On today's show: 

Erica Meltzer, national editor at Chalkbeat who covers education policy and politics, talks about President-elect Trump's priorities in education, including his campaign promise to dismantle the federal Department of Education, plus his nomination of WWE founder Linda McMahon for education secretary.

Evan Simko-Bednarski, transit reporter at the New York Daily News, talks about the planned shutdown of subway service to the Rockaways for repairs, plus other transit news.

BRCA mutations are inextricably linked with breast cancer in women, but they can also lead to cancer in the pancreas, prostate and more in men. Kristen V. Brown, staff writer at The Atlantic covering health and science, explains the link and why more men should get tested for the BRCA gene.

As Thanksgiving approaches, many Americans who are estranged from members of their family may be wondering how to reestablish that relationship. Fortesa Latifi, a journalist who is currently working on a book about family vloggers and child influencers, discusses the prevalence of estrangement in America and offers advice for those looking to reconnect with their loved ones.

Transcripts are posted to each segment as they become available.

"Rockaway lifeguards sound alarm on deadly potential of city's beach closure plan" (Gothamist, 5/19/22)

Susan Page, USA Today Washington bureau chief and the author of Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power (Twelve, 2021), talks about the latest in national politics. Jon Campbell, Albany reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, and Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent, talk about the new court-imposed congressional district maps and how they are affecting who is running in which districts. Bridget Read, senior writer at New York Magazine, discusses her recent feature in Curbed about New York City's rental market and how bidding wars have driven up the price of apartments. Jake Offenhartz, reporter at Gothamist, talks about the potential dangers in the upcoming temporary closure of Rockaway beach this summer for construction.

Transcripts are posted to each segment as soon as they are available.

To get a sense of what people were thinking and feeling ahead of the summer, WNYC's Sean Carlson headed out to the Rockaway boardwalk.

But this summer, young people arrested for misdemeanors on the peninsula will have an option much closer to home. A community court is scheduled to open through a partnership with the Queens District Attorney, two local police precincts, neighborhood leaders, and Queens Defenders.

Read more at Gothamist.

Kusama first presented her “Garden” outside of the Venice Biennale in 1966 as an uninvited participant at the art fair (back then, the globes were made of plastic). Standing among the reflective spheres, barefoot and in a gold kimono, she sold them for $2 a piece with signs that said, “Your Narcissism for Sale.”

“I think her main thrust is that she wanted to talk about the art world and the fact that the art world was so enchanted with itself,” said Lynn Zelevansky, a freelance curator, and art historian. “The fact that most human beings on this planet could not afford the art that was being shown at the Venice Biennale and that’s why she sold the balls for $2 each.”

Italian authorities eventually shut her down, but the installation has continued with shows in places such as Central Park (2004), the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris (2010) and recently at the Glass House in Connecticut (2016).

Now, it’s part of “Rockaway!” a free public art show created in 2014 led by Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1, and the artist Patti Smith, with the support of the Rockaway Artists Alliance, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, National Park Service, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Biesenbach and Smith have homes in the Rockaways and saw first-hand the damage to the area from Sandy in 2012 (More recently, there’s been even more erosion, leading to the closure of popular beaches).  Through the art series, they, along with the other participating organizations hope to bring attention to the need to rebuild and reinforce the region.

“I think it’s very important to not to think about ‘Rockaway!’ as a festival for art's sake,” said Biesenbach at the unveiling of Kusama’s work.  “It really has a different meaning and I think it’s very important for us that it’s raising awareness for this very vulnerable area here.”

An artist like Kusama who draws large crowds (and lots of Instagram attention) might bring the kind of attention the “Rockaways!” is hoping for (as long as the visitors aren’t too narcissistic).

Check out Gothamist for more pictures and here for directions. 

"Narcissus Garden" is open Friday through Sunday, 12-6 pm at Gateway National Recreation Area in Fort Tilden through September 3, 2018.

That was where WNYC first met hairdresser Richard Blanck. Like his wife, Blanck was born and raised in the area. And like many of his neighbors, the 72-year-old refused to evacuate during Sandy.

"It was mighty scary. It sounded like a jet plane was landing on your street," Blanck said. "I stayed on the porch. I was up to my ankles in water and the high voltage things on the poles started to spark. That's when I jumped back in the house."

Blanck's cellar filled up with eight feet of water. Four feet filled the garage. Lost were a basement of memories: family heirlooms, Christmas ornaments, a wedding dress. It would be two months before his heat and electricity were restored and another two years for him to repair the damage.

After that, it was all too easy to imagine another storm hitting.

