Drivers should be charged with crime in pedestrian deaths

During construction to remove the Little Ferry Circle, only one left-turn lane is provided, above. But in a typical Jersey gambit, drivers turn left from two lanes, causing congestion and delays, then merge into a single lane before crossing the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Will the schoolbus driver who failed to yield to pedestrian Leyla Kan in Leonia -- then struck, dragged and killed her -- join so many others in getting away with murder?

Police gave bus driver Esperanza Jaramillo, 54, of Tenafly summonses for careless driving and failure to yield to a pedestrian on Thursday morning, The Record reported on Friday. 

But Leonia police said Jaramillo could not be charged with a crime, because there was no evidence she was using her cellphone before she struck Kan, 60, owner of a Turkish restaurant in Palisades Park.

Final word?

I'm shocked there is no follow up in today's paper. And I hope the Bergen County prosecutor's fatal accident unit challenges the reasoning of Leonia police not to charge Jaramillo with a crime.

When is the Woodland Park daily's editorial board going to call on the state Legislature to change the law to make drivers criminally responsible for killing pedestrians, especially if they are in the crosswalk?

How many times in recent decades have drivers literally gotten away with murder by merely saying they "didn't see" the pedestrian?

'Didn't see' excuse

Friday's L-1 story reports the police version that "Kan was struck [as she crossed the street] by the protruding passenger compartment of the minibus behind the door, apparently unseen by Jaramillo" (Friday's L-1).

"[Police Chief Thomas Rowe] said that as witnesses watched in horror and screamed and honked their horns to get Jaramillo's attention, the bus dragged Kan 71 feet along the street before it came to a stop."

There was no reporting on why the school bus driver didn't know that she had struck Kan or that she dragged her 71 feet, nor does The Record say whether the woman was in the crosswalk. 

A news radio report said the victim's blood stained the pavement.

Lazy editors

The Kan story is another example of the slipshod editing of fatal-accident stories by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

These lazy editors are so desperate to fill their pages they often blow up photos as big as possible, as they did on Friday's L-3 with a totaled Porsche 911.

A story reports Stuart Liberman, 55, allegedly was drunk when he crashed into the back of a truck on the George Washington Bridge after midnight Thursday, breaking a thigh bone. 

Big deal.

Rouse leaves

Karen Rouse, a transportation reporter who covered NJ Transit for about seven years, is now a "politics reporter" at WNYC-FM, New York and New Jersey Public Radio, according to her Twitter page.

Rouse's investigative reports for The Record on Superstorm Sandy damage to NJ Transit locomotives and rail cars in 2012 were featured prominently on WNYC-FM.

Her shoes are now being filled by Staff Writer Christopher Maag, the onetime Hackensack reporter who last Sunday wrote about delays at the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Today, Maag reports on what caused "the big mess" after the Super Toilet Bowl six months ago, when 20,000 fans were delayed boarding NJ Transit trains (A-1).

Who cares? 

What a waste of space, as commuters continue to scramble for rush-hour seats on trains and buses into Manhattan every weekday morning, and face the possibility enormous delays leaving the bus terminal to go home won't be eased for years.

Meanwhile, former Hackensack reporter Hannan Adely's byline appears today on a story reporting an employee's lawsuit against the city (L-2).

More Christie B.S.

Editors and reporters have adopted Governor Christie's portrayal of himself as a compromiser so wholeheartedly they ignore all evidence to the contrary.

That must be the explanation for how The Record's crack Trenton staff missed the GOP bully's 11 vetoes on Aug. 1 (A-1). 

How embarrassing.

Has Christie used the veto more times than any other governor before him? Don't hold your breath for an answer in The Record. 

Voters don't care

The upbeat story on door-to-door campaigning by freeholder candidates papers over the huge problem of voter apathy (L-1).

In local elections especially, candidates for council and board of education often are elected by a fraction of registered voters.

In last November's gubernatorial election, that bum Christie won a second term, but turnout was the lowest in history for a statewide contest.

So, the freeholder candidates' strategy of targeting residents "with a history of voting regularly" simply doesn't make sense.

