Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out how the voice of the subway came to be heard on the Roosevelt Island Tram, too. We’ll also get details on the fight that’s building in Albany over changing the state’s landmark climate change law.
In a tram car about to cross the East River, 250 feet up, a familiar voice tells passengers to stay away from the doors — and to hold onto the handrails.
It’s the voice of the “stand clear of the closing doors, please” guy from the subway, Charlie Pellett, who has done voice-overs for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority since the late 1990s. He became the voice of the tram on Monday after a new sound system was installed last week.
“The cabins can get loud,” said Bryant Daniels, an assistant vice president of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, or RIOC, the state agency that manages the island. “And we wanted to ensure riders could clearly hear our messages about priority seating for elderly and disabled passengers,” along with the ones about the doors and the handrails.
Pellett wasn’t the first voice heard on the new system. An employee of the company that operates the tram did the announcements, and someone wrote in a WhatsApp group that “it would be great if we had the ‘stand clear of the closing doors’ guy,” according to Dan Schwartzman, a news anchor at Bloomberg who lives on Roosevelt Island. “I said, ‘I know the guy. Let me ask if he’d do it.’”
Schwartzman caught up with Pellett and asked if the voice of the subway would be the voice of the Roosevelt Island Tram. “His eyes lit up,” Schwartzman recalled.
It turned out that Pellett loves the tram. Maybe not as much as he loves the subway — “I once broke up with somebody because she would not ride in the front car,” where he would have almost the same view as the train operator, he said — but there was love in his voice.
“The tram is a gem,” he said. “The tram is iconic. If you think about five iconic things in New York City, there are the subways, there is Times Square, there are yellow cabs, there is the Statue of Liberty and, I would suggest, there is the Roosevelt Island Tram.” Especially if you know your movies. “If you’re a Spider-Man fan, you’ve got to ride on the Roosevelt Island Tram,” he said.
He also knows that there can be lines, especially since social media discovered the tram and turned it into a tourist destination, an inexpensive way to see the Manhattan skyline, to the dismay of some Roosevelt Islanders.
When he was starting out, Pellett wanted to work in broadcasting and also work part time as a train operator on the subway. The M.T.A. wasn’t looking for part-timers, he said, so he never took the motorman’s exam. (I did once, for a story. There were a lot of multiple-choice questions but none about “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.”)
He said it was “an honor” to do the tram announcements, which is what he has said about doing the subway announcements. He knows how maddening the subways can be — he commutes by subway every day. “I share the joy and share the pain,” he told me.
He also knows that he is a part of the city’s consciousness. “Restaurants come and go,” he said in a documentary called “The Most Recognizable Voice in New York.” “Broadway shows open and close. Celebrities, entertainers, they disappear. Everybody has 15 minutes. I’ve had at least 11 years.” That was 11 years ago.
Weather
Expect a rainy day with temperatures around 43. Rainy conditions will continue into the night with a low around 37.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until March 20 (Eid al-Fitr).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Like most married couples, my wife and I do not always share the same views, and any tweets she has liked as a private citizen do not speak for me.” — Representative Dan Goldman, Democrat of New York, who is facing questions about his wife’s social media activity regarding Palestinians.
The latest Metro news
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An insulting comment: A conservative radio host who attracts attention by being provocative described Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a “jihadist” and a “Radical Islam cockroach” in a social media post.
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Columbia faces a potential lawsuit: The university is under investigation for its handling of allegations against Robert Hadden, a former gynecologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital convicted of sex crimes.
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Violation of a judge’s order: Immigration agents in New Jersey may be held in criminal contempt if they continue to transfer migrants out of state.
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Unauthorized occupants: A report by the Department of Investigation highlights enormous challenges facing the New York City public housing system, including squatters.
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Armed squad created by a Trump ally: The unit — set up by Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is the Republican candidate for governor of New York — is being challenged by Democrats, who say that its members are unqualified.
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A place where the public can sit with the paintings: A SoHo artist spent years repainting site-specific artwork he hopes will never leave his home.
Energy costs surge, putting a spotlight on the state’s climate law
As demand for electricity has soared in the United States, sky-high utility bills have followed, contributing to an affordability crisis. President Trump discussed utility rates and cost-of-living concerns with Mayor Mamdani during their first meeting at the White House.
In New York, one of the 10 most expensive states in terms of electricity costs, concerns about utility rates have prompted Gov. Kathy Hochul to consider drastic changes to the state’s 2019 climate law. Her agencies say that going ahead with it could lead to even higher energy bills.
My colleague Hilary Howard writes that the fight is pitting climate activists and like-minded legislators against supporters of Hochul’s “all-of-the-above” approach. The activists believe it’s crucial to aggressively ramp up solar, offshore wind and other green energy projects. Hochul’s strategy favors a balanced mix of energy sources, including nuclear.
Activists and many lawmakers remain committed to meeting the goals in the law. It calls for New York to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydropower by 2030 and to shift entirely to carbon-free power a decade later. But they fear that Hochul is taking steps to amend the law and that it could fall victim to backroom dealings in Albany.
Hochul, who has considerable latitude to amend the law, seems transparent about her intentions. “I’m raising the alarm” about the energy and affordability crisis, she said at a news conference on Monday. She added that she hoped to engage the Legislature soon in a conversation about energy costs.
State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, said that the climate law was not to blame for rising energy costs.
“That’s nonsense, and everyone knows it,” she said.
Her office cited one report finding that households making less than $200,000 a year would benefit from a core program of the climate law, which charges polluters for exceeding emissions limits. It uses the proceeds to invest in renewable projects and energy-efficiency initiatives.
But last week the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority sent Hochul a memo saying that if the state began penalizing polluters, oil and gas prices for New Yorkers could jump by as much as $4,000 a year. The memo, which did not include details on how the authority had come up with those figures, seemed to prompt the governor to call the news conference.
METROPOLITAN diary
Too full
Dear Diary:
Two friends and I boarded a crosstown bus and sat on opposite sides in a two-seater and a single.
The empty aisle filled up quickly as we moved along. Suddenly, I realized I did not know where we were supposed to get off, and, unfortunately, I could no longer see my friends to ask them.
I tapped the guy standing above me and explained the situation. He tapped the guy next to him. They both graciously moved to create an opening so that I could see my friends.
Broadway was my stop.
— Joyce R. Heller
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post On the Trendy Tram, You Can Hear a Subway Voice appeared first on New York Times.