"I would not live near water, I'm too old to start to rebuild," he remarked in a telephone interview from his new home in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he and his wife live now. They are more than a hundred miles from the ocean. Watching news about this fall's hurricanes brings him back to Sandy. "My heart goes out to these people, especially the poor, the ones on the islands," he said. "There's no words to express the sadness you feel for them."

Blanck says he's happier now. He prefers the quieter, softer way of life outside of New York City. And he's glad to be nowhere near the ocean.

What the letter didn't include was the fact that the city has a "revenue contract" with Citibike, giving the company exclusivity for its first two phases (which include Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens — but not the Rockaways) and is in talks to expand to all five boroughs.

There currently are no Citibikes in the Rockaways. 

On Monday, standing with Spin representatives at Rockaway Beach, Queens Councilman Eric Ulrich accused the city of depriving the area of bike sharing.

"You would think it's a no-brainer, it doesn't cost tax payers a dime," Ulrich said. 

Leaders from Spin said they're still hoping to get permission to launch, legally.

Lorraine Quinn, who lives in the Rockaways, questioned Spin's business model of leaving bikes in strategic, public locations, including bike racks. Those who want to use Spin bikes use an app to unlock them.

"The bike lanes here are very small, it's already extremely crowded," Quinn said. "If you have a spot for 15 bikes and then people take bikes from other areas and bring back 30 bikes, where is that going? That's going to affect our whole area, and the look, and maybe our access to the beach."

Just three days before it planned to begin operations in the Rockaways, the company Spin received a cease-and-desist letter from city authorities.

"Please be advised that you do not have the authorization or permission, pursuant to a concession, franchise, permit, contract or otherwise, required for such operations," Michelle Craven, senior executive director of cityscape and franchises at the Department of Transportation, wrote in a letter to Spin CEO Derrick Ko.

The orange bikes debuted at Austin's South by Southwest festival this year. The company has since launched bike shares in Seattle and San Francisco. 

Unlike Citibike, which uses docks to lock and store their bicycles, San Francisco-based Spin allows riders to unlock a bicycle using an app and QR-code. The company charges $1 for half-an-hour. (By comparison, Citibike charges a minimum $12 for a day, but customers cannot use the bike for more than 30 minutes at a stretch without incurring extra charges.)

Spin's bikes are equipped with GPS and are strategically placed, based on demand.

"Ultimately we just want bikes to be accessible and affordable for everyone," CEO Derrick Ko told WNYC in an interview in April.

Ko said he hopes to launch Spin in neighborhoods where Citibike doesn't have a presence, like Staten Island and Queens. 

City Councilman Eric Ulrich, a Republican who had flirted with running for mayor, and who represents part of the Rockaway peninsula, supports Spin coming to his district. 

"The mayor would rather protect a public monopoly like CitiBike — which barely exists outside of Manhattan — than expand sensible bike sharing in neighborhoods that need it most," he said in a statement. "New Yorkers are starving for transportation alternatives and Mayor de Blasio shamefully says, 'Let them eat cake!'"

Spin is holding a press conference Monday in the Rockaways. The company couldn't be reached for comment on the city's cease-and-desist letter. But in a statement, it said it plans to continue having conversations with the DOT.

"It reaffirms our commitment to working closely and collaboratively with governments to provide innovative transportation options to cities that are affordable, equitable and eco-friendly," the company said.

Federal officials, recognizing that a large part of the issue was the steady disinvestment in public housing over the years, awarded the New York City Housing Authority a $3 billion grant for Sandy repairs. The funds were created to fix roofs, sidewalk and boilers at 33 developments damaged by the storm. And it's to be used for resiliency upgrades to prevent future storms from damaging the buildings. The grant is the largest in FEMA history.

You can see exactly what stage each development is in and what the money is being used for here.

This year, NYCHA finally began spending some of the grant for upgrades and resiliency. Construction has begun on three sites, with 23 others in the pre-construction phase.

At a building that's a model for other developments, Lower East Side Rehab V, construction is nearly complete. 

The city has installed low-cost elements, like a flood wall next to a ramp that leads to the basement and the boilers. 

The top of the stairs leading to the basement now have a 50-pound, removable storm gate that can be easily installed by housing staff if there's a storm surge warning.

Since the boiler system can't be moved to another location, there's now a flood wall inside the boiler room. The doorway has a flood panel that can be easily installed. And the basement windows have metal frames on the outside to quickly affix 20-pound aluminum panels.