It's not enough to criticize the PA behemoth from afar

The Record has written thousands of words criticizing the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, but no reporter has actually boarded a bus to the city or joined the long lines of home-bound commuters who face delays on the platforms, where spring-loaded seating resembles a torture device outlawed by the Geneva Convention, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How does a North Jersey newspaper cover the region's crowded public transit system?

If you are Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record, you buy into what the lazy local assignment editors have done for decades:

You send reporters to cover the meetings of the mass-transit agencies, including NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In recent months, thousands of critical words about the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan have merely parroted complaining letters to the editor, a state legislative hearing and the experiences of the bi-state agency's new chairman.

Rouse et al.

Commuters will cheer news the Port Authority board on Wednesday voted to approve $90 million in emergency repairs this year (A-1).

But that emergency spending could have come a lot sooner, if only the paper's transportation reporters actually rode mass transit and reported on the quality of the service, as the New York papers did for years with their subway columns.

A couple of years ago, Staff Writer Karen Rouse did report firsthand on the afternoon stampede for trains at New York's Penn Station, but Rouse apparently has never actually tried to get a seat on a city bound train or bus during the morning rush hour.

She also refused to ride the decrepit local buses in North Jersey -- relied on mostly by people who can't afford cars -- in the years before NJ Transit replaced them with new "talking" buses.

Boburg, Cichowski, Sforza

Shawn Boburg, who covers the Port Authority, has never reported on the need to expand the PATH commuter rail system or the reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel -- two parts of his beat.

The befuddled Road Warrior, John Cichowski, is hopelessly lost in the suburbs, and the so-called commuting column he has written for more than a decade has been taken hostage by drivers whose sanity is questionable. 

Anti-transit reporting

Of course, none of this is a surprise to readers who remember long, anti-light rail stories aimed at Englewood and Tenafly readers from then-reporter Tom Davis that were ordered by Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, himself a failed transportation reporter.

Lines of home-bound commuters are as long as ever at the Manhattan hub, but the Port Authority did install touch-screen terminals on the main level that show bus routes and, more importantly for occasional users, the number of the gate where they can catch a bus.

I haven't seen that improvement reported in The Record.

Today, an editorial on the new Port Authority chairman, John Degnan, and emergency terminal repairs is careful to avoid reviewing all that Governor Christie has done to hurt mass transit (A-12).

Forgotten responsibility

I chuckled at Boburg's lead paragraph this morning:

"For years, the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan has seemed frozen in time, a forgotten giant in the agency's vast portfolio of transportation facilities" (A-1).

Indeed. The terminal has long been forgotten in the Hackensack and Woodland Park newsrooms, too.

More corrections

Three long corrections appear on A-2 today, including a rare error in a local obituary.

Silver Alert: Road Warrior gets lost in search of a theme

Digital signs have appeared on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, above and below, stating the 25 mph speed limit and warning drivers going faster than that, "You are speeding." Meanwhile, it has been many months since I've seen a Teaneck officer with a radar gun manning a notorious speed trap at Pomander Walk and Cedar Lane that targeted drivers crossing the Anderson Street Bridge from Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Why is Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record running a front-page column on drowsy truckers -- if the problem is on the decline -- and not targeting all types of speeding and aggressive driving?

And why entrust this column to the addled John Cichowski, the reporter who has peddled so much misinformation in the guise of the Road Warrior (A-1)? 

Today's column is pegged to the chain-reaction crash involving a Walmart tractor-trailer driver who hadn't slept in "more than 24 hours" and a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter limo bus carrying comedians Tracy Morgan and James McNair (A-4). 

The June 6 crash on the New Jersey Turnpike knocked the luxurious limo bus on its side, killing McNair and sending Morgan to a hospital in critical condition with a broken leg and other injuries.

But Cichowski's column ranges far afield, despite the main headline:

"Threat from trucks and

sleepy drivers on decline"

The graphic on Page 1 is for "New Jersey road deaths involving trucks," apparently from all causes, including sleepy drivers, speeding and aggressive driving, but none is specified.

Cichowski also expands the column to include all drivers who are drowsy or fall asleep, including a "dozing minivan driver" who crashed into Maggie McDonnell's sedan, killing her way back in 1997 (A-7).

