New Jersey Nightly News; New Jersey Nightly News Episode from 04/07/1980 6:30 pm

The transit strike so we called but New Jersey commuters never had it so good. It's a fact and if you have a fly you want to learn what it stands for tonight on a closer look. In sports New York promoter maraud Muhammad hits a big he'll be promoting the upcoming Alli Weaver fight. The New Jersey with Karen and Bill Perry. Good evening. It's day seven of the New York City transit strike the day city officials predicted would be the worst yet for commuters. It was for some but not those going in from New Jersey. We have two reports the first from Jack on a day night mirror Monday the day it was all going to come down. Thousands of commuters fighting their way into a city nearly paralyzed by a mass transit strike. Well for most New Jersey commuters the drive into the city was still a dream. Still very easy. Still much less than the

crunch that have been predicted. The extra manpower was on hand again at the communications center for the Lincoln Tunnel. But the figures for traffic here tell the story at the Lincoln Tunnel the Holland Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge traffic was still running at about 60 percent of a normal workday. It was heavier than the last regular commuting day last Thursday but then it was supposed to be with the end of the Easter and Passover holidays. The law limiting access to cars with two or more passengers is still strictly enforced and no doubt it is keeping traffic down. But the real crunch is at the railroad stations. Read Wells now with a look at the problems of rail commuters during this the fifth morning rush hour of the strike. The roads may have been relatively empty this morning but PATH train stations were anything but. The PATH station in Hoboken was a sea of humanity with people trying to get to work in Manhattan. At one point there were so many people the Port Authority policeman had

to rope off one area of the station in order to control the size of the crowd. New Jersey commuters have not really felt the brunt of the New York transit strike partially because the path line has been adding extra cars during the New York strike. But the relative calm could end this Friday at midnight unless past Carman of the Port Authority reach a contract settlement during the New York transit strike. Passenger traffic is almost doubled on the path line and by the end of last week nearly 50000 people a day were using Path trains. During the strike. Port Authority officials have learned that people from Long Island in the outer boroughs of New York managed to get into Midtown Manhattan. And then if they're going to lower Manhattan No the Wall Street area they take the path line over to New Jersey and then they get on another path train and take it back to Manhattan and get off of the Wall Street stock. And everybody is worried about the possibility of a path's strike. Next week if it is on strike what are you going to do. Well I hope that they'll be back this from here to down here and I work in Austin area.

If not in fact if anything I'm going to you live Brooklyn you live in Brooklyn come to New Jersey and you're back in to Manhattan that way. That's right. When you have no alternative plans. My options are very limited that they're not exist and. You have to get to work. I don't didn't work in 20 years. What are you going to do next week. I have no intention of going to work a day. But he just going in there for fun. Yeah you have been back and forth just for the hell of it. Yeah for people who do depend on path to get to work. The threat of a strike looms ominously in their minds and inspectors and maintenance men are seeking raises that would increase their salaries from 15 to $18000 a year. And if a settlement is not reached by Friday night these trains will become idle and empty. And if these people turn to their cars for transportation it could cause chaos at the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in the George Washington Bridge at the PATH station in Hoboken. I'm read Wells at is that strike threat looms the path engineers have

announced they will refuse over time because of that beginning tomorrow the special loop between Thirty third Street and the World World Trade Center will no longer run and passengers will not be able to board past trains at the stations at Thirty third 23rd 14th and ninth streets from 6:00 to 10:00 each morning. That's to prevent the train change that Reggie talked about. And if New Jerseyans have had an easy time getting into the city it's probably partly because of those restrictions on one passenger cars. Kathmandu has been checking out the carpooling situation. Even at the George Washington Bridge where there are no restrictions on the number of people crossing in cars between 6:00 and 10:00 a.m. Many are carpooling because of the restrictions on the other side of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels carpooling is mandatory during those hours. Vehicles are not being allowed through unless there are at least two occupants. The New York New Jersey Port Authority says the restrictions have been very effective in keeping down the number of cars at the three crossings.