Joy Sinderbrand, vice president for the office of Recovery and Resilience at NYCHA, says her office is designing each development on a case-by-case basis. "At each of the sites this looks different, and it has to do with the building height above sea level, the building orientation, whether there's landscaping that can be used, whether there are elements that can be designed into the building," she said.

So far, NYCHA has spent $284 million of the FEMA grant on repairs across the city. It's spent an additional $144 million over the past two years on design for these projects, plus asbestos abatement and boiler demolition.

When Sandy hit, 64 boilers were damaged or destroyed. The city brought in mobile boilers, which cost $1 million a month and frequently broke down. After two years, the City Council held a NYCHA hearing in a NYCHA housing development to draw attention to the problem.

Today, 16 developments are using 41 mobile boilers, which cost $500,000 a month total. These are newer boilers than the ones installed after Sandy; they are raised above the floodplain and are expected to be in place until 2018.

At the Carlton Manor Houses in the Rockaways, the mobile boilers are housed in two trailers and take up half a handball court. The tenant association president, Lawanda John-Gainey, lives on the 11th floor. It takes a while to get hot water up to her apartment, she said.

"You got to run the water in the tub, run the water in the sink, flush the toilet. And just wait," she said, adding it can take up to 30 minutes before the hot water is flowing.

NYCHA says it's also revamped how it updates residents on evacuation orders. The agency said if there is another evacuation, it will use a combination of robo-calls, social media and door-knocking to inform residents about what's coming and what their options are.

Gainey said she wasn't aware of NYCHA's evacuation plans. She said she'd be reluctant to evacuate to a city shelter after her experience during Sandy. "Last time they had people go to different shelters, but they had no way for those people to get back," she said. "No, that's no good, you don't just send me to West Bubble and I don't have no way to get back."

But one thing that's rarely mentioned by officials or residents is how the storm may have been a blessing in disguise. Many of these housing developments were short of funds for overdue repairs and upgrades that they will now be getting, thanks to the FEMA grant.

There will be several more years until construction is complete, though. Until then,  many residents are still living in vulnerable developments.

Tucked among the sand dunes and sea grass of New York City’s outermost barrier reef, a splash of color dominates the landscape.

Its the latest addition to MoMA PS1’s Rockaway! public art festival: an installation by Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse, who covered an abandoned building at Fort Tilden, a former military base turned waterfront park, in vivid shades of red.

The installation is located in the Rockaways, a neighborhood that has undergone a massive recovery effort in the four years since Hurricane Sandy brought significant damage to the oceanfront peninsula.

Artist Katharina Grosse appears next to her piece in the Rockaways in Queens, New York. Photo by Andi Wang/PBS NewsHour

Fort Tilden was established in 1917, the same year that the U.S. joined Britain, France and Russia to fight in World War I.

The military base was positioned to keep watch over New York Harbor and, if necessary, be the first line of defense by air or sea. But eventually, the military site became defunct, and in 1974 it was decommissioned and taken over by the National Parks Service.

The site is one of transition and occasional contradiction. It is part of a former military base that today defends nothing. It’s part of a group of man-made structures, which have been eroded by some of the city’s most unbridled nature. In the next year, it will likely be demolished to make way for more post-Sandy park restoration.

Grosse said this state of transformation drew her to the site. “I think that’s a fascinating moment where you’re in the present, but you experience it right now, all these possibilities of transformation,” she said.

Photo by Andi Wang/PBS NewsHour

First, a team prepared the building site and blocked off a surrounding perimeter — then, she painted her first strokes in white.

She followed it with three shades of red, which she alternated with white over the course of painting. In total, the painting process took a week.

The installation, a splash of color against the sand, stands in stark contrast to the surrounding environment. “It’s very alone, it’s very visible, it is fragile as well,” she said. “I like color to be artificial and somehow not at all related to certain tones that I see around myself.”

Photo by Andi Wang/PBS NewsHour

Klaus Biesenbach, curator at large for MoMA PS1, first encountered Katharina Grosse’s work at a building in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.

The neighborhood, located on the precipice of a levee that broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2006, bore some of the greatest damage of the storm. Even as redevelopment efforts continue throughout the city, empty lots and abandoned buildings remain a common sight in the Lower Ninth Ward.

In 2008, Grosse painted one of those buildings with bright orange strokes for “Prospect.1,” a piece at the New Orleans Biennial.

As she painted, “you would literally see a mass of water” just beyond the levee, she said. “When I was there, you could feel it in your fingertips that this was a very dangerous spot,” she said.

After seeing that project, Biesenbach invited Grosse to develop the space in Fort Tilden, which was a former aquatics center on the military base.

