable in their cars.

Residents report that areas around 35th, 36th and 37th streets at 30th Avenue have been the worst affected, with the Norwood Neighborhood Association estimating that there has been at least one break-in per night over the last few weeks.

Residents point out that the crimes spike over the weekends, when an influx of outsiders crowd bars and restaurants in the busy 30th Avenue commercial area.

Pearl Thomas was affected when her boyfriend’s parents’ luxury 2007 Audi was broken into. “You know, it’s embarrassing,” Thomas said. “I’ve lived in Astoria for the last seven years and they’ve [the boyfriend’s parents] visited us before and nothing happened. And now, we move into this area and the car gets broken into,” the 36th Street resident said.

The Audi was parked on 36th Street between 30th and 31st avenues when the incident occurred in the last week of March. Luckily for Thomas, the perpetrators didn’t walk away with too much, except for a beloved CD with a collection of sheet music.

Thomas thinks thieves were probably looking to steal the car’s GPS, but couldn’t get their hands on it, as the instrument is built into this particular model.

When asked who might be behind the break-ins, [Councilman Peter] Vallone said he was skeptical that 30th Avenue revelers had anything to do with the rise in crime, saying people who wanted to enjoy a dinner out weren’t likely to be stealing GPSs.

Professor helping illegals cross border

From Sphere:

Ricardo Dominguez describes himself an "artivist" -- a cross between an artist and activist -- and he calls his newest act of civil disobedience a "Transborder Immigrant Tool."

It's a cheap Motorola cell phone retrofitted with GPS technology. Dominguez, an associate professor of new media arts at the University of California, San Diego, hopes to get the tool into the hands of people making the treacherous crossing of the U.S.-Mexico border on the so-called Devil's Highway.

The tool, which will cost less than $30 per unit, is undergoing field testing and tweaking. Dominguez has so far collected $15,000 in grants to fund its development and rollout, and by next summer, his plan is to have churches and groups like Border Angels and No Mas Muertes distribute the phones and train users on their features.

The information in the phone will be good for only four days, and instead of a traditional triangulated GPS technology, they will use a "single-bounce" system. They will be encrypted to avoid detection by the Border Patrol and other authorities.

Big Brother now watching building inspectors

From the Gotham Gazette:

The program comes amid building department efforts to cope with a year of controversy that, among other reforms, resulted in the resignation of former Commissioner Patricia Lancaster last year. The latest scandal came last week when six inspectors were arrested for bribery, and prosecutors accused the Luchese crime family of infiltrating the department.

Over the past five years, the Buildings Department has seen at least one bribery incident every year. Often inspectors themselves reported the bribe attempt to the Department of Investigations, which then worked with buildings to arrest the briber.

Tracking will certainly not solve all the department's problems. Knowing the location of an inspector does not immediately reveal wrongdoing in cases like bribery, said buildings department's spokesperson Tony Sclafani.

"This is one step to ensure integrity, but it's obviously -- it's not going to be the catch-all," said Sclafani.

GPS to track DOB inspectors

From 1010WINS:

New York City will track its hundreds of building inspectors with GPS technology to make sure they are actually doing the inspections they report, the Department of Buildings said Friday.

The new scrutiny comes after an inspector was charged last year with faking a report that he had inspected a crane days before it collapsed and killed seven people.

Electrical, construction, elevator, crane and other inspectors will now have GPS tracking on their mobile phones so that department heads can follow their movements in real time through a web-based program.

Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri said the system will "ensure inspectors reach their assigned locations and are held accountable for their important work."