But still needing to fill space, the burned out reporter discusses a 1998 crash involving a "40-ton tractor-trailer" with faulty brakes that crashed into a big SUV on Route 17 in Paramus, killing a Saddle River surgeon and his mother in law (A-7).

Still, that wasn't enough. He includes a tour bus accident on the Garden State Parkway that killed eight in 1998, admitting "it, too, did not appear to involve drowsy driving."  

So, why is it included in the column? Maybe, Cichowski's editors should issue a Silver Alert for the confused reporter.

Meanwhile, The Record and other media have ignored the low safety rating of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter limo bus that carried Morgan.

Weak story

Another front-page story today appears to sugar coat the Tea Party, which is made up of radical, mean-spirited Republicans who are anti-immigrant and just about everything else, including taxes of any kind (A-1).

Staff Writer John C. Ensslin make Susan and Joel Winton -- founders of the West Bergen Tea Party -- sound like kindly grandparents.

But if you plow through this whitewash, you find out the Wintons have lost it, claiming their experiences doing business in communist Czechoslovakia "is one of the reasons we are passionate about saving our country" (A-6).

Forced busing

On the Local front today, Staff Writer Karen Rouse had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover a hearing on delays and service problems faced by commuters returning to North Jersey from the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (L-1).

Rouse, who has written almost exclusively about NJ Transit train operations, buried the lead, reporting that a Port Authority executive promised relief from terminal crowding by 2020, if the agency gets a $230 million federal grant it has applied for (L-2).

Rouse also had a Page 1 story today on the unveiling of NJ Transit's new disaster strategy after Superstorm Sandy caused $120 million in flood damage to rail cars and locomotives stored in low-lying yards (A-1).

Ignoring readers

The Better Living cover story on "five winning dishes" from Korean restaurants in North Jersey offers little to readers who don't meat, who are diabetic or who are watching their weight (BL-1).

All but one of the dishes reflect Staff Writer Elisa Ung's twin obsessions with meat or sweet, artery clogging desserts (BL-3).

There is no mention of such non-meat classics as japchae (translucent noodles) or soft-tofu stews served so hot you can cook a fresh egg in them.

LOL: Cops make Page 1 for enforcing traffic laws

A long, elaborate wheelchair ramp connects the Avalon luxury apartment complex on Hackensack Avenue in Hackensack with the Home Depot Shopping Center. The rent for a 483-square-foot studio is $2,165 a month, according to the Avalon Communities Web site. The apartments, built between two shopping centers, are perfect for shopaholics.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's Dave Sheingold seems to have a bug up his ass that the annual police crackdown on seat-belt and child-restraint violators is catching a growing number of uninsured, drunk and reckless drivers (A-1).

Is there something wrong with that or with the extra revenue collected by cash-strapped towns, where property taxes seem to climb inexorably amid declining services?

During the two-week 2013 Click It or Ticket Campaign, Hackensack police issued 1,587 summonses -- triple the number given out in other communities -- but only 17.4% for seat-belt violations (A-8).

Does anybody care but the law-breaking drivers who were undone by the aggressive enforcement of traffic laws that began with the appointment of Police Director Mike Mordaga in February 2013.

Quoting morons

The anal Sheingold, the paper's computer-assisted numbers cruncher, even quotes Steve Carrellas, the moron who calls himself the "New Jersey coordinator" of the National Motorists Association, whatever that is.

"It's turning into a stop-and-fleece program. You're stopping people and taking their money away," claims Carrellas, who proves reporters will quote the most idiotic person they can find just to stir up needless controversy (A-8).

Someone should tell Carrellas driving is a privilege, not a right, and if reckless drivers, speeders, drunks, car thieves and other law-breakers are taken off the road, that's great.

We need the money

And if there is even a small chance Hackensack can use the extra money to help it climb out of the deep financial hole dug by Zisa family allies in the past decade, I say hooray.

As  a property taxpayer, I can't wait for the time when hundreds of red-light and speeding cameras are installed to generate real money for towns.

That's especially the case in Hackensack, where officials have been reluctant to ask Hackensack University Medical Center and other tax-exempt entities to contribute financially to the city, which was fleeced by Ken Zisa, the corrupt former police chief and state assemblyman.

