The Long Island Rail Road is in the midst of a program to replace manual signal switches, like the one this man in the photo is operating. This photo was taken in the train tower on the east side of Jamaica Station. Railroad engineers must actually move the levers to switch a train onto a given track. The LIRR is replacing manual switches with computers.

LIRR Photo

Here's a creative way to attract city-dwellers to Long Island for a day.

The American Airpower Museum at Republic Airport in Farmingdale is partnering with the Long Island Rail Road to offer railroad passengers free trips via vintage Army truck. People who use the service over Labor Day Weekend will receive gate discounts to visit the museum's air show, featuring a squadron of World War II fighters, bombers and patrol planes flying throughout the weekend.

Posters, video ads and re-enactors dressed in WWII garb will distribute discount passes at Penn Station, Jamaica Station and stops throughout Brooklyn.

It's a good way to ease people's concerns about being stranded without public transit once they're on the Island.

American Airpower Museum Photo

Newsday reports today that the Federal Aviation Administration couldn't require commercial airliners to carry a system to prevent explosions like the one that doomed TWA Flight 800 until the technology became light enough, small enough and cheap enough. This happened after two "eureka" moments for researchers in 2002. Then came years of wrangling with the airline industry.

Fortunately all was settled in the nick of time, as the 12th anniversary of the TWA crash was about to roll around.

The acting FAA administrator, Robert Sturgell, greeted the new regulation on the day before the anniversary as "another step forward on what has been a long journey of investigation, discovery, innovation and cooperation."

His boss, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, welcomed the FAA's achievement with a crash victim's brother at her side, as "a memorial to the victims and a tribute to dedicated public servants who have spent their lives making flying safer."

You can't complain about the outcome, but you might wonder about the timing and these folks' dedication to our safety.

Since the research was ready six years ago (perhaps on the anniversary of no significant event) and the parties had years to work out a deal, might the regulation have been ready to go, say, three days before the anniversary? Two months before? Seventeen months before?

Wouldn't federal and industry officials committed to the safest possible skies want to rush such a regulation into effect as soon as it was available? Why risk even one more midair explosion?

We've become so accustomed to the news being packaged for consumption and timed for maximum impact and availability of related video that nobody is even asking these questions.

The Ravitch Commission is reportedly hard at work, and it's a good thing, too. Because MTA Chief Lee Sander is going to update the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board next Wednesday on the state of the MTA's finances, and it ain't gonna be pretty. So, the fact that Sander can add that the legendary Richard Ravitch and crew are working on a solution will soften the blow.

Gov. David Paterson came up with the idea for Ravitch to head a commission shortly after congestion pricing failed. So, it's a good bet that some sort of alternative congestion pricing idea will come out of the commission's deliberations, which are scheduled to finish by Dec. 5. Congestion pricing was supposed to produce $400 million to $500 million a year for mass transit upgrades. Without it, there is a huge hole in the MTA's proposed 2010-2014 construction budget.

But don't let them fool you. Even with congestion pricing money, the original $29.6 billion construction, or capital, budget was $9 billion short.