We found that the Holland and Lincoln tunnels carpooling has increased significantly the average number of persons in each auto entering the city is roughly two point twenty people. Normally that number is something like 1.4 or 1.5 persons per vehicle. Those figures now put the metropolitan area carpool rankings at the top of the national average with fewer cars you think the P.A. would be losing money on tolls. But authorities say they're making up the difference with the increase in ridership on path and bus lines. When we arrived here to check out traffic at the George Washington Bridge around 535 our eyes hardly open just barely alive. Expecting to see cars backed up for miles but instead. Folks here are just zipping right along wearing some very big smiles. I keep watching myself whirl the cars but they haven't shown up. To get into the city with no probable. So far for New Jersey commuters this strike has had quite the opposite effect of what everyone expected. Instead of waiting in bumper to bumper traffic people on this side of the Hudson

are tying up phone lines arranging for carpool pickup locations. I can manage head shootings in two separate incidents left three people dead early this morning in West Orange a 60 year old couple was shot to death during a four hour siege in their home. Their 24 year old son William Jennings will be charged in the home with sides police said they were called to the scene by Jennings teenage sister shortly after 5:00 a.m.. She later escaped through a second story window. Jennings described as an avid hunter with a history of mental problems held about 20 armed police at bay until about 9:00 a.m. when he was critically wounded then captured. Meanwhile in South Jersey near Atlantic City a 41 year old woman is still in critical condition tonight. She was shot early this morning by a male friend who then killed himself inside of Pleasantville house where he had been holding her hostage. The dead man has been identified as 56 year old Charles Hicks of St. David's Pennsylvania. Police were called to that home about 9:00 last night. Negotiations continued

throughout the night with Walker but about 3:15 today shots rang out and both were critically found wounded. Hicks was pronounced dead shortly thereafter and Miss sunder Walker also a Pennsylvania resident remains unsure. Memorial Hospital police are calling it one of the biggest pot bust ever in New Jersey State Police today showed off two tons of marijuana. Morris County prosecutor's office seized yesterday in Denville the bust came when investigators saw a man loading a truck from a house that was under surveillance. Four men were arrested and officials hope the but the positive effect will be felt well past the county limits. One of the men such as this is taking the street he's going to get will have in fact. Been right in this area. Given the fact that if one of the family was like he's going to have him make the list. Police estimate that marijuana had a street value of more than two million dollars. Now the weather forecast for the state tonight will be cloudy with a good chance of rain probably

by morning. Temperatures should be in the mid 40s tomorrow should be cloudy with periods of rain throughout the day. The high should be in the upper 50s and the outlook for Wednesday. Windy mild another chance of showers. A Bill Perry is in a fighting mood tonight. How about it Bill. Not really a remarkable development over the weekend the bottom line

is Newark Marotta Mohammed is in the big time there are all kinds of reports who is Muhammad Ali going to fight next. Mike Weaver a Larry Holmes his first wife. Well it's going to be Ali and Weaver and Mohamed is the promoter. I talk to Mohamed by telephone today he was in his New York office after spending the weekend in California. Right now I'm here I was on his way back to California to put the finishing touches on the deal. It will all be made public a week from Wednesday at a press conference in Los Angeles maraud found a California investor to put the big bucks up and the rest as they say will be history. This move a rod one of the the big money right of where the bigger the rod the birds that are living in the mirror world with a with the kind of money through mud with legs with seven rod babble about me the New Orleans able to produce from the hammer room was able to

get by without a leak and with ten men you're not going to find the country and then and mess with the contractor a contractor already signed your ride yesterday on a VCS wide rather sports Weaver sat. No contact beside you aware of that with him. They're the ones you can move them around and exclusive right. Make me the thinking in the power of the new. Right right. Mohamed would not confirm a published wire service report which said the fight was set for Brazil in July in a one hundred and sixty five thousand seat stadium. The cosmos there in Fort Lauderdale awaiting game two of the season Wednesday night in case you missed it Saturday night the cosmos opened with a 4 3 overtime shootout win over the U.S. and hurricanes love those

NASL nicknames in the shootout cosmos go when you but came out big to keep the cosmos alive then with the counts 3 3. George OK now you attend shoot out kick he nails it and Georgia doesn't even like the shootout method of breaking a tie but he was right there. Houston missed their chance over the top and it ended four to three Cosmo's and the shootout score was also 4 3. Is there a basketball magazine right here his name St. Peter's. Bob Katter's It's coach of the year good choice to get in his rookie year led St. Peters to a 20 to a 9 record and i t been inside actually an interview and it's a real good story Karen you can read that as I do the rest of the sports there are two things I would have liked to have done today play some golf or watch a baseball game have to settle for the baseball the ball game laughing at Rutgers What a beautiful day for a game someone get me a hot dog to score records five laugh yet one record is five runs seven hits to Arizona to get 1 6 and 3. Winning pitcher for Rutgers John Gandalf though he is one and only picked up a victory in relief. Losing pitcher with Scott we go rector's is now suing to Wednesday the Knights host the Delphi to other college boards around the state

