Loading ...If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
ConEd has never been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed but this seems pretty ridiculous to us. ConEd has been finding so many stray-voltage hot spots throughout the city they’ve started hiring “specially trained” livery cab drivers to park their cars over them to keep people or pets from accidentally walking over them.
The drivers and their cars can sit at a hot spot for days in rotation waiting for ConEd to come out and fix it. The cars are given a letter explaining what their doing loitering outside people’s houses for hours at a time.
“A stray voltage hazard was discovered here,” the card says. “The coned/taped off area contains an extremely dangerous electrified object or structure.
“I am unable to move my vehicle because I am guarding this coned/taped off area from pedestrians.”
ConEd is unwilling or unable to say precisely how much they are paying the drivers to sit on their grates, nor could they say how many companies are involved in the program. Really they couldn’t provide any specifics about any part of the program except that the drivers are specially trained and they sit there for days on end.
One of the livery drivers said of his specialty, “I just watch and make sure no one goes near it.” If ConEd is paying the usual base rate of $30/hr that works out to about $720 per day, per site. Our guess is that thanks to bureaucracy and or just plain incompetence they’re paying way more than $30/hr.
Don’t get us wrong, anything is better than having someone killed by an electrified sidewalk but come on, if ConEd is actively talking about raising our rates we’d really like to hear that it’s going to something that seems less wasteful than this.
—admin
Subscribe to Metadish using an 
Post a Comment