Kosciusko, Kosciuszko

It is hard for me to get my head around the fact that the Times mass transit reporter is someone from Texas. Emma G. Fitzsimmons was in the right place at the right time when the Second Avenue subway was finally built. I wasn't there when it opened at the beginning of the year to great fanfare, and I have yet to find a need to use that portion of the Q line. I'm waiting for a doctor's appointment later in the year that might afford me the opportunity to get off at 72nd Street and Second Avenue. Of course, this depends on how well my right knee is doing.

The Second Avenue subway vaulted Ms. Fitzsimmons onto the front page with her Second Avenue subway reporting. And as if that weren't enough, the recent track breakdowns in Penn Station that have placed the cojones of the LIRR, New Jersey Transit and Amtrak, and their millions of daily passengers in a vise, is again front page news. The story from the tracks keeps getting uglier, and Ms. Fitzsimmons is there with her hard hat and Timberland shoes to bring us the story, even if she has to kick rats out of the way. Jimmy Breslin would have been proud of her.

And now there is the opening of the new Kosciuszko Bridge. That name that is one of the hardest to spell surnames in all of New York. My own last name is 12 letters and is completely Greek in origin, and it is not as hard to spell as Kosciuszko.

The opening of the new bridge finds Ms. Fitzsimmons in a supporting role, as David Dunlap, another infrastructure reporter, gets the front page nod to bring us the story, complete with schematic drawings of support cables. The design of the bridge is of the new style for suspension bridges, and gives everyone a preview of what the new Tappan Zee Bridge will look like.

A few pages from that story Ms. Fitzsimmons gets to share a byline with another reporter, Patrick McGeehan, on Amtrak's announcement that they are going to start repairing tracks "this summer," making everyone's life miserable, but leaving out just how miserable by not telling anyone the number of tracks that will be taken out of service. There are 21, serving three railroads. The long hot summer will be here.

Amtrak owns Penn Station. If anyone remembers the bankruptcy of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the demolishment of the old Penn Station, they will remember a process that kept bankruptcy lawyers employed for life.

The old joke about New York City was that it was a "nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

With Long Island City sprouting so many new towers that it seems as if the Brobdingnagians went on a building spree, the other phrase, "New York will be a nicer place when they get it finished" never seemed more appropriate.

It is a great time to be here from Texas.

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