Photo by Andi Wang/PBS NewsHour

Biesenbach said he wants the exhibition to foster dialogue about the surrounding environment and how to plan for future storms.

“I think what’s very important to acknowledge is that four years after Hurricane Sandy, we’re in recovery. The recovery needs to go gradually into preparation,” he said. “We know there’s going to be another storm. We know the sea level is rising.”

The piece will be on view at the Gateway National Recreation Area at Fort Tilden in Queens, New York, through Nov. 30.

The post This vivid installation splashes color across a long-abandoned military base appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Construction workers were putting some finishing touches on the final section, between Beach 117th Street and Beach 126th Street early Friday, in preparation for an opening later in the evening.

Marge O'Brien and her friend, Rita Balfe, were sitting on a bench near Beach 117th Street, enjoying the boardwalk despite overcast skies. Both said the new concrete boardwalk is an improvement over the previous wooden one, which was heavily damaged during Sandy.

"Oh, the new boardwalk is 100 percent better," O'Brien said.

Balfe agreed.

"The wood didn't hold up every year, you know, so it always had to be replaced," she said. "I mean, it was a beautiful boardwalk, but nothing compared to what this is now."

Even with cloudy skies, several cyclists were riding up and down. Ben Foley said the new boardwalk makes for a much smoother ride, and he hopes the opening of the new stretch will help local businesses, too. "I think they rely on the boardwalk," he said.

Other residents said while they were excited it was finally ready, there are some downsides, including obstructed views of the beach. Protective dunes were built up post-Sandy.

"Now we can't see the ocean," said Timothy Curtain. "But, you know, we don't want no water coming back again, that was a disaster."

He said he's confident the new boardwalk was built to last.

"This will never move...not in our lifetime, anyway," he said. "Cement and steel, I guess, is the way to go."

This fall, the city will continue construction between Beach 19th Street and Beach 39th Street, which is currently open, with all new construction since Sandy slated for completion by next Memorial Day.

Add to that list, one other: the Rockaway Peninsula in southeastern Queens.

At least that's what Eric Sanderson argues in a new research paper published in the latest issue of Northeastern Naturalist. Sanderson, a senior conservation ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (which runs New York City's zoos) and author of the best-selling Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, looked at 100 charts and maps dating back to 1502 to arrive at his conclusion, which puts the peninsula's age at far younger than previously thought.

The peninsula grew, Sanderson believes, as a result of ocean currents pushing sand further and further west, forming first just a spit, then a ridge, and finally a piece of land substantial enough on which to build houses, roads and a subway line. The Rockaways formed a protective barrier that in turn allowed the marsh islands inside Jamaica Bay to form — although in the 20th century, their very existence has been threatened by pollution and sea level rise.

Given how Sandy entirely submerged the Rockaways and the marsh islands when it hit in 2012, Sanderson's research has profound implications for how the region plans how, or whether, to make the area more resilient in the future.

Orton said the flooding, which was the "worst flood event for the New York City region" since Sandy, was caused by Monday's snowstorm. The storm seemed mild because it hit far off shore, but it still drove waters up onto the roads with the high tide.

Orton studies storm surges and he said sea level rise will make flooding more common. "It's not something dramatic," he said. "But it is accelerating and every decade it's gonna be worse."

John Cori, a resident and co-president of Friends of Rockaway Beach, said the area isn't getting the help it needs from the city. "On 84th Street, these people are walking in plastic bags back and forth to their houses," he said. "In Broad Channel, they're underwater. On 120th Street, they're underwater."

Cori said residents are still waiting for protective measures like rock jetties and bulkheads.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city has added sand to the beaches and built dunes, and has upgraded bulkheads on Beach Channel Drive.

But that didn't reassure the residents who witnessed the flooding. Many took to social media to share photos and videos of their neighborhoods Tuesday. 

Okay. This #Rockaway flooding situation is downright ridiculous now. 😑😑😑 cc: @TheWaveNews @Rockawaytimes pic.twitter.com/n5ZzHim8LH

Click here to see the Stevens Institute’s real-time map of flood conditions in the northeast.

Philip Orton spoke to WNYC's Jami Floyd.

“It’s like I'm living in a third world country," Lloyd-Bei, 55, said last week. "I have to literally fill buckets up in the kitchen and lug 'em up the stairs.”  

His home sits on the Jamaica Bay side of the peninsula, four houses down from the water. Black mold creeps across the ceiling in the living room. On the night of Oct. 29, 2012, seven feet of water filled a basement that housed a spare bedroom and his father’s large collection of vinyl records. 