Hackensack should follow Jersey City, which is seeking $400 million from the Port Authority in a federal lawsuit that alleges the bistate agency "is not giving enough financial assistance in exchange for dozens of tax-exempt properties" (A-3).

Lazy reporting

Why does reader Dom Calicchio have to point out problems at NJ Transit's Kingsland rail station in Lyndhurst (A-15 letter to the editor)?

Transportation reporter Karen Rouse and Road Warrior John Cichowski should get off their duffs and give commuters firsthand reports on rail and bus service.

Apparently, they've been infected by the lazy bug that long ago bit Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, who run the local-news assignment desk.

Sykes and Sforza had to fill today's thin Local section with two long wire-service obituaries for an obscure Venezuelan ex-president and a screenwriter nobody knows (L-5).

Reporters ignore long-suffering bus commuters

The Port Authority provides a clean, comfortable enclosure for NJ Transit customers waiting for the No. 165 and No. 166 buses at the agency's midtown bus terminal in Manhattan, above. The four fold-down, spring-loaded seats are thinly disguised torture devices banned by the Geneva Convention.

The terminal has finally gotten what it has needed for years: A listing of all bus departures with route number, time and, most important, the platform number where the bus can be boarded. Platforms change, especially late at night. A ticket clerk said the Bus Terminal Interactive Map, which has a touch screen, was installed about a month ago. I saw two of the three in the terminal, but none for commuters using the main entrance on Eighth Avenue.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's transportation reporters, including Karen Rouse and Road Warrior John Cichowski, believe NJ Transit bus riders are the lowest of the low.

They have routinely avoided reporting about local and Manhattan bus service for years or the long-suffering riders who have had to endure creaking coaches, packed buses and long lines at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

They also have ignored complaining letters to the editor, so it was a surprise to see Editoral Page Editor Alfred P. Dublin devoting part of his opinion column to conditions at the terminal (Friday's A-19).

But Doblin's main focus was contrasting the aging terminal with the new marble concourse of the World Trade Center's PATH station, and he ran a photo of a leaking ceiling for emphasis.

Not that bad

That photo is misleading. I took the No. 165 bus to have lunch in the city on Friday, and the main public spaces are clean and in good condition, with a variety of food and coffee concessions, and a connection to the city subway system.

And you can't beat the senior round-trip fare of only $3.80.

The real problems are the cramped enclosures at platforms where riders board buses, forcing almost everyone to stand in lines that can stretch down escalators and around lower levels.

And for many years, until touch screens listing buses and platforms were installed about a month ago, occasional terminal users often wandered around searching for the departure point of their New Jersey-bound buses.

Shouldn't the Port Authority be encouraging commuters to take the bus, given mounting traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings, and improve conditions at the terminal?

This photo was taken during rush hour on a Friday night in the summer of 2012 at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the line from an upper-level platform stretched down an escalator to the second level, above. 

Taking the bus

On Friday, I was lucky to get a No. 165 Turnpike Express in Hackensack, and reached the Manhattan terminal in under 30 minutes. 

My return on the 1:40 p.m. No. 165 local to Oradell (from Platform 212) was torture. Passengers filled 46 of the 49 seats.

I asked the driver about letters to the editor, complaining about long lines at the terminal during rush hour, and he said he didn't know what caused them.

The trip stretched to 1 hour and 40 minutes, thanks to Ridgefield Park police, who closed one lane of Route 46 for a house construction crew, adding at least 20 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The scheduled travel time to Main and Anderson streets in Hackensack is under an hour.

Earlier, on Boulevard East, the driver passed stops requested by three passengers, telling two women who were together, "At least it's downhill [to the stop he passed]."

Buses jockeyed with several private jitneys, often referred to as the "Spanish bus," which provides seats to and from the city riders can't find on NJ Transit.  

In bumper-to-bumper traffic on Route 46, the driver of the No. 165 cleaned his nails, and then stopped to pick up two passengers standing about 50 feet apart, even though I saw no bus-stop signs near them.

Later, he allowed a man who said he had no money to board.

Today's paper

The death of Wallington Fire Capt. Gregory Barnas has gotten a tremendous amount of coverage since he died on Feb. 28, including Friday's Local front, where a headline referred to a "hero's funeral"; nearly all of Page 1 and all of A-6 today.

