NYC: Guys with Clipboards I Saw on 34th Street

Factual Questions
1

Another obscure question. :slight_smile:

Today I was waiting for the M16 bus in Manhattan on 34th Street & Park Avenue. Roughly half a block away was this older man, somewhat shabbily dressed (i.e., not dirty or torn but just old clothes that had seen better days), sitting on a tiny stool and holding a sort of clipboard.

Now, it wasn’t exactly a clipboard: at the top was a row of rectangular buttons in red, green, and yellow – possibly other colors too, but r/g/y were the ones I noticed. The man spent most of his time looking out at the street and clicking the various buttons with the fingers of one hand. Now and then he would stop and make notations on a form on the clipboard.

I tried to see a pattern in his button clicking; for example, because of the red/green/yellow colors I thought perhaps he was timing the traffic lights or something. But I gave up on the traffic lights theory because he seemed to look around at people more than he did the lights.

Anyway, about ten minutes passed – yeah, the bus was taking a long time – and then another man in similarly worn-down clothing crossed the street carrying a freakin’ lawn chair (which you don’t see every day in Manhattan!). Parking himself and his chair about twenty feet away from Guy #1, he pulled out an identical clipboard thingy and started a-clicking. Guy #2, btw, was facing away from the street in the opposite direction of Guy #1, looking downtown towards a large office building and the sidewalk in general.

Naturally, before I could get up the nerve to go over to them and ask 'em what they were doing, my bus arrived. (To be honest, I probably would have been too shy/chicken to ask even if the bus hadn’t showed up.)

So I was hoping one of you smart Dopers would know what these men were doing, 'cause I’m stymied. I mean, I’ve been in Manhattan for 15+ years and never seen such goings on.

Urinating on the street, sure, but never strange clipboards.

2

They were grad students. They are doing some sort of data gathering for research purposes.

3

Heh. Thanks! I figured they were gathering data for research purposes. Dunno if they were grad students, though. They both looked around 50 years old (although that alone doesn’t mean anything) and just didn’t give off that academic vibe. More like the very low income/unemployed people you might see at a soup kitchen, albeit not quite as impoverished-looking.

I know, not very helpful, am I?

4

So maybe they were hired by grad students to gather the data for them.

5

Perhaps they were collecting data for the roads and traffic authority on the number of different types of vehicles that pass by. Different buttons for car, motorbike, bus, taxi. The job might be earn this fellas a few bucks for little skill.

Or maybe they were just recording bus counts/times for the public transport authority.

6

From what the OP is talking about, they’re almost certainly MTA workers who are making sure the buses are on proper schedule and that they’re obeying regulations. I knew a guy who used to do it. You see them in the subway too.

7

Another possibility: They may have been auditing the traffic there to decide if a stoplight is necessary, or to see if existing stoplights are timed properly.

My brother, a Civil Engineer, had to spend many a day parked at an intersection with one of these data collectors. Of course, that was the new guy at the firm. I believe they send out interns for that sort of thing now. :wink:

8

These guys were parked near the 63rd St entrance and exit to the FDR at the beginning of last week. They’re counting cars, buses, taxis, and motorcycle traffic, going in different directions.

Watch closely-- I saw the squad of old guys for two days, and they were followed up by a middle-aged chinese guy for the rest of the week.