Now, all that’s left is mud. There’s a copper pipe jutting out of the wall that drips water into a toilet that sits in the middle of the room. The wood overhead is soft with mildew.

For many people in this predominantly African-American neighborhood, Sandy recovery has been an agonizingly slow frustrating process. In the early days after Sandy, the city’s Rapid Repairs program moved swiftly and got Lloyd-Bei’s electricity back on and installed a new boiler. But he needed more help.

“I felt like an imbecile," he said. "I know a lot of people could do this work themselves: go to Home Depot, buy the supplies. But I really don't know how to do it.”

More than 20,000 New Yorkers applied to the city’s Build it Back program for major repairs or even reconstruction that was not covered under Rapid Repairs or their flood insurance policies. But more than half of those people dropped out, after facing the complex maze of paperwork and requirements or determining they did not need help after all. Lloyd-Bei was one of them. The city claimed he couldn't prove that he owned the home. He admits that he is still transferring ownership from his father, who died five years ago, but says that he provided the program with every document he was asked for.

While demoralized by his experience with the city, he remained tenacious in looking for help and reached out to the non-profit group Friends of Rockaway.

“As soon as I called them it was immediate response, it was very refreshing to finally feel like it's gonna happen,” he said.

Of the people who remain in the program, about 60 percent have either received reimbursement checks or seen repairs begin or both, according to city officials. But in Arverne, Build it Back has so far only started repairs on only 25 homes, leaving many people there feeling disenfranchised.  They vent their frustrations at a bi-weekly community meeting at the Battalion Pentecostal Church.

“I want to know why that almost three years later are were still, most of us, more or less are in the same position,” said one regular, attendee Irene Cooper.

Fielding complaints at the front of the room was the chairwoman of the community board, Sonia Moise. She fired back, saying that Arverne residents are not as involved as those who live in communities on the western end of the Rockaway Peninsula.

“Honestly, when you go to the west end and they have their meetings they come in droves, honestly, and they apply for all of these programs,” she said. “When you talk about the east end, we don’t come, we don’t fill out the applications, we don’t make enough noise.”

In Belle Harbor, one of those neighborhoods to the west, construction has begun on 17 percent of homes that are still in the Build it Back program, compared to 6 percent in Arverne. Moise suspects there might be economic or racial discrimination involved: According to Census data, the median income in Belle Harbor is twice as high as it is in Arverne; Belle Harbor is 98 percent white, while Arverne is predominantly black.

A spokesman for the city’s recovery program, Samuel Breidbart, said the reason is that Arverne has more homes that require complete reconstruction or elevation, which involve time-consuming design and engineering processes. 

To pick up the slack, a coalition of non-profits that had been operating in Queens banded together to share resources. They included national leaders like the Salvation Army as well as deeply rooted New York City groups like CAMBA. Known as the Queens Recovery Council, they meet every week in Arverne to discuss matching individual cases with non-profits that can help.

“It's like putting together a crazy, the most insansest puzzle you've ever put together,” said the group’s facilitator Hannah Arnett, who works for United Methodists Disaster Recovery. “It's a puzzle without box with the tiniest pieces.”

The group that's helping Lloyd-Bei, Friends of Rockaway, is one of the groups. It's an offshoot of the St. Bernard Project, which formed after Katrina in Louisiana. It has evolved from the early days right after Sandy when it did mostly "muck and gut jobs" — removing trash and moldy walls. Now, it runs a bustling operation out of a warehouse in Rockaway Beach.

Learning from their corporate donors, they've adopted UPS's inventory system for organizing tools and supplies. In its warehouse, there’s a massive white board with a black and white grid — a row for every house they're working on. Toyota’s managers swooped in and taught them how to use project management tools like Gantt charts to keep track of their projects.

“The idea here is for us to Gantt out, to visualize every stop of the process,” said Friends of Rockaway director Thomas Corley. “So that we can communicate to home owners, storm survivors, this is where you'll be two weeks from now this is where your home will be.”

The group is currently working on about a dozen homes and hope to add Lloyd-Bei's house to the chart soon. 

Even the city recognizes the value of these non-profit groups, and is partnering with Friends of Rockaway to complete Build it Back jobs — as well as work with home owners who don't qualify but still need help.

That was the suggestion laid out in former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's citywide resiliency plan issued last June. The agency that normally builds beach dunes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, does typically require public accessibility as a prerequisite for its construction projects.

But it turns out there is another pot of money that could pay for the project without forcing Breezy's beaches to go public: the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that he supported using FEMA money for the dunes, a necessary step in the approval process.

