David Yassky, the new chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, has made a SHOCKING (not) discovery: Manhattan has more yellow cabs than Brooklyn.

To be fair, it’s not something he just recently discovered. He discovered it some time ago (I imagine the same way most people do – by using their eyes) but now that he’s Mr. Taxi, this revelation becomes a newsworthy lead in to his declaration that chairmen, he intended to “ensure the industry serves all parts of the city effectively.”

I wish him luck but sheesh – why not just scale Everest? It would be easier.

Speaking of transportation, there was a piece in the Gothamist about bad subway announcements — bad being defined as inaccurate, too garbled to understand, or just not made at all. I know, I know – you’re thinking, “Duh” but since the Straphangers Campaign went through all the trouble to come out with a new report on the subject, it wouldn’t hurt to mention it again. In a way that everyone could understand. Maybe the MTA would learn by example.  Or not.

So what did the report find? Well, it found that 55% of the announcements were bad. 55%? Only 55% And apparently this is an improvement. I must be riding a vastly different system than they looked at. Or I’m just unlucky.

They also point out that “Poor announcements can mean missed stops, longer trips and a lot more stress.”  Amen. I had an unnecessarily long trip, missed two stops and had tons of stress just this weekend trying to get from point A to point B on the 1 train this weekend.

You know what would have made the whole thing a lot less of a hassle? If the sign telling everyone that the 1 train wasn’t running had been VISIBLE to anyone other than the person standing right in front of the ticketing window. There was a massive white board on the back wall of the booth that – had anything been written on it – would have been easily seen by people coming down the stairs (assuming they could push safely past those stomping agrily back UP the stairs. But was the news of the non-running 1 posted ON that white board? It was not. It was written – in ball point pen on a half sheet of 8×11 paper in front of the ticket book attendant. Who was blocked by annoyed people trying to get answers about alternatives and updates.