NYC and Long Island Begin Gas Rationing

It's a beginning for the big solution

 

I grew up on Long Island but live in California now for 25 years. I can say that my brother lives in a super nice home and is without electric since Sandy struck. It is like living in a third world. Cuomo needs to restore electric and gasoline.

 

I live in Queens, and last Sunday I drove up to Port Chester on the border of Connecticut to fill up, because the stations all around me were either out of fuel, or out of power. People waiting on lines for gas stations that aren't even open, waiting for them to get a fuel delivery. There's people with no electric still running off generators, which just compounds the gasoline shortage. My job is sending gas cans with our shuttles back n forth to Jersey (where they have their own pump at the HQ) to bring back to fill up our work cars and vans.

 

Why does alternate day fueling make a difference ? Even land barges do not normally fill up every day.

 

From NYC, Long Island to ration gas to ease fuel crunch - Yahoo! News

Storm Sandy Gasoline Finder by GasBuddy.com shows how bad things are.

 

Let me tell you that it's very F**ked up

 

It's because of the generators being used. A small home will go through 7 to 10 gallons a day. So in addition to filling cars, people are filling multiple gas cans at the same time

 

What is taking so long to fix the problem. After 11 days one would think the Gov can deliver some of the National Surplus tankers every hour on the hour if needed. Why can't the energy company restore electric for gas stations with a GTiger team of Technicians just on that problem. This seems like it is dragging on and on and the system is broken. Obama should throw resources at it. Cuomo should park his butt in Washington DC and get this fixed now.

 

Why would Obama throw resources at it? He got his photo op with Christie, election over.

 

For the same reason he was elected again: compassion, even for people like you.

Just be glad Romney does not now have the podium to say: "Don't worry, guys. The free market will fix it."

 

Let's see, people chose to live where they live. People chose to drive what they drive. People chose whether or not to produce their own electricity.
Then when it turns out people made poor choices it is the governments' fault they are living with the consequences?

All this aid & extra work costs money. Who should pay for it? Are you advocating a national disaster relief tax as is collected in other countries?

If building codes were changed to REQUIRE solar panels & multiple sources of energy (natural gas or coal AND electric) people would be howling about intrusive big government.

We are now looking at the poster child of limited resources and it isn't a pretty picture.

"What is taking so long to fix the problem?" Some places are still flooded. After a flood equipment is damaged. Flip the power back on & people can be warmed by the resulting fire.

When railroad tracks are washed out it isn't just passenger rail service that gets suspended. Freight trains can't run. One tank car carries 30,000 gallons. A tanker truck carries 3000 to 9000 gallons. So that is 3 to 10 EXTRA tractor trailers on the road to replace 1 train car. There are hundreds of train cars sitting at refineries. When I used to take the NJ Turnpike you can count them as they sit on the tracks running next to the highway. Where are you going to find all these extra trucks & drivers?

How easy do you think it is to get into NYC? Traffic backs up at all of the bridges & tunnels every day. Now flood the tunnels. The Holland Tunnel just opened. I believe the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is still flooded. At least some of the subway tunnels flooded. Service is not completely restored. So divert the mass transit & tunnel traffic to the bridges and add long convoys of extra trucks. How long do you think it is going to take you to go that last two miles before the bridge?

Manhattan imports everything. Damaged supply lines cause suffering. Those than can, leave. Those that can't are stuck.

 

Brilliant post

 

As opposed to the complete inaction of Obama? I'm not a fan of Romney either. All I'm saying is I have zero faith in any government officials to do the right thing, from either party. They all only look out for themselves.

As for JimN's post, just look at how fast they got lower Manhattan up and running again. Now compare that to the outer boroughs that our Mayor and Governor could care less about. How about Chuck Schumer completely disappearing once he realized the photo ops were over. How about the complete inaction on the Mayor's part to put in place this rationing plan 12 days after the disaster, a week AFTER him and the Governor said it would be a couple of more days, and just deal with not being able to have a full tank. Trains can't get to Manhattan? So I guess we should just give up and not even try to bring gas to the stations another way. Don't give me the traffic BS either, a convoy of trucks w/ police or National Guard escort to bring it in. In the end we're all frustrated here because nobody seems to be putting in any effort once lower Manhattan was restored.

 

Interesting how threads drift because we had long lines on Tuesday along with a full parking lot. So at different times, I had voters 'helping' with their outside voice, offering suggestions on how to run the polling place better:

• Who rented this totally inadequate church? - A. I don't know because we're just the paper handlers. The Probate Judge office handles facilities, not us.
• Is anyone making money for this mess? - A. Well I am the supervisor and I'm making minimum wage. Worse, my normal pay rate is $50/hr so the 20 hours of training, day-before setup, and election day has cost me $1,000 for which I'll get a $150 check without taxes taken out that I'll have to cover out of my own pocket. So today, it will cost me a little over $850 but I would be happy to let you take this job.
• You should have a long row of tables with the clerks spread out and sharing the voter sign-in sheets? - A. Ok, so you want us to tell that crowd of voters waiting in lines and the clerks working to vote them to wait while we rearrange the tables and this will make everything more efficient. As we caught up with the voters, we did start floating sublists between adjacent clerks and this allowed us to share the voters between the clerks. This turned out to be a good idea instead of trying to keep fixed-lists of which clerks were handling which names.

Everyone has a right to complain but sometimes the method of complaining defeats the merits of the suggestion. Now this may be a regional difference as we've often been amused by how New York Yankees always seem to be complaining about the most trivial things (we get TV programs like 'Seinfeld'm 'The Nanny' and occasional tourists.)

The other observation is humans often don't see a problem until the crisis arrives. That gas stations with tanks of fuel do not have their own generators to pump the gas . . . well hindsight is always 20/20, foresight often less. But tying up resources that are used infrequently is also not a good idea. Knowing the potential cost of a power outage, our Prius both have 1 kW of inverter power with the wife's ZVW30 being upgraded for improved power quality and surge capacity . . . lessons learned.

Bob Wilson

 

I certainly will have my "Prius electrical generator" ready for any future circumstances. No more 3 days of lurking around the garage/shed/house trying to get "the parts" to make it work again.

 

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