Arthur Lighthall, the general manager of the Breezy Point Cooperative, said opening up its beaches would require parking spaces and bathrooms that the densely-settled area does not have space for. He also said FEMA funding has other advantages: it will likely come more quickly.

"We may never see the results of any study or work done from the Army Corps for years," Lighthall said.

Check out our photo slideshow of some of the interview subjects chronicled by Jen and Susannah.

Sound familiar?

It started in 1954, when a series of damaging storms caused more than $750 million dollars in damage and killed more than 150 people in the U.S. The Army Corps of Engineers started a series of studies for New York City’s shoreline. Then, in 1960, Hurricane Donna hit the region as a Category 3 storm, and gave a sense of urgency to the endeavor.

But very little of the outlined plans came to fruition, although some of their features may resurface when the Army Corps releases a new set of studies over the next year and a half.

“We just put the mops away and people went back to normal,” said Dan Mundy, Sr., a resident of Broad Channel, Queens, who was 22 at the time. In the mid-1960s, after the study for the Rockaways was finally released, Mundy got a copy of it and pored over it.

The proposal, drawn up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was quite extensive. It recommended making the beach deeper and higher, and then building a flood wall 18-feet above sea level. The wall would rise up a bit above the boardwalk’s surface, like a solid fence that people could lean on and look out over, towards the ocean.

At the time, Mundy thought the plan was fanciful and doubted it would go anywhere.

“I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, this is some dream here,’” he said in an interview earlier this month on Rockaway Beach, which was seriously damaged in Sandy. “But what if that plan had been put in effect? We might not be standing here looking at this 24-7 operation that’s going on here, trying to get this beach ready.”

Mundy ended up founding an environmental organization that has helped restore the salt marsh in Jamaica Bay. He held on to the Army Corps study for decades until Sandy came, flooded the lower level of his house, and swept the report out to sea.

Looking back on the Army Corps studies, they seem eerily to presage just such a storm as Sandy:

The Rockaway study proposed a hurricane gate across the mouth of Jamaica Bay. The gate would have been kept open in good weather, but would have been closed before storms to protect neighborhoods on the inside of the bay, like Broad Channel and Canarsie, which in fact suffered seriously flooding from Sandy.

A 1964 Army Corps study for Staten Island’s South Shore suggested a thick reinforced levee, 15-feet above sea level, to wrap around neighborhoods like Oakwood Beach and Midland Beach, where more than a dozen people drowned from flash flooding.

In 1972, the Corps proposed a flood wall on Coney Island’s beach, according to a New York Times article at the time, as well as hurricane gates for Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay—areas which also suffered fatalaties, extensive damage and lengthy power and heat outages during Sandy.

The Corps took another look at Staten Island in 1976 and proposed extending the barrier it had earlier recommended all the way north to Fort Wadsworth, in the shadow of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

The structures would have been higher than Sandy’s storm tide, which topped out at 14 feet above sea level. It is hard to predict just how these barriers would have behaved during Sandy—some levees in New Orleans failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But John Boulé, a former commander of the Army Corps’ New York District, said they likely would have helped prevent damage.

“Certainly, the city and New York area remain vulnerable,” Boulé said in an interview, “and projects on the coast would reduce risks to the facilities and the structures behind them.”

Lack of interest, and money, doomed the plans. At the time, the Corps estimated the three plans would have cost about $100 million, more than $700 million in today’s dollars. The city, which was then entering its fiscal crisis, would have had to have contributed a portion of the money. Local officials said the Coney Island sea wall would have cut the city off from the water. And there were plenty of other engineering projects around the country that powerful congressmen wanted to get done instead.

Environmentalists also have long been wary heavy engineering solutions, and raised questions about certain aspects of the plans at the time. The hurricane gates, they said, would hinder water flow in and out of Jamaica Bay, which was polluted from sewage treatment plants.

As for levees and seawalls, Orrin Pilkey, a professor emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University, said they only encourage development in areas that people should instead move away from.

“The plans that the Corps made, I just simply would not trust,” said Pilkey, the co-author of a book, The Corps and the Shore, that is critical of the government agency.

Several years ago, the Army Corps began new studies for how to protect Staten Island and the Rockaways from erosion and storm damage. The federal Sandy bill allocated about $4 billion dollars to help finish those and other studies and potentially to build some of the projects that they will recommend. Suddenly, these old studies from the 1960s are relevant once again.

A recent report on the current Staten Island study, for example, indicated that a levee and seawall between 13 and 15 feet above sea level was being contemplated for part of the South Shore.