Today's edition carries a front-page column by Mike Kelly, whose first sentence is puzzling:

"Big funerals say a lot about small towns." Really?

Putting aside whether Barnas is or isn't a "hero" for going out to fight a restaurant fire -- then falling off the roof and dying -- none of the coverage addresses long-standing concerns of residents in towns with volunteer firefighters. 

Town officials shortchange residents by not having professional firefighters, such as those in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood. 

The Record reports today that Barnas, 57, also was a full-time captain with the Jersey City Fire Department, and a member of the fire department in Waymart, Pa., where his family has a vacation home (A-1).

Wasn't he stretched a little too thin?

At the Ninth Avenue end of the bus terminal in Manhattan, a memorial to firefighters and police officers who died responding to the 9/11 attack on America, above and below.

'Human depravity'

Today's Local section relies heavily on Law & Order news (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6), meaning Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza couldn't find legitimate municipal news to fill all of that space.

Another in a series of accident photographs, showing a car door or doors that were removed to reach an injured driver, appears on L-2.

The most riveting story is the sentencing of a troubled 22-year-old Cliffside Park man in the brutal rape of two sisters, 9 and 11 years old, in 2012 (L-1).

Don't miss this line from Staff Writer Kibret Markos, who I would guess is exaggerating:

"Even in a courtroom accustomed to stunning accounts of human depravity, this one left many in the audience with gaping mouths" (L-1).

Markos then proceeds to describe the rapes in detail on L-6 -- detail that likely wouldn't have been allowed by the editors even a decade ago.

Readers might be asking themselves why they haven't previously seen "stunning accounts of human depravity" in Markos' coverage of the busy Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.

Local-news readers are left out in the cold again

Hackensack officials have asked residents, including those on Euclid Avenue, above, to move their cars so plows can clear streets of snow "from curb-to-curb." Cars will be ticketed and towed, if parking is prohibited when streets are "snow covered," the city says.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

In The Record newsroom, the local editors' contempt for bus riders knows no bounds.

For decades, coverage of snow removal routinely ignored blockaded bus stops, and long lines of NJ Transit riders snaking through Manhattan's midtown bus terminal became a laugh line at news meetings.

In the months and years after Staff Writer Karen Rouse was assigned the transportation beat, she couldn't find time to report on NJ Transit's creaking local buses, patronized mostly by minorities who can't afford to buy cars.

Catching up

Now -- five days after the problem was reported on TV news -- The Record's front page catches up to dangerous snow mounds blocking riders' access to bus stops along Route 4 in Hackensack and Route 3 in Clifton.

Where was Dan Sforza, head of the local-news assignment desk, hiding out in a bathroom stall with one of the New York tabloids?

Where was Editor Marty Gottlieb, editing another one of those interminable Page 1 stories about the "bromance" between Governor Christie and some other GOP moron?

Where were Rouse and Road Warrior John Cichowski?

Christie love fest

Meanwhile, Gottlieb sent Staff Writer Melissa Hayes to Chicago to cover Christie's fund-raising trip as head of the Republican Governors Association (A-3).

Hayes, one of the governor's biggest boosters, uses a well-worn media device to blunt criticism of Christie -- putting the harsh assessment in the mouth of a Democrat:

"Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who made the trip to Chicago, described Christie as a 'political bully,' questioning how he couldn't know what some of his closest aides were doing" when they closed Fort Lee access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, Hayes reports.

Millions have been wondering the same thing, and readers wonder why The Record's reporters and editorial writers have been so blind to Christie's many faults since he took office in 2o10.

Coming clean

Three days ago, former Record staffer Tom Moran, now a member of The Star-Ledger's editorial board, said the paper's endorsement of Christie during the fall election campaign is "regrettable."

Moran said:

"Yes, we knew Christie was a bully. But we didn’t know his crew was crazy enough to put people’s lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn’t know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn’t know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno."