today seeking all 13 St. Josephs one in 93 That's our Sports Report OK Carol. Europe's best way to get a mega goal I started it. The State Board of Education starts hearings tomorrow on mandatory sex education in kindergarten through grade 12. It's a proposal that's caused a continuing controversy among teachers preachers and parents. Mariam also has that story. Young love it feels right and it's good for TV ratings. But the consequences of young love are too often painful 12000 New Jersey teenagers got pregnant last year alone. The problems we're seeing mostly of N1 pregnancies the venereal diseases that youngsters are becoming for mistress of a very early age. High divorce rates and things like this with youngsters. And you think you can stop that with a mandatory sex ed not necessarily stop but at least unlike me YOUNG PEOPLE to the point so they know what they're getting into. The family life plan of course the Board of Education is considering would cover topics like the reproductive

system dating child abuse and incest were controversial topics like contraception abortion and homosexuality would be optional and local communities would decide just how specific sexual issues would be taught and at what age. But the New Jersey School Boards Association still thinks that's too much state control of a sensitive topic should be local involving involvement including the religions and the various ethnic values that are represented in the community. And if they community can get together and develop a program that that is the very best kind. Furthermore we don't believe that a mandatory program should necessarily include K-12 instruction. The State Board of Education expects a heated hearing 85 people have asked to speak on one side or educators who say it's just too emotionally charged a subject to be mandated by the state. And on the other side are those who say that unless the state does something local groups will hide their heads in the sand and the problems of

teenage sex will continue in Trenton. I Mariama Rosso. Casino Control commissioners will consider Wednesday whether to ask the legislature to raise the state's legal gambling age from 18 to 19 making it coincide with a new legal drinking age. A commission spokesman said the move would help avoid extra security problems for casinos hold when 18 year old gamblers ask for free drinks served at the gaming tables. That item among a busy agenda for the commissioners. They will also consider whether to extend a Bally's temporary license and whether to allow that casino to expand its operations. The kickback trial of State Senator David Friedman his father is nearing an end. Both sides plan to make closing arguments to a federal jury in Newark tomorrow. The Friedland's are accused of accepting payoffs to a range of loans from a Teamster pension fund. New Jersey's decision to allow cameras in the court is met with widespread praise. But I'm media commentator Richard Nixon has some reservations about the rules.

While I strongly endorse the state's Supreme Court's decision to extend its experiment with cameras in the courtroom to all 21 counties two aspects of last week's decision are disturbing. First however some background last May the court under the leadership of the then Chief Justice Richard who's launched a one year experiment with television radio and still photography in selected courtrooms. At first the test was limited to Bergen and Atlantic counties but it was later extended to 110 and Monmouth Counties at the request of the press. Subsequently the court turned down a request from New Jersey Nightly News for coverage of the great mock trial in Monmouth citing the delicate nature of the trial as its reason. Meanwhile New Jersey Nightly News did get permission to cover a small claims court in Bergen and tenant landlord court in the planting important for their educational value but hardly controversy. Now the court has extended the successful experiment to all 21 counties. But again as limited coverage the still photographers newspapers and magazines and noticeably excluded TV

cameras. This brings me to the disturbing aspects of the recent decision. First there is the obvious double standard which at best will lead only to a distortion of the collected evidence on which the court will eventually decide whether to make the experiment a permanent fixture of New Jersey courtrooms. How will the justices determine the value of photographic coverage if they eliminate television from the experiment. What's also disturbing is the court's dangerous precedent of injecting itself into the editorial process. When the poor Court permits TV into some trials and prohibits it from others it is making news judgments that historically have been the responsibility of editors not government officials. With but two months remaining in the experiment I would urge the Supreme Court to allow all journalists access to public trials. This is Richard Nixon. A.

It's called a feck. The national aviation facilities experimental center at Pomona outside Atlantic City. They FAQ has a fourteen hundred employees who begun to move into new headquarters a process that will continue until late June and Augusta visited the center recently for a closer look. Gus when you bought a commercial airliner there's only one chance in ten million that you'll be involved in a fatal collision. In fact chances are only one one hundredth of one percent. The jet flight will be anything other than normal in every way. There are twenty five hundred commercial airliners and 600000 general aviation aircraft in the US today. The sheer density and numbers of planes in the air threaten to confound the safety

statistics already near collisions number in the hundreds every year. The volume of Africa is expected to triple in the next two decades are extensive air travel has led to the development of an elaborate super sophisticated highway system in the sky. Requiring constant refinement and development. It poses a tremendous safety problem that's being solved largely by computer simulations. That's when a fact comes in. It's the Center for the nation and the world in research to make flying safer. It is a sprawling 5000 acre facility right under the heaviest and traffic pattern in the world. The New York Philadelphia Washington corridor. Since the founding in 1058 of its parent agency the Federal Aviation Administration they think has operated out of a motley collection of one hundred eighty five old buildings left from the World War to promote a naval air station. But now the test pilots engineers and technicians are moving their hundred million dollars worth