The project manager for the current Rockaways study, Dan Falt, said sea walls and hurricane gates are under consideration for that segment of the coast.

“We are going to much take a good look at this project with its flood wall approach,” Falt said, “because that may be the way to go.”

Pile driver installs a section of steel wall between A train tracks in the foreground and Jamaica Bay behind. (photo by Jim O'Grady)

(New York, NY - WNYC) New York is Holland now: the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority is building a wall to keep out the sea along a two-mile stretch of the A subway line on its way to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. The wall is made of thick steel and runs along the eastern side the tracks on the island of Broad Channel, in the middle of Jamaica Bay.

The $38 million project is the MTA's first big step since Sandy to prevent flooding from future storm surges.

To make sure the wall is strong enough to hold off another flood, workers are pounding each section about 30 feet into the ground. In the end, the wall will rise only seven feet above the rails, two feet above Sandy's height. The MTA thinks that's high enough.

On a recent windy afternoon, Contractor Mitch Levine was watching workers pile drive and weld each section into place. He said the wall is designed to withstand salt water. "This steel is special steel," he said. "It's marine steel, which will stop it from eroding over the course of 100 years."

Keeping the hungry waves at bay

NY MTA program manager Raymond Wong said the wall is supposed to prevent future storm surges from doing what Sandy did in this area, which was rip the embankment right out from under 400 feet of track.

"The tracks were hanging in the air," he said.

For three weeks after Sandy, each tide took another bite from a larger section of the embankment--until the NY MTA rebuilt the shore by dumping tons of stone and concrete next to the tracks. But this stretch of the A train across Jamaica Bay is still not in service. Thousands of riders now cram into crowded shuttle buses and face rush hour commutes that can end after midnight.

The wall will also serve a second purpose: keeping debris off the line. Forty-eight boats came to rest on the tracks after Sandy, along with jet skis, docks and fuel tanks. The clean up alone took three months.

Why a wall?

NY MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said engineers chose a steel wall to protect the A train because, "It could meet strength requirements as well as timing requirements--we wanted to make sure the wall would be in place by May 1." The line is scheduled to return to full service by summer.

Although Jamaica Bay is part of Gateway National Park, Ortiz said the wall didn't need to go through "any type of approval process" because it's within the right-of-way of the tracks, which is controlled by NYC Transit. Ortiz said the NY MTA did consult with the National Park Service and Army Corps of Engineers about the plan.

At the Broad Channel station replacing signals and thousands of feet of cable and other components. (Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Kevin Ortiz)

Bringing the power back

The MTA is taking a much more short term approach to repairing the A train's damaged electrical system. A mile away from Broad Channel, a control house sits in the railyard at the end of the line in Rockaway Park. Inside, Wong showed off rooms stuffed with equipment that looked modern in the 1950s, when it was installed. One panel has thousands of fuses, each with its own hand-lettered tag. Sandy turned these rooms into temporary aquariums.

"Everything was just coated in salt water that undermined the copper," Wong said. "When we came here, this whole thing was a big block of rust."

Electricity is vital to the subway. It powers signals that keep the trains apart, and switches that move those trains down the right track. There's also lighting at stations, public address systems, and power to the third rail to move the trains--the list goes on.

So what is the MTA doing to protect the electrical equipment at low-lying sites from future storms? "We're just trying to get up and running over here," Wong said. "There's really not much you can do."

Wong said, ideally, the MTA will lift the control house 10 feet in the air, rip out the old components and computerize the system. But that's millions of dollars and years away. His goal right now is to get the A train back by summer, however he can.

Click here for more photos of restoration work on the A line.

View from the A Train window as it crosses Jamaica Bay. (Photo by roboppy)

(New York, WNYC) Before Sandy, every A train trip between the Rockaway peninsula and the rest of New York City began and ended with a crossing of Jamaica Bay. The train moved along a piece of land so thin that, from inside the train, it appears to skim atop the water.  But for months, that 3.6 mile railroad bridge has been out, doubling commutes for Rockaways residents and further adding to the sense of deprivation brought on by Sandy.

On October 29, Sandy's storm surge overwhelmed that thread of connection. When the waters receded, the A train's foundation was gone, removing a major transit link from the peninsula's 130,000 residents.

One of those residents is senior producer of The Takeaway, Jen Poyant.  She moved to the Rockaways a few years ago for a relatively affordable beach home -- far from Manhattan, but still, a direct shot on the A train.  Water filled Poyant's basement, and came within a foot of flooding her first floor.  For a month, she and her family couldn't return home.  When she finally got back, she was overjoyed, but the daily trip to work can feel overwhelming -- like a little bit of work squeezed between commutes.