Just awful 

Some of the worst headlines I've seen appeared today in The Record's Sports section:

Pitcher perfect

Japanese righty basks in pinstriped spotlight 

A top New York editor loses his way in the suburbs

NJ Transit has been slammed by the media, but the agency may not be to blame for vastly underestimating the number of Super Bowl fans who took the train to and from the game in East Rutherford (33,000), resulting in hours-long waits for some of them, The Record reports today. About 2,000 parking passes and 300 charter bus permits, which could have accommodated 15,000 fans, were never used, the newspaper says.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

A little over 2 years ago, Marty Gottlieb ended a stellar career at The New York Times and took over The Record's cramped Woodland Park newsroom.

But it soon became evident the Borg publishing family didn't give the new editor the go-ahead to clean house after a disastrous tenure by Francis "Frank" Scandale, his predecessor, who was fired.

The same lazy, incompetent local-news editor kept their jobs, the same burnt-out columnists wrote endlessly and often inaccurately about all manner of nonsense, and -- in the absence of any meaningful editing or fact-checking -- the quality of the paper declined dramatically.

Today, it's clear that Gottlieb, who traded Paris for Paramus and Paterson, has lost his way in the suburbs.

On top of news?

The New York City media are obsessed with snow removal and the quality of mass transit -- two big North Jersey issues Gottlieb hasn't touched.

The paper's chief transportation reporter, Road Warrior John Cichowski, suffers from early Alzheimer's or dementia, and writes almost exclusively about driving.

Karen Rouse, the reporter who covers NJ Transit, has spent most of her time trying to find out who was responsible for putting hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment in harm's way during Superstorm Sandy.

TV's local scoop

On Monday night, CBS 2 News crowed about an exclusive -- the belated bulldozer clearing of bus stops on Route 4 in Hackensack and Route 3 in Clifton that had been marooned by high snowbanks.

Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse braved the sub-freezing weather to tell the TV reporter he acted when he saw the CBS 2 video of the dangerous conditions a few days earlier. 

Filler, not news

Today, the Local section doesn't carry any photos of dangerous bus stops. 

Instead, there are photos of uncollected Christmas trees in Ridgewood (L-3), and pothole repairs on Route 46 west in Little Falls (L-6), where the local editors had to fill a big hole with a long obituary for actor Clint Eastwood's agent, a man no one has ever heard of. 

Missed story

On Sunday, a letter to the editor complained of long lines and missing NJ Transit rush-hour buses leaving the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Richard G. Simon of New Milford said that for the past three weeks, the waiting time for the No. 167 and No. 177 buses averaged about 45 minutes.

Last Thursday, he wrote, there was a line of several hundred people that snaked down the escalator to the floor below the platform, but only two of the scheduled buses arrived between 4:50 p.m. and 5:40 p.m.

You've never seen transportation reporters Rouse or Cichowski reporting on the continuing problems in the crowded bus terminal or the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains. 

NFL screw-ups

Today's front-page NJ Transit story is about the disappointing Super Bowl, suggesting the media was too hasty in piling on the agency for keeping thousands of fans waiting to board trains to and from the game (A-1 and A-6).

Apparently, the National Football League screwed up by vastly overstating how many fans would drive or take buses to the East Rutherford stadium.

Another front-page story breathlessly reports on "new or amended subpoenas" in the Bridgegate scandal (A-1), even as pedestrians have to walk in the street because of uncleared sidewalks.

More errors

Readers are familiar with cost overruns on public projects, but with Cichowski, they've seen numerous factual overruns, as in his L-1 Sunday column on removal of the Little Ferry Circle and safety improvements on the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River.

The addled Road Warrior reported the project will cost $39 million, but The Record's earlier story and the state Department of Transportation Web site list the cost as $30 million.

Cichowski said a man's sister was killed "near the proposed work site," but later noted she was killed by a car while walking across the bridge, which is a major part of the proposed work.

Irrelevant detail

And the befuddled reporter wrote that "despite the construction of two interstates ... in the 1960s (Routes 80 and 95), Route 46 has remained a popular route to Teterboro Airport."

That's likely because neither interstate goes to Teterboro.  