of computers and other highly specialized electronic gadgetry into this new $50000000 building being financed by the Atlantic County improvement authority. A critical problem in aviation is that the volume of air travel and the sophistication of the airplanes has consistently outstripped the human ability to operate them safely. Technicians and engineers in a FAQ are concerned with the integrity of the affray MMS themselves. One of the new facilities here will be a huge fire testing building which will permit year round all weather fire tests on airplanes as big as DC 10. And the mix of skills and may thank also includes experts on airport design landings just as they are seven and improvements in the thousands of flight service centers and efforts across the country. But increasingly the focus is on better air traffic control better operation of a complex highway system in the sky and increasingly This means greater use of

automation computers reducing the human factor or at least making it possible for people to interact better with computers. Finally increasingly this sort of research is being done on the ground in simulations. This is a study program to study the workload of pilots using a new type of instrumentation as compared to old conventional wisdom it takes an effect. I met Doug Elliott an aerospace engineer. He happens to be a former pilot one of many of his colleagues have never actually flown a real airplane. Though lacking that firsthand experience they still have to understand the human element in flying. Many are psychologists that are currently Doug Elliott is working on the development of a system which permits pilots to obtain from a CRT TV monitor in layman's language the same information they now get from conventional aircraft instrument panels. The object is to make things simpler for the pilot and reduce the chance of human error.

You'll see pictures of instruments you'll see pictures of the Course he's flying. In one case on this weather radar for example you see pictures of the weather around him and lines showing of course he's supposed to fly. And where his aircraft is and in some cases they can switch over and get in words and messages. There will be cases where if there's a failure of something in an engine perhaps words will come on and tell him what the problem is and what the corrective action would be. And with the simulator you can create different they have the impression at least of different kinds of circumstances. Yes that's one of the beauties of simulators. You can repeat conditions over and over where you would be difficult to do in a real airplane. You cannot you can show all sorts of behaviors and problems situations that might be dangerous to do in a real airplane and you can do it in the simulator with perfect safety and do it over and over and get a lot of data in a fact dramatically demonstrated its ability to facilitate the relation between man and computer at the September

1978 groundbreaking for its new building. Morning Mr President I am made boy recognition computer. I have been programmed during a CA to Graham breaking at your command. If you're already there. Me. Hey yeah I asked you here to be myself then begin the count down. Yes thank you Mr. President. I'm now beginning the groundbreaking Countdown by the way. Three two right there. It's been a dream I think of people ever since the beginning of the computer age to be able to communicate in a simple natural way with computers. The idea of giving computer instructions by voice rather than entry through a keyboard is central to the work of Dr. Donald Connelly a psychologist. The words that I say will be transmitted into the keyboard strokes that the controller must make

and they will appear on that small display down here. I'm in. 1. 3. 2. Altitude. 1. 7. 0. Now the message is complete. If I say the word go. At this point a mechanical Royce will come back and repeat to me right it thinks I said go. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. In this instance it was repeated back in smoke. The main idea behind men talking with computers of course is to make the work of air traffic controllers easier. There is an increasingly stressful occupation and one in which humans stress is obviously undesirable. The advantage and at the same time the price of this is to reduce the importance of the human element in controlling aircraft. The romantic days of seat of the pants flying actually began to wind down 20 years ago

and this the last of the old DC 3 is in the NE Thankfully here and from outta symbolizes the end of that era. These two men have been witnesses to the change that just how does the chief test pilot at Maytag and Bill Stevens also began his flying career before World War 2. Piloting DC 3. Both men are in their 60s. We clambered into the cockpit area of the old plane for a few reminiscences and I thought right that this plane came out in the 30s. Yes and it's still being flown in some places in the world. That's correct yeah they they used some of them on the night mail contract here in the country and in our country and they use it in a lot of foreign countries for both pass your flying and cargo operations flying as much fun as it used to be that when you started. No not really. Yeah it was quite a thrill

when done right. But now the airways terminal areas are so crowded so much regimentation it's very much like driving a car in a city. Forty years ago the DC 3 was the queen of the skies carrying 90 percent of the world's air passenger traffic. Clearly time has passed by the old plane. The arrival of the computer age means that I travel is no longer trust their safety to the skills of men like that Shostak House and Bill Stevens so much as they do to those of human engineers scientists of all descriptions computer experts and the incredibly smart machine which can marshal welding electrons in the service of man. And that's the new is forgotten in Bergen New York and Bill Perry here in Trenton I'm Karen Stone goodnight for the New Jersey nightly news. Oh New Jersey Nightly News is a joint presentation of

New Jersey Public Television and w o any t 13.