The direct train ride has become an odyssey from a slow-moving crowded bus to the train miles into the mainland.  Sometimes, fellow commuters told Poyant, it takes all night to get home from Manhattan.

The MTA says its aware of the frustrating commute, but can't promise relief until summer.

MTA executive director Tom Prendergast described the result to New York's City Council: "An entire bridge and critical subway line serving the Rockaways was destroyed."

With the A train out, the MTA put subway cars on a truck, drove them to the peninsula and lifted them by crane onto tracks that serve six stops at the end of the line. The H train now runs for free from mid-peninsula at Beach 90th Street to the eastern end of the Rockaways. Bus service has also been increased.

But these are temporary measures. The list of needed repairs to the A train is extensive, and the going is slow. "We had to build out the shoulders on the east and west sides of the track, where you saw the washouts occur," Prendergast said. "We've had to replace damaged and missing third rail protection boards and insulators. We've had to replace signal power and communications equipment, which is ongoing." And damage to the Broad Channel subway station has not yet been fully repaired.

The MTA has patched and reinforced the land bridge where Sandy took large bites from it. But crews are still laboriously laying track and rebuilding the signal system from scratch — both on the railbed crossing Jamaica Bay and on the west end of the peninsula.

In the meantime, the MTA says it'll keep increasing service on the Q53 line, using old buses that have been held back from retirement. Those buses are jammed with riders every weekday rush hour as they make their way over the Cross Bay Bridge. More buses are coming in April.

The A train is expected back no earlier than late June.

Walking to school in Calcutta  (photo by Alfred Yaghobzadeh/SIPA)

A new exhibit now on display at the United Nations chronicles those sojourns.  Journeys to School follows the routes of children in 13 different countries take as they walk, ride donkeys, snowmobile, ride the subway, and even canoe to school. Many of them must navigate dangerous roadways -- an issue that was thrown into sharp relief in New York City last week, where a 6-year old boy was struck by a truck just blocks from his school.  All the photos underscore the link between transportation and education. Getting to school in a safe -- not to mention timely -- fashion is as important as the condition of the classroom.

(Photo by Kate Hinds)

Children going to school via somlot, a motorcycle rickshaw in Mae Sot, Thailand. The driver is also the children's teacher. "If I can't get the kids only 50% would attend class," he said. (Photo by Nicolas Axelrod/SIPA)

According to UN statistics, 1,000 people under the age of 25 are killed in traffic crashes each day.

Six-year-old Elizabeth Atenio walks two hours every day to attend classes at the Kibera School for Girls in Nairobi. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki/SIPA)

While much of the exhibit was devoted to countries in the developing world, some children are in major cities -- including New York.

14-year-old Far Rockaway resident Santiago Munoz, who commutes over two hours each way to school in the Bronx (photo by Kate Hinds)

Santiago Munoz lives in Far Rockaway, Queens -- a New York City neighborhood devastated by Sandy. Before the storm, Santiago's commute to the Bronx High School of Science was already daunting.

"I used to walk six blocks to the nearest A train station," he said, "and from there I would ride it for around, I would say 50 minutes, then transfer to the 4 train for 40 minutes." Tack on a ten minute walk from the station to the school, and his commute -- on an average day -- was one hour and 40 minutes.

But then Sandy washed out a key segment of the A train, and he now takes two buses to get to the subway. "And now it takes me two hours and a half to get to Bronx Science." He says he uses his commute time to do homework or catch up on sleep.

Munoz said the exhibit gave him perspective. While he acknowledges his commute appears tough to the average New Yorker, "compared to these kids -- not at all. They're very inspiring."

Ruth McDowall, standing in front of her photographs of schoolchildren in Nigeria (photo by Kate Hinds)

Photographer Ruth McDowall talked about the average school day for children of the nomadic Fulani minority in Kulumin Jeji, Nigeria.  "They have to wake up at 5:00 in the morning," said McDowall, "to do chores like collecting firewood, getting water -- sometimes it can take an hour or more in dry season." The kids start walking to school by 6:30 am. "They get to school by eight, do about three hours of school, and then do another hour and a half walk home." Because the walk is long and hot, many children become dehydrated on the way to school, where they often find it difficult to concentrate. When they get back home, the rest of the day is devoted to herding responsibilities.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (photo by Kate Hinds)

The exhibit is on display in the United Nations Visitors Center until April 26, 2013.  It's organized by UNESCO, public transportation company Veolia Transdev and photo agency SIPA Press.