See a full blow-by-blow exposing Cichowski's errors and hilarious exaggerations on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Readers are ready to pull out their hair

NJ Transit screws NFL fans and commuters alike

Hackensack's DPW did a fair job of clearing streets and intersections after the snow stopped falling on Monday, but left several inches of the white stuff on the block of Euclid Avenue between Main Street and the tracks, and an 18-inch barrier blocking driveways on other blocks of Euclid. Above, a Summit Avenue intersection this morning, when a snow-laden tree was a thing of beauty.

Hackensack schools do not provide those familiar yellow buses, forcing thousands of parents to drive their children to school, in a colossal waste of gasoline that aggravates air pollution and frays nerves. Thousands of other students walk both ways. Above, cars leaving the high school campus this morning.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Transportation reporter Karen Rouse and Dan Sforza, the supremely lazy head of The Record's assignment desk, have been screwing commuters forever.

In recent years, they've ignored such persistent service problems as antiquated local buses, long lines to board NJ Transit buses in Manhattan and the rush-hour stampede for seats on trains leaving Penn Station.

So, you should have heard me howl with laughter this morning when I saw the Page 1 photo of hordes of Super Bowl fans -- 33,000 in all -- waiting to board NJ Transit trains after the disappointing game on Sunday (A-1).

Suckers. Why wasn't this photo in Monday's paper?

Perfect storm

I'll bet Governors Christie and Cuomo, actors Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner, and all of the other VIPs at the game didn't have to take the train.

Then, the snow that began falling early Monday canceled 350 flights from Newark as of 9:40 a.m. -- a perfect Jersey transportation storm (A-6).

Today's big, black A-1 headline screams about fans' anger and their "'nightmare' ride home," but commuting in North Jersey by car or mass transit is a daily nightmare The Record won't touch.

An editorial on A-8 mentions "commuters who suffer every day on NJ Transit buses and trains" and "have no relief from the overcrowding in the Port Authority Bus Terminal," but no such problems have been reported by Rouse, Road Warrior John Cichowski or any other reporter.

Denver lows

Rouse came to the old Hackensack newsroom from the Denver Post, thanks to Francis "Frank" Scandale, one of The Record's worst editors, who also came from that paper.

In Denver, she was known for her education coverage, but some moron gave her the North Jersey transportation beat, and it's been all downhill from there.

A second front-page story today -- on reforming "political patronage, a culture of fear and conflicts of interest" at the Port Authority -- gives the bi-state agency a pass on extortionate tolls and its refusal to expand PATH rail and commuter bus service into Manhattan (A-1).

More Bridgegate

The NJ Transit and Port Authority stories overshadow new developments in the Bridgegate scandal, including the refusal of Governor Christie's former deputy chief of staff to turn over documents to investigators (A-1).

Bridget Anne "Bridge" Kelly, who sent the infamous e-mail, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," is the latest member of Christie's inner circle to take the Fifth.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are demanding documents from Christie's office, the former U.S. attorney said during a radio interview Monday (A-1).

Give us a break

Editor Marty Gottlieb couldn't help putting the federal subpoenas in context. But did the first paragraph of the story really need this wordy explanation?

"... a development that puts him [Christie] at the opposite end from the kind of probe he once led as the state's hard-charging U.S. attorney"?

Jeez. "At the opposite end of the kind of probe he once led..."? That's embarrassing, especially for a former New York Times editor who was stationed in Paris.

Hey, Marty, your readers aren't as thick as some of your assignment editors and columnists, notably Cichowski, the so-called Road Warrior.

More drivel

In his drivel on A-6 today, that moron doesn't acknowledge that he blew it big time in his previous column by predicting traffic paralysis for people driving into or out of Manhattan on Sunday.

Nor does he admit today he was completely blindsided by the problems encountered by Super Bowl fans who used mass transit (A-6).   

On A-2, the editors correct star reporter Stephanie Akin's Sunday takeout on development near the Harrison PATH station.

Local yokels

Three of the five elements on the Local front today are Law & Order stories (L-1).

Almost 8 inches of snow fell, according to today's weather story, which runs with an inaccurate photo caption describing a Toyota that hit a utility pole as a "coupe."

Local weather: Now you see it, now you don't

A Toyota SUV and a Toyota sedan collided on Tuesday afternoon at Euclid Avenue and Linden Street in Hackensack, above and below, at an intersection where drivers often run stop signs.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The record-setting, bone-chilling plunge in temperatures was front-page news on Tuesday, but today, editors of The Record try to hide the local-assignment desk's lackluster coverage.

The lazy assignment editors in the Woodland Park newsroom apparently instructed reporters to stay inside and try to cover the story by telephone (L-1 and L-2).

Cold shoulder

That must why there isn't a single interview with a commuter, such as the dozen people shivering as they waited in line on Tuesday morning on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack for an express bus to Manhattan.

Or a photo of Verizon repairman raising a low-hanging wire outside a home on Euclid Avenue in Hackensack or working outside anywhere else in North Jersey.

Instead, Editor Marty Gottlieb's front page today delivers an astounding three stories on national, state and Bergen County politics (A-1).

At 8:30 on Tuesday morning, the outside temperature in Hackensack and Paramus was a bracing 5 degrees.

More Christie spin

Gottlieb continues to give Page 1 play to Governor Christie's latest B.S., portraying his GOP bullying as "bipartisan compromise."

The story by Staff Writer Patricia Alex, who covers higher education for The Record, isn't much different than past accounts, starting in 2010, that regurgitated Christie's fictional "Reform Agenda," "Jersey Comeback" and "Stronger Than the Storm."

Those political marketing campaigns were designed to hide Christie's war on the middle class, as does the current one, which ignores all of the vetoes he has used to stymie the majority Democrats in the state Legislature.

Perspective

A letter to the editor from Richard Cerbo of Hackensack serves as a counterpoint to a recent story on the city's plan to encourage apartment development downtown in a bid to revive Main Street (A-10).

Cerbo, son of a former mayor, notes "builders, developers, investors and commercial property barons" will benefit most of all.

"That's how business is done, but not once in the story was there any mention  of helping those left out, including the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly and the sick," Cerbo said.

He noted Hackensack already has "an urban feel" and that more development would add more traffic and quicken "the deterioration of the city's quality of life."

Relief for whom?

In a related story, the Hackensack City Council on Tuesday night unveiled a measure offering tax relief to developers and others "who build or make improvements in the 39-block Upper Main Street Rehabilitation Area" (L-1).

The proposal appears designed to benefit members of a public-private partnership called the Upper Main Street Business Alliance who own or have purchased much of the property in the development district, and hope to cash in by selling it to developers.

Hackensack can ill afford to grant tax relief in a city where Hackensack University Medical Center, Bergen County and Fairleigh Dickinson University already own hundreds of millions of dollars in property that pays no property taxes, shifting the burden to homeowners and small businesses.

The Record also reported the hiring of Deborah Karlsson as Hackensack's new city clerk (Tuesday's L-2).

Sky is falling

On the Local front today, the befuddled John Cichowski, in his guise as the Road Warrior, compares the Christie-inspired George Washington Bridge traffic jams in September to:

The 1966 New York City transit strike, the 1969 snowstorm that paralyzed the five boroughs, a Chicago blizzard in 1979 and a Denver snowstorm in 1983 (L-1).

Smoking gun

Today, the Web sites of The New York Times and The Record are reporting the papers obtained e-mails showing that Christie's office was "closely involved," as The Times describes it, in GWB lane closures that caused traffic jams in Fort Lee, where the mayor is a Democrat.

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," Bridget Anne Kelly said in an e-mail to David Wildstein, a close friend of Christie's who had been appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to Christie, gave the go-ahead for the lane closures about two weeks before they occurred, The Times reported.

Trial by fire

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza -- in an apparent bid to deflect attention from readers' disappointment in local-news coverage -- managed to find a journalist with a real image problem: 

Former Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf is on trial at the Bergen County Courthouse on charges he sexually abused a 4-year-old girl at his Wyckoff home three years ago (L-3).

Transit column?

Every major newspaper in New York has carried a subway column, but The Record has acted contemptuously toward NJ Transit bus and rail commuters.

In the past decade, the Road Warrior column has been devoted almost exclusively to drivers, and Staff Writer Karen Rouse, another transportation reporter, has never bothered to ride the buses and trains and report on the quality of service.

On Monday's L-3, Rouse reported on the progress of a turnpike widening project between Exits 6 and 9 -- about a hour's drive from Bergen County.